His next piece of luck was that the chief witness against him, Captain Mackellar, second to Colonel Paterson at the duel, went aboard an American whaler returning to northern waters to present himself as Macarthur’s accuser at the general court martial, and the ship was never seen again after leaving Sydney. It could seem to King that Macarthur enjoyed the preternatural luck associated with the being King considered to be Macarthur’s uncle—the Devil. These chances would have a powerful impact on the future of the colony and Australia.
Macarthur did not stop fighting the governor in London. Everyone he met, wrote Macarthur to his friend Captain Piper, ‘applauds my conduct and execrates Mr King’s’. Without a witness for the court martial, the adjutant-general merely reprimanded Macarthur for earlier insisting on a pointless trial in Sydney, but made certain King could not court-martial him on his return.
Wool imports into Britain had been increasingly impeded by the war with the French, and wool manufacturers were keen to inspect the case of wool Macarthur had brought with him. He told them he was the only settler who had separated his merino sheep from his general herds, and that the results were wonderful. He wrote and published a pamphlet, Statement of the Improvement and Progress of the Breed of Fine Woolled Sheep in New South Wales. Its thesis was that he, and other likely settlers, could deliver Britain from wool dependency on the Continent. As a document it would have more impact on the manufacturers and government than would any plaint from Governor King. Macarthur submitted the essence of the pamphlet to the Privy Council Committee for Trade and Plantations. Sir Joseph Banks lightly mocked him for his over-enthusiasm—the naturalist refused to believe that millions of sheep could be grazed in New South Wales. Banks spoke of Australian grass as ‘tall, coarse and reedy’. But he had never been as far inland as Macarthur.
Macarthur believed that behind Banks’s attitude lay King himself, one of Banks’s old protégés. However, he was encouraged by the decline of the Tories, and looked for help from the new Whig government which came to power in May 1804 under Pitt, with Lord Camden as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. Within two months Macarthur was again promoting his cause before the Privy Council. A wool merchant helped him by testifying that Banks’s claim about the excessive expense of shipping wool from Australia was false. Then genial old Captain Hunter appeared and urged the council to listen to Macarthur. Thus Hunter, formerly an enemy, was forgiven.
The Privy Council wrote to Earl Camden urging he authorise a conditional grant of pastures to Macarthur. Camden was a man easily influenced—he had been the vacillating and panicky Lord Lieutenant of Ireland who had been presented with the crisis of Irish rebellion against the Crown in 1798. He had been replaced at the peak of the uprising which had resulted in so many convicts being sent to New South Wales. Now, in influencing other Antipodean realities, he was strongly swayed by Macarthur’s Whig friends, and signed off on a 10 000-acre (4050-hectare) grant to Macarthur and organised for him to leave the army to devote himself full-time to the wool enterprise.
King, in the meantime, was in increasingly bad odour with the military of New South Wales. He had taken five convicts and mounted them as his own bodyguard. When the Irish convicts from the Hercules ‘committed some great excesses and left the place they belong to’, King sent his private guard to Parramatta to serve under the direction of the officers of the New South Wales Corps, but their services were rebuffed with contempt. On his arrival in New South Wales, King had been enthusiastic in wanting to take over and had been impatient for Hunter to go, but by now he had become a haunted man. The acid of his enemies’ machinations and their public contempt had eroded his soul.
A CRISIS IN LAW
King had warned the British government that there would be trouble and perplexity if a professional lawyer were not sent out to New South Wales as Judge-Advocate to ‘circumvent the chicane of those miscreants who, from having committed the worst of crimes, use their knowledge of those parts of the law which are open to chicane for the most improper purposes’. Two of the three legal officers in the colony were convicts, and could not be officially employed. One of these two was a middle-aged solicitor named George Crossley, who in 1796 had been charged with forging the will of a clergyman, defrauding the heir-at-law. Crossley had allegedly placed a fly in the mouth of the dead testator before tracing the signature with the deceased’s hand, so that he would be able to claim that there was life in the body. Crossley survived that trial but was subsequently charged with perjury and convicted. Crossley would become an important source of informal advice for King and, later, the new governor, William Bligh.
Michael Massey Robinson, a literary Englishman, was the other convict lawyer. He had been transported for threatening to publish a verse which accused James Oldham, an ironmonger and alderman of the City of London, of murder. He had journeyed to New South Wales on the same ship as the ailing judge-advocate Richard Dore, and was such entertaining company that Dore made him his secretary. Dore died, but Massey Robinson was still depended on. In 1802, though, he demanded a gallon of rum in payment for the delivery of a bail bond, and perjured himself over it, and though sentenced to Norfolk Island, he had become so essential to Simeon Lord, the emancipated convict, as a general agent and advisor, as well as to other merchants, that a number of the most respected gentry in Sydney petitioned for his pardon. Governor King himself needed Massey Robinson and restored him to his post. Later, his forgery of movement permits was discovered, but glossed over.
It offended the officers that in their legal dealings with government their fate might depend on what convict lawyers told officials. It equally offended settlers that when they went to court, rulings upon which their futures might depend came down from a bench of close-knit officers and a judge-advocate, Richard Atkins, with no legal training.
The nature of the colony’s courts and the way they were open ‘to chicane’ by those Joseph Holt had called ‘the huckster officers’ would be a trap to bring that eminent explorer William Bligh down. The new governor’s determination to bring the trading officers to heel was set, and he applied the same determination to all matters, often treating special pleaders with a quarterdeck irritability and liverishness. So he quickly gave grounds for a log of complaints to be made against him.
BLIGH THE SINNER
The eminent William Bligh, Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society and darling of Sir Joseph Banks, committed his first unpopular act as governor by directing people to quit their houses built within the lines of demarcation of the public domain. ‘He has ordered Morant’s house and all that row to be pulled down, which has been done, to the total ruin of those poor wretches.’ King had granted leases of fourteen years to some of the occupants. ‘Some of these people,’ wrote one complainant, ‘in the erection of their houses, have expended the fruits of many years’ industry. These are now forced to quit their dwellings without the least remuneration . . . If one governor can do away the act of a former one, all property of whatever nature must be uncertain.’ Later, those who opposed Bligh for meaner reason would embrace the cause of the evicted.
Then, when unpopular William Gore, the provost-marshal, was accused of having ‘uttered a false note’—that is, forgery—Bligh directed George Crossley, ‘sent here for perjury’, to plead for Gore as his counsel.
These complaints were permitted to far outweigh Bligh’s reforms—the flogging-as-torture and to extract confession which had marred King’s regime was now ended, and promissory notes could only be issued for amounts in sterling, not for quantities of goods. Further, conditions for the arrest of a citizen were made regular. Bligh also looked upon the land as a sacred trust, and was sparing with grants and livestock, and put limitations on the use of convicts—a reform in the eyes of Whitehall but not in those of the officers, free settlers and others.
He quarrelled from the start with Macarthur. By now, Macarthur had been a year or more returned, and was pursuing the sheep business on his grant southwest of Sydney which he h
ad obsequiously named Camden. Macarthur first called on Bligh in 1806 while the new governor was visiting Government House, Parramatta, where King was waiting for a ship home. As they walked in the garden, Macarthur claims Bligh savaged him, and there is a Bligh-like temper to the sentiments Macarthur quoted, even if he was an unreliable witness.
‘What have I to do with your sheep sir? What have I to do with your cattle? Are you to have such flocks of sheep and such herds of cattle as no man ever heard of before? No, sir! I have heard of your concerns, sir. You have got 5000 acres of land in the finest situation in this country. But by God, you shan’t keep it.’
When Macarthur replied that the grant came from the Privy Council and the Secretary of`State, Bligh cried, ‘Damn the Privy Council and damn the Secretary of State too! You have made a number of false representations respecting your wool, by which you have obtained this land.’
According to Macarthur, Bligh behaved so irascibly at table that he caused the fragile King to weep, and after breakfast, when Macarthur tried to reiterate Earl Camden’s interest in the wool project, Bligh said again, ‘Damn the Secretary of State, what do I care for him, he commands in England and I command here.’
Soon Elizabeth Macarthur was telling her best friend, Miss Kingdon, in whose father’s manse she had spent the happiest times of her girlhood, that Bligh was violent, rash and tyrannical. It would be easier to dismiss her if she were not such an admirable and genial woman, very loyal to her husband but capable of her own thoughts. Now that he had returned to Australia they lived principally on their property on the Parramatta River, which she thought delightful. She wrote that when they married, ‘I was considered indolent and inactive; Mr Macarthur too proud and haughty for his humble fortune or expectations, and yet you see how bountifully Providence has dealt with us. At this time I can truly say no two people on earth can be happier than we are. In Mr Macarthur’s society I experience the tenderest affections of a husband, who is instructive and cheerful as a companion. He is an indulgent father, beloved as a master, and universally respected for the integrity of his character.’
There were also complaints from the Macarthurs about King’s friend and Bligh’s, Mr Robert Campbell, a young man who had come to Sydney from Calcutta in 1800 to open a branch of the family company, Campbell, Clark and Co. He had made such inroads into the officers’ trading monopoly that he was by 1804 agent for many of the officers who ironically sometimes complained of his mark-ups. In his position as naval officer of the port as well, he had the opportunity to deal with all vessels that did not come to New South Wales assigned to any particular trading house.
Andrew Thompson, former convict, was also the butt of complaints of those who opposed Bligh. An emancipated Scot with a good practical head, he ran Governor Bligh’s farm, which Bligh’s enemies depicted as a demonstration of the governor’s rapacity, while his friends lauded it as a useful model farm. Thompson inadvertently gave ammunition to Bligh’s opponents when he reported that he had exchanged inferior numbers of the governor’s herd of cattle at the Toongabbie yards and obtained good and sufficient ones in their place.
Thompson was rare in being a Scots convict. He had been tried in Jedburgh in 1790 for stealing £10 worth of cloth. He arrived in Sydney in the Pitt in February 1792 and served in the men’s provisions store for a year, and then at Toongabbie as a member of the police force. In 1796 Governor Hunter appointed him to the Green Hills, that is, Windsor, the main settlement on the Hawkesbury. He stayed there for the rest of his life. He was pardoned in 1798, and built his house overlooking the river on an acre leased from the government. He rose to chief constable and held that office until 1808, during which time he distinguished himself by investigating crimes and capturing runaway convicts, acting as intermediary between Europeans and Aborigines and rescuing settlers from appalling floods.
Bligh was strongly influenced by Thompson’s transmissions from the Hawkesbury. For the Hawkesbury folk saw themselves as cut off and victimised by the officers’ cartel. They pleaded that the governor might make representations to His Majesty to allow privileges of trade to their up-country vessels and themselves as other colonies had, and that the law might be administered by trial by jury of the people, as in England. They liked the governor for his plans—like King’s—to bring down prices with a government store.
Yet two of the first ‘respectable’ farmers of New South Wales, John and Gregory Blaxland, Kentish men who had been talked by Sir Joseph Banks into emigrating at their own expense, disliked Bligh for his non-compliance with what they saw as their just demands. The Blaxlands had burned their bridges behind them, selling their long-held family farm. They thought Gregory had not been adequately supplied with land, stock and convict labour, and looked at every resource supplied to Bligh’s own model farm by Thompson with rancour.
Soon, scrolled-up pipes—anonymous lampooning political doggerel— attacking Bligh began to appear in the streets (as they had during King’s governorship), the most noted drawing on the notorious mutiny led by Fletcher Christian on the Bounty against Bligh to declare: ‘Oh tempora! Oh mores! Is there no CHRISTIAN in New South Wales to put a stop to the tyranny of the governor?’
THE GRAND IMPASSE
When Bligh was appointed governor, Lieutenant John Putland, married to Bligh’s daughter Mary, had accepted a post as his aide-de-camp, even though he was suffering from tuberculosis. Mary was small, vigorous and resembled her mother, who had not accompanied Bligh because she was a very poor sailor. In Mrs Bligh’s absence, Mary Putland served as the mistress of Government House, where everyone thought her elegant and amiable.
For a man wary about granting land, on arrival in Sydney Bligh had had Governor King grant him the thousand acres (405 hectares) on the Hawkesbury he used for his model farm, but also 600 acres (243 hectares) at St Marys in Sydney’s west for John and Mary Putland. Bligh in return gave a grant to Mrs King which she recklessly named ‘Thanks’. This arrangement naturally outraged people like the Blaxlands.
Putland’s tuberculosis weakened him. He could not always attend public events with his wife. One Sunday in St Philip’s Church, to which she had accompanied her father, Mary fainted when soldiers laughed at the transparency of the new dress her mother had sent from England. She had chosen in the heat not to wear petticoats and the long pantaloons which covered her legs were visible in the light. Bligh verbally flagellated the soldiers responsible, thus making them far from willing servants.
Late in 1807, Mary had written to her mother, ‘Pappa is quite well but dreadfully harassed by business and the troublesome people he has to deal with. In general he gives great satisfaction, but there are a few we suspect wish to oppose him . . . Mr Macarthur is one of the party and the others are the military officers, but they are all invited to the house and treated with the same politeness as usual.’ When John Putland died in early January 1808, to be buried in the grounds of Sydney Cove’s Government House, with the remains of Arabanoo and others, Bligh was worried about the effect it would have on his daughter’s health. ‘She has been a treasure to the few gentlewomen here and the dignity of Government House.’
In late 1807, Bligh and Macarthur had become locked in conflict over two issues. One concerned Judge-Advocate Atkins; the other was to do with the escape of an Irish convict on the schooner Parramatta, which made the owners of that vessel, Macarthur and Garnham Blaxcell, a free settler, responsible to pay a bond of £900. Macarthur and Blaxcell refused to pay, and so there was a warrant issued for their arrest. When the warrant was presented on the night of 15 December, Macarthur refused to acknowledge its legality and sent the chief constable away with a note which read, ‘I consider it with scorn and contempt, as I do the persons who directed it to be executed.’ Macarthur followed the letter into Sydney and was arrested four doors from Government House and committed to appear for trial at the criminal court on 25 January 1808. Now Macarthur brought his Atkins card into play.
Throughout 1807 and into early 1808, Mac
arthur began to use as a lever and a ploy a near-forgotten debt of £82 9 shillings and sixpence owed him by Judge-Advocate Atkins. In 1801 Atkins had repaid Macarthur with a bill which Macarthur had taken with him to England and which was there dishonoured. On Macarthur’s return to the colony, Atkins had promised to pay it, but that had been two years past. Macarthur pointed out that to get justice he would have to ‘call upon Mr Atkins to issue a writ to bring himself before himself to answer my complaint’.
Macarthur used this debt of convenience to attack the legitimacy of the court in one of its most vulnerable areas—the position of Judge-Advocate, particularly as held by an untrained drunkard like Atkins. He was also favoured by its other great weakness—its being composed of officers unlikely to bring too harsh a sentence down on one (formerly) of their own.
All through January, as Macarthur awaited his trial, he tried to get Atkins removed, and Bligh said only the British government could do that. There was also an argument over a town lot on Church Hill Macarthur thought was his, but was told by government to give up for ‘any situation he may fix on to an equal extent’.
On the night of 24 January 1808, the officers had regimental dinner at the barracks to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the colony due to occur two days later. The dinner was attended by all nine officers and a number of their friends, including Macarthur’s son Edward, and his nephew, Hannibal. The diners could see John Macarthur pacing the parade ground, a hungry presence, while the officers and gentlemen danced with each other to the music of the fife band. On his way home that night to Annandale, Major Johnston injured his arm ‘from the over-setting of a gig’, so that he was not able to attend the next morning when the court made up of Atkins and the officers sat. The New South Wales Corps had stacked the gallery with soldiers, and even before the indictment could be read Macarthur rose and argued the impropriety of Atkins sitting in his case. When the judge-advocate attempted to put an end to Macarthur’s speech and threatened to throw him in gaol at once, Captain Anthony Fenn Kemp threatened the judge-advocate himself with imprisonment. Atkins left the courtroom and went to Government House to report to Bligh. About eleven o’clock that morning the six officers of the bench wrote to Bligh demanding he appoint another judge-advocate.