Elizabeth Macarthur

by Michelle Scott Tucker

  ELIZABETH MACARTHUR IN A LETTER TO ENGLAND (EXTRACT) 18 NOVEMBER 1791

  Two young women stepped ashore from the Gorgon’s barge: Mrs Mary Ann Parker accompanied her husband Captain Parker, master of HMS Gorgon, and Anna Josepha King accompanied her husband, Phillip Gidley King, a naval officer. As a young lieutenant Phillip King had arrived with the First Fleet and was then sent straight to Norfolk Island. For two years he had battled to establish the island settlement before Governor Phillip, just prior to the arrival of the Second Fleet, sent him back to England to report the colony’s difficulties.

  King worked fast. Arriving in England just before Christmas 1790, he saw the home secretary Lord Grenville and royal adviser Sir Joseph Banks and discussed with both men the problems of New South Wales. On 2 March 1791 he was promoted to commander. On 11 March he married, and four days later sailed with his bride in HMS Gorgon with Captain and Mrs Parker. King had a commission as lieutenant-governor of Norfolk Island1 and was stopping briefly in Sydney before travelling on to his new post. The wife of one of the agents on a convict transport also arrived in the colony with her husband and at least some of the newly arrived officers of the New South Wales Corps, including Captain Paterson, were accompanied by their wives. As Elizabeth wrote to her friends in Bridgerule, there were now ‘so many ladies in the Regiment that I am not likely to feel the want of female society as I first did’.2

  Elizabeth had been perhaps the only free person in the colony feeling that ‘want of female society’. Many of the officers lived openly with convict mistresses and more than a few later happily acknowledged and cared for the subsequent children. But the convict ‘wives’ were not women Elizabeth could associate with. This socially awkward situation was, for Elizabeth at least, partially relieved that spring. The officers took little parties of ladies on boating excursions up and down the various inlets between Sydney Cove and Parramatta, as well as across the harbour to Manly. Elizabeth described the entertainments in a letter to Bridgerule, writing about ‘taking refreshments with us, & dining out under an awning upon some pleasant point of Land, or in some of the Creeks or Coves’.3 Elizabeth described Mrs Parker as ‘a very amiable intelligent Woman’,4 and immediately warmed to Mrs King, who was also from Devon and who had lived many years in Bideford, not more than forty kilometres from Bridgerule. Mrs King was expecting her first child and perhaps Elizabeth was able to confide in her: Elizabeth was newly pregnant again too.

  During his two years establishing the colony on Norfolk Island, Lieutenant King had fathered two sons with convict woman Ann Innett. The eldest boy, named Norfolk and born on 8 January 1789, was the first colonial child born on the island. King returned to the settlement at Sydney Cove from Norfolk Island a year later and it seems likely that Ann and little Norfolk travelled with him. The second boy, Sydney, was born in early 1790,5 perhaps shortly before King sailed away in March to Batavia, then to England and marriage to the genteel Anna Josepha. But if the colony of late 1791 was agog to see the new Mrs King’s reaction to her husband’s earlier indiscretions, they were disappointed. The boys would be welcomed into Anna’s life and home, and Elizabeth was able to write with discretion and approval that ‘Her stay here being very short I saw but little of her; but I had reason to believe her possessed of a great share of good nature & frankness.’6

  With her new circle of women friends, Elizabeth was pleased to enjoy some society events. On 25 October 1791, the thirty-first anniversary of King George III’s accession to the throne, a salute of twenty-one guns was fired by the Gorgon and a dinner was held at Government House. The meal ‘was served to upwards of fifty officers, a greater number than the colony had ever before seen assembled together’.7 The next day the Patersons and the Kings, along with King’s son Norfolk, left for Norfolk Island aboard the Atlantic, which was en route to Calcutta to obtain yet more stores for the New South Wales colony. Seven weeks later on Norfolk Island, in December 1791, Mrs King was safely delivered of a boy whom she named Phillip Parker King. Phillip, for his father, and Parker for Captain Parker of the Gorgon.8 Baby Phillip’s future son, also Phillip, would one day marry a Macarthur girl.

  By the end of the year most of the Third Fleet transports had left Sydney, several trying their luck with mixed results at the whale-fisheries along the coast of New South Wales. In November the Macarthurs moved from Parramatta back to Sydney. ‘We are at present here rather in an unsettled state,’ wrote Elizabeth, although the change of scenery seemed to agree with little Edward, now almost three years old. ‘Edward grows a strong and healthy child, & from being a great deal of trouble to me ceases almost to be any at all—he prattles every thing—& is quite Papa’s Darling.’9 Elizabeth’s November letter was written just in time to be taken to England aboard the Supply. The little brig had been the first vessel of the First Fleet to arrive at Botany Bay. Under the command of Lieutenant Ball the Supply had served as the colonists’ lifeline in her constant to and fro between Sydney Cove and Norfolk Island and had braved the Great Barrier Reef of northeastern Australia and the miasmas of Batavia to fetch fresh stores. ‘It was impossible to view our separation with insensibility,’ wrote Tench. The Supply ‘which had so often agitated our hopes and fears, which from long acquaintance we had learned to regard as part of ourselves,’10 was leaving for home. She carried on board a kangaroo, the first to be shipped live to England, as a present for King George III.11

  Finally, on 18 December 1791, HMS Gorgon sailed too. She carried away not only Captain and Mrs Parker, but most of the marines who had come from England in the First Fleet—including Dawes and Tench. After nearly four years of service both men seemed ambivalent about the New South Wales experiment. Dawes had sought to stay on and, over the years, asked to return but was never permitted or otherwise able to do so. Tench painted a grim picture of the Sydney he was leaving: ‘this place had long been considered only as a depot for stores’. The settlement ‘exhibited nothing but a few old scattered huts and some sterile gardens. Cultivation of the ground was abandoned, and all our strength transferred to Rose Hill.’ As a marine and an officer, Tench felt put upon. ‘The barracks, so long talked of, so long promised, for the accommodation and discipline of the troops, were not even begun when I left the country.’ Nor was there a new hospital. Instead ‘the old one was patched up’ and annexed by the field hospital originally brought from England in pieces.12 Sydney, nevertheless, continued to be the place of the governor’s formal residence, and, consequently, the headquarters of the colony.

  Everyone missed the Gorgon. ‘The cove and the settlement were now resuming that dull uniformity of uninteresting circumstances which had generally prevailed,’13 wrote the chief bureaucrat, David Collins. With the public stores again running low, Christmas was expected to pass quietly. A divine service was performed in the open air at Sydney and at Parramatta. After almost four years of delivering sermons in the sun or wind or rain the Reverend Johnson longed for a church. ‘It cannot be wondered at,’ complained Johnson to Governor Phillip ‘that persons, whether of higher or lower rank, come so seldom and so reluctantly to public worship. I have, not seldom, found very great inconveniences attending it myself.’14 Someone took it upon themselves, however, to lighten the mood and on Christmas night the store was robbed of twenty-two gallons of spirits.15

  In mid-February 1792 Major Francis Grose, the commanding officer of the New South Wales Corps and newly appointed lieutenant-governor of the colony, finally arrived, on HMS Pitt. Grose, then aged thirty-four, was accompanied by his wife, Frances, and their young son (also Francis), who was the same age as Edward Macarthur.16 In stark contrast to Tench’s descriptions, Grose liked what he saw. ‘Instead of the rock I expected to see I find myself surrounded with gardens that flourish and produce fruit of every description. Vegetables here are in great abundance and I live in as good a house as I wish for.’ Grose was allocated the farm of his predecessor, Major Ross of the marines, and considered that it produced everything his family needed. ‘All that i
s wanting to put this colony in an independent state,’ wrote Grose after just seven weeks in the colony, ‘is one ship freighted with corn and black cattle. Was that but done, all difficulties would be over.’17 But storms in April added to the difficulties, causing floods and bringing down trees and huge branches. Most of the houses were rendered damp and seeds recently sown were washed out of the ground.18 The stores ran low and once again rations were reduced.

  In early May, though, the Macarthurs had cause to celebrate. Elizabeth gave birth to a healthy baby girl. It was two years almost to the day since their first little girl had been born—and lost—at sea. This second baby girl was given a name: Elizabeth. With her arrival, the tide began to turn for the Macarthur family. Major Grose, a comfortably built man variously described as affable, indolent or downright lazy, took a shine to Lieutenant Macarthur and appointed him the regimental paymaster. The job was a juicy plum. As well as an additional £15 a month in pay, standard practice throughout the service saw a variety of kickbacks and perquisites flow John Macarthur’s way.

  Two more store ships arrived in June and July, bringing food, livestock, clothing and a renewed sense of optimism to the colony. The first ship, the Atlantic, carried news of the shipwrecked HMS Pandora, which had been sent from England to capture the mutinous Bounty crew. In August 1791 Pandora had struck a reef near the northern tip of the Australian mainland and, as Bligh had done only two years earlier, the survivors (eighty-nine crew and ten captured mutineers) made their way to Timor in open boats.19 The second ship, the Britannia from London, brought better news. ‘Some steps had been taken towards prosecuting Donald Trail, the master of the Neptune transport, for his treatment of the convicts.’20

  Barrels of stores were unloaded from each ship, laboriously warehoused and, in the weeks following the ships’ departures, finally opened. The colonists found themselves short-changed, with provisions well under the stated weights. And what remnants of food existed were variously putrid, rancid, or full of husks.21 Grose, a man accustomed to eating well, took decisive action—or perhaps was persuaded to take action by John Macarthur. ‘The soldiers under my command,’ Grose wrote to Governor Phillip, ‘have scarcely shoes to their feet and have no other comforts than the reduced and unwholesome rations served out from the stores.’22 Grose assembled the captains of his corps to discuss what could be done to relieve the situation, and the entrepreneurial leaders of the New South Wales Corps raised over £4000 in £200 shares to charter the Britannia, dispatching her to the Cape to buy cattle, horses, stores and comforts.

  Governor Phillip was unhappy with the arrangement. He grumbled that other ships with provisions from Europe would arrive before the Britannia could return.23 He worried that the action might ‘affect the interest of the East India Company by opening a door to contraband trade’.24 He was right to worry—the East India Company held a formal and legally enforceable monopoly on all British trade in the region, although it was almost impossible to police. Phillip also wondered at the corps’ intestinal fortitude, refuting the notion that ‘the ration served from the public stores is unwholesome; I see it daily at my own table’.25 Governor Phillip declined to take a share in the venture but, in the face of public support for it, did not prevent it from going ahead. The Britannia sailed out of Port Jackson in October 1792. By this stage Governor Phillip, aged fifty-four, had had enough. He’d been away from home for more than five years and under his leadership the colony was ‘approaching that state in which I have so long and anxiously wished to see it’.26 Although his spear wound had healed quickly, Phillip was now plagued by a pain in his side which ‘hourly grew worse’.27 It was probably kidney stones. At the end of October, Governor Phillip let it be generally known that he was resigning, and returning to England in the Atlantic.28 But before he left, Lieutenant John Macarthur managed to argue with him.

  It was a relatively minor altercation, the sort that had regularly erupted between Governor Phillip and the other officers since the establishment of the colony. No one at the time thought it warranted even the slightest mention in their diaries or dispatches. The quarrel didn’t come to light at all until Macarthur himself recalled it (apparently word for word and with almost superhuman clarity) almost twenty years later. He had never, Macarthur said, had any difference with Governor Phillip but one.29 Macarthur had control of the regimental store. Grose had ordered that, from the recently arrived trading ship Royal Admiral, a keg of spirits be purchased for each company of the New South Wales Corps, to be served as a daily ration. Some mistake was made during the unloading and one of these kegs was landed without being recorded. A disagreement ensued between the wharf constables, the company commander whose keg it was, the commissary and, eventually, John Macarthur.

  Macarthur took the dispute to Governor Phillip. Phillip, harassed in the face of his imminent departure and in constant pain, flew into a rage. He censured Macarthur strongly and directed that the cask be given up to the commissary. The more Macarthur tried to present his case, the angrier Phillip became. In the end, the governor threatened the young lieutenant with arrest. That, for an imprudent Macarthur, was a bridge too far. ‘Sir, you may please yourself. You are the first officer that ever threatened me with an arrest. And I give you my word of honour that if I am put in arrest, I shall require a full and sufficient explanation of the cause before I consent to sit quietly down under such a disgrace.’ 30

  Such was Macarthur’s account of this episode almost two decades after the alleged incident. If Macarthur’s account was accurate, it is surprising that Governor Phillip failed to arrest the hot-headed young officer for insubordination. Apparently, the next day a cooler Phillip allowed the company commander who had bought the disputed keg to explain, and the cask was returned to the regimental store. But for the remaining month of Phillip’s stay in the colony, John Macarthur refused all invitations to dine at Government House.31 This can only have been a disappointment to Elizabeth, who in her loyal way would have followed her husband’s lead. Perhaps Elizabeth quietly managed to bid Phillip a fond farewell before he left.

  In his last days Phillip gave to each of the marines and sailors who were establishing their own smallholdings, and to each married convict couple who were doing the same, ‘one ewe for the purpose of breeding; and to others he gave such female goats as could be spared’.32 These animals represented the colony’s future and had been procured and nurtured at great expense. Phillip hoped that they would be cherished accordingly. They were not. Most were eaten or sold to officers in exchange for rum. With all the honours due his rank and station, Phillip sailed on the morning of 11 December 1792. He was accompanied ‘voluntarily and cheerfully’ by local Eora men Bennelong and Imeerawanyee, much to the distress of their wives and kin. The latter was the same cheeky young man Tench had written about, when Imeerawanyee served Elizabeth Macarthur at Governor Phillip’s table. The Atlantic also carried various specimens of timber, plants, animals and birds including ‘four fine kangaroos and several native dogs’.33 Only Bennelong would return. Imeerawanyee died in England and was buried there.

  In the absence of a replacement governor, lieutenant-governor Grose took charge. The civil magistrates were sidelined and the justice system, always partially overseen by the military, became wholly so. For the first time a distinction was made between the rations received by the military and the allowance received by the convicts.34 Grose also began to delegate much of the work that had previously caused Governor Phillip such ‘infinite fatigue’.35 He appointed his protégé John Macarthur to inspector of public works. John Macarthur became the man on the spot: issuing orders and attending to the various and constant requests of the emancipated settlers.36 Entrusted with the direction of all the superintendents, storekeepers, overseers and convicts working at Parramatta and at nearby Toongabbie (a farm and convict station Phillip had established in 1791), Lieutenant John Macarthur was, at the age of twenty-six, in charge of the agricultural development of the colony. At last Elizabeth could see h
er husband, and therefore her family, making progress.

  Throughout his time in office, Phillip had received no instructions about granting land to officers. To emancipated convicts, yes. To common marines and soldiers, yes. But the officers remained in a legal limbo. And to some extent the situation suited Phillip. If the officers were granted land, they must also be granted convicts to work it, taking much-needed men away from the clearing, construction and agricultural work of the government.37 But on the day Grose took office he granted twenty-five acres (ten hectares) to a Lieutenant Cummings. Two weeks later the papers attesting to Grose’s formal authority to grant land arrived on the Bellona, along with the colony’s first group of free settlers. And so the land rush began. Grose allotted ‘such officers as asked one hundred acres of land which, with great spirit, they began to clear at their own expense’.38 Macarthur, of course, was one of those who asked, and Grose was happy to oblige him. Elizabeth wrote to England with joy, telling her friends and family that Major Grose ‘has given us a grant of one Hundred acres of Land on the Banks of the river close to the Town of Parramatta. It is some of the best ground that has been discovered, & ten men are allowed us for the purpose of clearing & cultivating it’.39

  Elizabeth’s celebratory mood was shared by the other free men and women of the settlement, and was reflected in their cheerful reception, in March 1793, of some unexpected visitors from Spain. Two corvettes arrived, midway through a five-year circumnavigation of the globe for scientific and mapping purposes. Despite the various wars between England and Spain, the Spanish officers were received with pleasure by Grose and treated as honoured guests. In return, the visiting Spaniards set up a pavilion on the harbour foreshore, to serve chocolate and other delicacies to the ladies of Sydney.40 But Elizabeth’s riches did not end there. ‘I have one more gift to speak of,’ wrote Elizabeth to Bridget, ‘it is a very fine Cow in Calf, of which I am very proud, & for this also we are indebted to Major Grose; & to a Family in this Country in its present situation, it is a gift beyond any value than can be placed upon it’. The changes to her family’s fortune coloured everything, and Elizabeth seems to have relaxed into her role as a parent. ‘Edward grows and improves beyond even our sanguine expectations; & little Elizabeth is able to walk by one hand though not ten months old.’41 Nothing was quite so difficult any more.