A Far Distant Land: A saga of British survival in an unforgiving new world (The Australian Historical Saga Series Book 1)

by David Field

  Sure enough, when the curtain rose yet again, there was George, heavily made up to look like a much older man, who was loudly demanding, of a servant, the whereabouts of various relatives, including his niece. Then a beautiful young woman entered, with a request to borrow his coach for ‘pleasure’ and Daniel’s jaw dropped when he heard the melodic, almost hypnotic, voice of the woman who for the past twenty years had made his life worth living.

  She was wearing a massive wig with long fair curls trailing down to the bodice of her gown and she was heavily made up to look like the ‘flighty’ young girl she was portraying, but there was no mistaking the penetrating green eyes. In total astonishment, he checked the programme that he had earlier stuffed into his pocket and chuckled. Not only was Martha acting the role of an inconsequential young heiress, but she was also doing so under the assumed name of ‘Marianne Merchant’. Whether or not she had fooled Elizabeth that this had been her professional name during the Drury Lane career that she’d never had was neither here nor there — the audience believed it and they were lapping up her performance.

  Now it all made sense. The frequent absences from home, the furtive meetings with Michael Hargreave, when they were no doubt rehearing scenes from the play unfolding before him, the refusal to disclose what was really going on in the Institute while the governor had it closed — it all added up and he was the biggest, brashest, most clod-hopping fool of a man who ever lived, with a wife who was a talented, gifted, beautiful angel of a woman he would never doubt again.

  As the curtains were drawn at the end of the closing scene, there was tumultuous applause from the appreciative audience and the curtains were pulled back once more to reveal the entire cast on stage. After several bows, two young girls wobbled uncertainly up the side steps to present bouquets of flowers to both Martha and Elizabeth, who was still in costume after her performance as the nurse. Elizabeth walked proudly off the stage and to further applause presented her bouquet to the governor, who rose to kiss her on the cheek. Daniel looked back at where Martha was beaming down at him with an exultant grin; suddenly she pouted him a kiss and threw her bouquet down to him. He caught it deftly and blew a kiss back at her; even from that distance he could see the tears carving channels into her heavy make-up.

  An hour or so later, after the audience had dispersed, the actors came out from behind the curtain, some of them still wiping off their make-up. Elizabeth was the first to reach the front row, where she was embraced by John. She looked over John’s shoulder at Daniel and asked, ‘Was it worth all the deception?’

  ‘Most definitely,’ he replied, ‘but “full London cast”?’

  ‘They all came from London, originally,’ Elizabeth replied with a wry grin.

  ‘Some of them as convicts, no doubt,’ Daniel replied.

  ‘And they call me a snob!’ Elizabeth retorted, as Daniel was almost barrelled to the floor by Martha in a big bear hug.

  ‘Did you prefer me with fair hair?’ she asked breathlessly.

  ‘Definitely not,’ he replied, ‘but after that triumph, I’ll no doubt have to get used to seeing my wife transformed.’

  23

  Despite their frequent and enthusiastic endeavours, Daniel and Martha had no more children. But by the start of 1808 it was as if they had combined the Bradbury household with that of the Johnstons, who occupied the adjoining property to theirs and whose mansion was less than a mile up the road and the briefest of coach trips either way.

  Martha had become increasingly critical of the education that her children were receiving from a succession of indifferent home tutors, whereas Rachel was forever singing the praises of the one who attended at Annandale every day to instil some education into her lively brood. His name was Emrys Jones and he had been a teacher in a very select private boys’ school in the Buckinghamshire village of Amersham until he fell into temptation regarding the school funds, which he needed for additional nursing services for his invalid widowed mother. The sum had been a large one, but the judge had taken into account the man’s learning and decided that the new colony of New South Wales might benefit from his services once his seven-year term expired, as it had a year before he was recommended to George by the Reverend Marsden.

  He was a gifted teacher of children and even the haughty and somewhat headstrong Roseanna had been persuaded to improve her English to the point at which she was regularly reading novels as she curled beneath the spreading gum trees dotted around the front lawn. George Junior, now approaching nineteen, had no interest in anything without a saddle, while his younger brother Robert had already declared his future to be in the Navy, for which Latin and Greek would be something of a superfluity.

  The real scholar among the Johnston brood appeared to be David, approaching nine years old and the constant companion of his somewhat less studious neighbour Rebecca Bradbury, upon whom he nevertheless appeared to exercise some intellectual influence. It was their obvious mutuality and the similarities in their ages and intellectual development, that first led to Martha’s suggestion that Rebecca should transfer her studies up the road, where the tutoring was of a higher quality. This was rapidly agreed to, in the hope that the presence of Rebecca would be a good socialising influence on Julia and Blanche as she undertook regular education and left the nursery to her younger sister Maria, with the middle sister Isabella somewhere between the two.

  Once Rebecca had made the switch, it made economic good sense for her to be joined by her sixteen-year-old brother Matthew, for his final year of education before he pursued what seemed to be his determination to join the Army. At the combined schoolroom in Annandale, Matthew and Rebecca would in due course be joined by their brother Mark, who, at two years of age, still required a nurse rather than a tutor.

  The ongoing need for a nurse in both houses had also added to what seemed like a marriage between two families. With only Maria Johnston requiring a full-time nurse, the onerous duties that had led to Sarah Biddle being assisted by Lucy Bracegirdle no longer required the work of two and Mark Bradbury was so enamoured of Lucy that arrangements were well under way for her to transfer to Haberfield House as nurse/deputy housekeeper when the Johnston coachman, Edward Tolhurst, threw a squib into proceedings by proposing marriage to her.

  George reacted with predictable calm and generosity by not only hosting their wedding reception on the front lawns of Annandale, but also agreeing to Tolhurst’s transfer to Haberfield, with the former Bradbury coachman, Devlin, replacing him at Annandale. This complex domestic merger was rounded off by the conversion of the former rudimentary schoolroom at the back of Haberfield House into a head office for the Institute, leaving John Macarthur’s older son Edward to supervise the physical side of things in the Sydney office, in his mother’s hope that the ambitions he had developed during his education back in England to become an Army officer would evaporate in the heat of commerce.

  It was an appropriate time for those engaged in the business of the Institute to have all hands on deck, given the seeming determination of the new governor, Bligh, to trim its sails. His first action following the successful staging of Elizabeth’s first venture into drama production had been to summon George into his office at the Domain in order to lay down the ground rules.

  George had not been invited to take a seat, so he remained at attention as Bligh left him in no doubt of the future agenda.

  ‘Please congratulate your good lady on a first class production the other evening. And you weren’t too shabby yourself, although I hope that the drivelling buffoon you were depicting was not intended as a lampoon of me.’

  ‘Absolutely not, sir,’ George assured him with his straightest face, while looking dead ahead at the wall behind the governor.

  ‘Very well, now down to business. Let there be no doubt in anyone’s mind that I run this colony, not you and your men. I’m aware that my predecessor gave you some additional land out in Cabramatta in gratitude for the job that you did out at Rose Hill, suppressing those rebellious
scum who clearly had no gratitude for the mercy they had already been shown, but I wish that in no way to be employed as a precedent, do you understand? You are paid to protect me and my colony, along with your men and now that Paterson has been sent to enforce the King’s peace in Van Diemen’s Land, you are effectively the commanding officer of the entire Corps. It is your sworn duty to ensure that the colony remains peaceful and law-abiding and that your men are reminded of the loyalty they owe to me. To me, do you understand? Not you — me. You cannot expect further grants of land upon which to grow rich through cattle production merely for performing the duty for which you are paid a Major’s salary. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Completely, sir.’

  ‘Very well — dismiss.’

  Although George was the first to experience the rough edge of Bligh’s tongue, others would not have to wait long. The new governor was one of those men with the inherent ability to cause trouble in an empty room and he soon locked horns with John Macarthur when he gave away beasts from the colony’s herds and supplies from its stores, to farmers in dire need after severe flooding on the Hawkesbury, in return from an undertaking that they would in future do no business with either Macarthur or the Institute of which he was a partner. When Macarthur protested, he was very rudely reminded that the governor was acting in the best interests of the colony as a whole and not those who had grown fat by exploiting it.

  Another vitriolic letter from Elizabeth to a very highly placed friend in London was the first warning to the Colonial Office that they might not have chosen wisely in placing the colony under the iron fist of an arrogant, hard-nosed martinet who might be very good at hanging and flogging naval ratings, but knew little about diplomacy. There was a further shaking of aristocratic heads in high places when Bligh himself wrote back to London that he had placed a total embargo on the use of rum as a medium of exchange and was expecting a strong resistance that might even develop into a full-scale rebellion; however, he assured them, he would meet such a response with all the armed force at his disposal.

  The Institute and its partners were not the only ones to doubt the wisdom of Bligh’s appointment. His approach to justice was a very personalised one, beginning with condoning the trial of a group of Irish convicts on capital ‘revolt’ charges by a court that consisted of their accusers. Somehow or other, despite this, the men were acquitted anyway and Bligh refused to have them released from custody. He also dismissed from magisterial office the highly capable Surgeon-General of the colony, Thomas Jamison, for no other obvious reason than the fact that he was a business associate of Macarthur’s. He followed this up by dismissing, again without any reason with a vestige of credibility, the colony’s Assistant Surgeon D’Arcy Wentworth and gave free vent to his ill temper by fining and imprisoning three local merchants who had penned a letter to London that he regarded as offensive to his dignity.

  As if to show that his venom was not class based, he also antagonised large numbers of the lower middle class who had begun to find their feet in their new land by ordering them to dismantle and remove houses they had built on land they rented from the colony. Little wonder that as early as October of the previous year, George Johnston, as the commanding officer of the New South Wales Corps, had written to his ultimate commanding officer, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, warning him that it was to be doubted if he could, for much longer, stand by and watch his men being verbally abused by the man they were sworn to defend, or ignore the interference, by a naval officer, with the work of a land army.

  The powder keg awaited only a match and this was supplied at the very start of 1808, when Bligh was presented with an opportunity to put John Macarthur in his place. It was a minor technicality, but it led to an armed uprising against Bligh.

  The first indication of what was to come had landed on Daniel’s desk the previous month. It was official notification, from the governor’s office, that the Institute was to forfeit the seven-hundred-pound bond that had, in accordance with colonial regulations, been lodged with the Transit Board in security of the compliance of the master and crew of the Parramatta with all colonial laws. A convict had succeeded in stowing away below decks while the vessel had been moored in Sydney Harbour and when Macarthur advised the governor, on behalf of the Institute, that he was disputing the legality of the forfeiture, Bligh ordered Judge-Advocate Richard Atkins to summon Macarthur to his court to argue the point. When Macarthur arrogantly failed to appear on the due day, Bligh ordered his arrest. He was granted bail, on condition that he appear to answer a charge of contempt of court on 25th January.

  Macarthur objected to the court that was to try him being headed by Judge-Advocate Atkins, on the ground that Atkins owed him a business debt. Atkins refused to step down on that ground and in response the officers of the Corps who had been empanelled as a jury, in accordance with contemporary practice, walked out in sympathy with Macarthur’s objection. Bligh ordered Macarthur’s re-arrest and when the officers of the Corps responded by demanding a new Judge-Advocate and the release of Macarthur from custody, the governor demanded that George attend at his Mansion and give him a good reason why his Corps officers should not themselves be charged with mutiny.

  A hasty council of war was summoned around the large dining table at Annandale. It consisted not only of George and Daniel and their wives, but also Elizabeth Macarthur, who was invited to stay at Haberfield House while John was languishing in the town’s gaol. Elizabeth Farm was being managed, for the time being, by Edward Macarthur, freed from his Institute duties, and it was a highly indignant Elizabeth who opened the proceedings with the complaint that her husband’s extensive business interests now required the supervision of a son barely into his twenties whose real ambitions were military.

  ‘Please God that all this nonsense puts any idea of army service out of his head. No disrespect to you, George, but it’s come to a sorry pass when a man is faced with the terrible decision you have to make, simply because he’s under the notional command of a tyrant.’

  George looked like a man facing the gallows upon which he was about to be hanged, as he looked across the table at Daniel. ‘What do you think I should do, Daniel? You’re the lawyer.’

  ‘No I’m not,’ Daniel replied. ‘At least, I have no experience of the sort of constitutional dilemma you’re faced with, nor do I have any knowledge of criminal law. But it seems to me, if it’s my opinion you’re seeking, that the only basis for the allegation of mutiny against the men is that they refuse to obey the dictates of a man who’s clearly lost all sense of proportion. Was it “mutiny” when the people of France rose up against their king?’

  ‘You’re not talking about armed rebellion, surely, George?’ Rachel gasped, a hand to her mouth in sheer horror. ‘You could be hanged for that.’

  George put his arm around her consolingly, but looked bleakly back across the table. ‘Daniel has a point, I’m afraid. “Mutiny” has suddenly become anything that the governor disagrees with. We can’t run a society on that basis — that would be like plunging us back under the Roman Emperors, or that dreadful Henry VIII. Provided that we strictly uphold the law of this colony, then we’ll keep our noses clean and as I understand it, “mutiny” is any refusal to obey the orders of the King himself.’

  ‘Bligh will argue that he is the King, in the sense that he carries his commission to govern the colony,’ Daniel countered.

  ‘But only in accordance with the laws of England,’ George reminded him. ‘The Magna Carta — if I recall my history correctly — gave every man the right to be judged and punished only by a jury of his peers and under a justice system that is unbiased. John was quite right to object to Atkins running the court when he owes him money and my men were well within their rights to refuse to serve under him. Tell me I’m wrong.’

  ‘You’re not wrong, George,’ Elizabeth assured him, ‘and may I remind you all that it’s my husband who’s sitting there chained to the wall?’

  The next morning th
e entire Johnston family lined up at the front door to bid farewell to George and their tears and hugs conveyed the strong belief that he would not be coming back to them that evening. He was on his favourite mount, Pegasus, having left the carriage at home in case his family might need it in his absence and as he rode gloomily down the Parramatta Road towards the township that was clearly visible down the slope, he was aware of a faster mount catching up with his. He turned in the saddle and grinned as he saw Daniel only a few yards behind him. ‘Going shopping?’ he asked sardonically.

  ‘Shopping for justice, let’s say,’ Daniel replied.

  ‘This isn’t your battle, Daniel, and you’re not even a soldier any more.’

  ‘Thanks to you and John. John’s now in jail and you’re about to do something as risky as I did at Botany Bay. The least I can do is to attempt to whip up the mob at the appropriate moment.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ George argued back. ‘Hopefully public opinion’s with us anyway, in which case there’ll be no need for a mob orator to lead the storming of the Bastille. If they’re not with me, then they deserve the governor they’ve got.’

  ‘And what about you, if they’re not with you? As far as I can read your mind, I think you’re about to lead a rebellion — I only hope that it’s a popular one. We can worry about London later.’

  George pulled in the reins and halted his horse and Daniel did likewise. ‘Daniel, I appreciate the offer and I’d like to think that you’d follow me through the gates of Hell, but you have a wife and children back there, who need you. No point in us both ending up in jail, or on the end of a noose.’

  Daniel looked across at him. ‘I remember a man who walked up behind me on the beach at Botany, pulled me to my feet and took a pistol from me before I deprived myself of the rest of a very happy life. That life’s yours now, George, if that’s what it comes to.’