William Cox

by Richard Cox

  Roberts, David, ‘The Bells Falls Massacre and Bathurst’s History of Violence’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 26, no. 105, October 1995, pp. 616–27.

  Rubinstein, Bill, ‘The Top Wealthholders of New South Wales, 1830–44’, The Push From the Bush, no. 8, December 1980, pp. 41–47.

  Spigelman, J. J., The Macquarie Bicentennial, Annual History Lecture, History Council of New South Wales, Sydney, 2009.

  Ward, John. M., ‘James Macarthur, Colonial Conservative, 1798-1867’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 66, pt 3, December 1980, pp. 149–62.

  Woodruff, Douglas, ‘Expansion and Emigration’, Early Victorian England 1830–1865, vol. 2, Oxford University Press, London, no named editor, 1934, pp. 375–92.

  Maps

  British Ordnance Survey Old Series 1811, Cassini Publishing, 2007.

  6. Electronic Resources

  Australian Dictionary of Biography, online edition, various authors.

  Notes

  Abbreviations

  ADB Australian Dictionary of Biography

  AHS Australian Historical Studies

  HRA Historical Records of Australia

  HRNSW Historical Records of New South Wales

  JACH Journal of Australian Colonial History

  JRAHS Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society

  ML Mitchell Library

  Foreword

  1 Joseph Holt, Memoirs of Joseph Holt, ed. T. Crofton Croker, Henry Colburn, London, 1838, vol. 2, p. 134.

  2 London Gazette, issue 16137, p. 535, British National Archives.

  3 Governor Macquarie to Earl Bathurst, 24 June 1815, HRA, Series 1, vol. viii, p. 360.

  4 Bonwick Transcripts, Box 22, pp. 4220–31.

  5 Bonwick Transcripts, Box 10, p. 4078, evidence taken by Bigge at Mulgoa.

  6 Cox to Bigge, Bonwick Transcripts, Box 25, pp. 5328–35.

  7 Chris Cunningham, The Blue Mountains Rediscovered, Kangaroo Press, East Roseville, NSW, 1996, p. 145.

  8 John Thomas, Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry on the State of Agriculture and Trade in the Colony of New South Wales, British Parliamentary Papers, vol. 10, 136, 13 March 1823, hereafter called Bigge Report, Agriculture.

  9 Michael Roe, The Quest for Authority in Eastern Australia, 1855–1851, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1965, p. 6.

  Chapter 1

  1 Memoirs of William Cox J.P., William Brooks and Co., Sydney, 1901, facsimile reprint by the Library of Australian History, North Sydney, 1979, p. iv.

  2 Macarthur’s father was a mercer and draper in Plymouth. D’Arcy Wentworth was connected to Lord Fitzwilliam, although his father was an innkeeper. Piper was of an army family and the son of a doctor. Marsden was the son of a Yorkshire blacksmith, persuaded to go by William Wilberforce, but later became a pastoralist as well.

  3 Donald Payne, Dorset Harbours, Christopher Johnson, London, 1953, p. 20.

  4 John Hillier, Ebb Tide at Poole 1815–1851, Poole Historical Trust, Poole, 1985, p 12.

  5 Jo Draper, The Georgians, Dovecot Press, Wimborne, Dorset, 1998, p. 20.

  6 The official presided over a consistory court, which sat in the Minster and had powers covering not only religious matters and personal morals, but also financial affairs of tithes and wills. David Popham, The Book of Wimborne, Barracuda Books, Buckingham, 1983, p. 81.

  7 The house has been restored by the council, as being the oldest inhabited house in Wimborne.

  8 Memoirs of William Cox J.P., op. cit., p. 12. They consist of: Or, three bars azure, on a canton argent a lion’s head erased gules. Crest a griffin’s head, erased pp pierced by arrow. Motto: ‘Fortitudo in Adversis’.

  9 ‘Cox of Clarendon, N.S. Wales’, 35 page unpublished typescript genealogy, until c.1900, provided by James. C. Cox, Anglesea, Victoria, pp. 1, 2.

  10 A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Colonial Gentry, Bernard Burke, London, 1895, p. 75, reprinted edition p. 781.

  11 Reproduced in Gwen Yarker, Georgian Faces: Portrait of a County, Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, 2010, p. 6.

  12 Ordnance Survey Old Series, 1811, Sheets 11 and 15 map ref 975017, scale 1:50,000, and sheet 329 of 1909 reprinted by Cassini Publishing, Southampton, 2007.

  13 Clarendon was built by James Cox in 1834–38. It has been restored by the National Trust of Australia. The portraits are on loan from Tim Cox, of Victoria. See Chapter 13.

  14 These styles were illustrated in a 2011 exhibition at the Dorchester Museum, called ‘Georgian Faces: Portrait of a County’, which exhibited portraits of aristocrats and gentry of the eighteenth century.

  15 Nigel Cox joined the Royal Navy as a cadet in 1912, at the age of 12, and returned to Australia in the mid-1960s. His son does not know how he acquired the portraits.

  16 In February 1802, but he was removed from the magistracy in October by Governor King, for disobeying the Commander in Chief’s orders that officers should not farm.

  17 A Guide to Wimborne Minster, William Pickering, London 1830, p. 38.

  18 William Rees-Mogg in The Times, 24 June 2001, p. 31.

  19 Draper, op. cit., p. 73.

  20 Yarker, op. cit., p. 58.

  21 Thomas eventually stayed in England, becoming a country rector in Somerset, as described in Chapter 13.

  22 David Popham, The Book of Wimborne, Barracuda Books, Buckingham, 1963, p. 64.

  23 ‘Cox of Clarendon’, op. cit., p. 3. The school was rebuilt in the 1860s, but closed along with other grammar schools in 1980. The Priest’s House museum has some Cox records.

  24 White’s Directory of Christchurch, Christchurch, Hampshire, 1859. Chain making ceased around 1814, but watchmaking continued. Allen White, The Chain Makers, Christchurch, 1967, p. 16.

  25 Memoirs of William Cox J.P., op. cit., pp. 15, 16. They were married in February 1789. Robert Cox died in 1815.

  26 Letter from Jim Cox to the author, 20 June 2011, from 29 Parker Street, Anglesea, Victoria, recounting research done by Barry Cox in 1991.

  27 Paul de Serville, Port Philip Gentlemen, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1980, p. 82.

  28 Susan Watkins, Jane Austen’s Town and Country Style, Thames & Hudson, London, 1990, p. 57. Although Austen’s first novel, Sense and Sensibility, was not published until 1811, she was already 25 when William left for the colony and acutely sensitive to the social situation of her time.

  29 Yarker, op. cit., p. 14.

  30 J. H. Bettey, Rural Life in Wessex 1500–1900, Moonraker Press, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, 1977, p. 33.

  31 It is has not been possible to trace any specific land belonging to William as a farmer in the County Records at the Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre.

  32 In the National Gallery, London.

  33 Popham, op. cit., p. 107.

  34 Draper, op. cit., p. 9.

  35 The Concise Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992, vol. 1, p. 883.

  36 Sir Frederic Morton Eden, The State of the Poor, 3 vols, printed by J. Davis, London, 1797, vol. 2, p. 146.

  37 William Marshall, On the Landed Property of England, G. and W. Nicol and others, London, 1804, pp. 29, 113, 119, 125, 128.

  38 William Cobbett, Selections From William Cobbett’s Illustrated Rural Rides 1826–32, ed. Christopher Norris, Webb & Bower, 1984, pp. 127, 130.

  39 Eden, op. cit., 2. p. xix.

  40 Marshall, op. cit., p. 335.

  41 Bettey, op. cit., p. 50.

  42 Royal Kalenders, British National Archives and Kingston Lacy, The National Trust, 1994, pp. 9, 12, 23.

  43 The Parish Register of St Peter and Holy Trinity, Shaftesbury, shows a number of Upjohns as being labourers. Several were transported for theft and founded an Australian Upjohn family. One descendant, Sir William George Dismore Upjohn (1888–1979), became Chancellor of the University of Melbourne.

  44 Dorset History Centre records, conveyance of 20/21 March 1721. Unfortunately the church is deconsecrated and use
d for offices and the internal monuments cannot be seen.

  45 A Short Account of the Life and Travels of James Upjohn of Red Lion Street Clerkenwell., 1784, privately printed, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1990, vol. 2, pp. 7, 11.

  46 Ibid., p. 13.

  47 The unreliable Memoirs of William Cox J.P., op. cit., state wrongly that she was born in Bristol.

  48 Parish records of Devizes St John, Wiltshire Historical Records, Chippenham, A1 345/141A and 142/A. The house is now No. 4.

  49 John Young, Wiltshire Watch and Clockmakers, Sedgehill Press, Trowbridge, Wiltshire, 2006, p. 113.

  50 The Universal British Directory of Trade, Commerce and Manufacture, sold by C. Stalker, London, 1791, pp. 777, 779.

  51 Memoirs of William Cox J.P., op. cit., p. 16.

  52 Letter to the author from Major Peters, The Rifles (Berkshire and Wiltshire) Museum, Salisbury, 18 September 2007.

  53 Memoirs of William Cox J.P., op. cit., p. 17.

  54 Burke’s Colonial Gentry, reprinted from the 1891 edition by Heraldry Today, London, 1970, p. 781.

  55 Wiltshire Records Archives, A1 336/1.

  56 Wiltshire County Records, Militia Accounts, A1 712/1-29 and documents 109/795/807.

  57 Richard Upjohn Light, A Study in Ancestry, privately printed, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1990, vol. 1, pp. vi, 121, vol. 2, pp. 7, 13, 14, 62.

  58 Anthony Clayton, The British Officer, Pearson Longman, London, 2006, p. 57.

  59 War Office circular of 14 March 1795 relative to recruiting, Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre, Chippenham, documents 109/795/807.

  60 Register of baptisms, parish of Devizes St John, Wiltshire Historical Records, Chippenham, Wiltshire.

  61 The Memoirs explain this as being due to ‘a woful [sic] time of peace and his opportunity for war was not’, but admit that the terms offered for the New South Wales Corps were ‘very good’, pp. 17, 18.

  62 Brian Fletcher, Colonial Australia Before 1850, Nelson, London, 1976, p. 44.

  63 Geoffrey Gray, A Military History of Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990, pp. 10, 11.

  64 Letter from Anne Youll in Balham, London, of 11 December 1903, to Winifred Cox at Cann River, Orbost, Victoria, ML Mss 6731.

  65 Joseph Holt, Memoirs of Joseph Holt, ed. T. Crofton Croker, vol. 2, Henry Colburn, London, 1838, pp. 45, 46.

  66 John Washington Price, ‘A Journal kept on board the Minerva transport from Ireland to New South Wales’, British Library Mss 13380, hereafter referred to as Surgeon’s Log. The baby is not included in the passenger list on p. 36.

  67 Land Tax assessments for the Parish of Devizes St John, Wiltshire Records A1/345/143. Their house ceased to be on the tax registers after July 1798.

  68 Holt, Memoirs, op. cit., p. 36.

  69 ‘Cox of Clarendon’, op. cit., p. 8.

  70 Burke’s Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, H. Colburn, London, 1835 and revised, vol. 4, p 577.

  71 Cox to Piper, letter of 29 July 1804, Piper Papers, ML, CYA 358.

  72 Surgeon’s Log, 17 March 1799, p. 6.

  73 It had been John Macarthur’s, as evidenced by Elizabeth Macarthur’s letters.

  74 Douglas Woodruff, ‘Expansion and Emigration’, Early Victorian England, Oxford University Press, Oxford, vol. 2, p. 375.

  75 By November 1802 Macarthur held 3950 acres, Laycock held 1348 and Lieutenant Thomas Hobby 660. HRA Series 1, vol. 3, p. 614.

  Chapter 2

  1 Holt, Memoirs, op. cit.

  2 Surgeon’s Log, p. 10. Price was young, but men at both the London and Dublin colleges started their surgical training at 16.

  3 Ibid., p. 2.

  4 These are discussed in Alan Brooke and David Brandon, Bound for Botany Bay: British Convict Voyages to Australia, British National Archives, London, 2005, pp. 189–215.

  5 Ibid., p. 7.

  6 Ibid. The dates do not make sense.

  7 Surgeon’s Log pp. 6, 6 verso.

  8 Ibid., p. 31.

  9 Ibid., p. 2.

  10 Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore, Knopf, New York, 1987.

  11 Colonial Office Correspondence, Secretary of State, CO 201/20, British National Archives.

  12 Brooke and Brandon, Bound for Botany Bay, op. cit., p. 37.

  13 Ibid., pp. 25–31, 51–5, 168.

  14 Surgeon’s Log, p. 37.

  15 E.g., Frank Clune, Bound for Botany Bay: Narrative of a Voyage in 1798 Aboard the Death Ship Hillsborough, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1965.

  16 Brooke and Brandon, Bound for Botany Bay, op. cit.

  17 Surgeon’s Log, p. 30.

  18 Ibid., p. 12.

  19 Ibid., p. 10.

  20 Brooke and Brandon, Bound for Botany Bay op. cit., p. 169.

  21 Memoirs of William Cox J.P., op. cit., p. 19.

  22 Surgeon’s Log, p. 1.

  23 National Maritime Museum and also Eric Leeson, William Cox – a Short Biography, privately published, Wimborne, 2008.

  24 The normal deck height in convict transports was 5 feet 10 inches.

  25 Bigge Report, Agriculture, pp. 2, 6, 7.

  26 Surgeon’s Log, p. 35.

  27 Ibid., p. 43.

  28 Holt, Memoirs, op. cit., p. 36.

  29 Surgeon’s Log, p. 38.

  30 Ibid., p. 44 verso.

  31 Ibid., p. 39.

  32 Ibid., p. 39.

  33 Ibid., p. 37.

  34 Quoted in Roderick Cameron, Australian History and Horizons, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1971, p. 57.

  35 Bigge Report, Agriculture, p. 4.

  36 Joy Damousi, ‘Chaos and Order: Gender, Space and Sexuality on Convict Ships’, AHS, vol. 26, no. 104, April 1995, p. 355.

  37 Ibid., p. 352.

  38 Surgeon’s Log, p. 42.

  39 Ibid., p. 43.

  40 Holt, Memoirs, op. cit., pp. 49–51.

  41 Surgeon’s Log, p. 44.

  42 Holt, Memoirs, op. cit., pp. 45–46.

  43 Ibid., pp. 45, 62, 86.

  44 Holt, Memoirs, op. cit., pp. 45,46.

  45 Surgeon’s Log, p. 52.

  46 Memoirs of William Cox J.P., op. cit. p. 23.

  47 Surgeon’s Log, p. 69 verso.

  48 Holt, Memoirs, op. cit., p. 86.

  49 Surgeon’s Log, p. 83.

  Chapter 3

  1 Grace Karskens, The Colony, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2009, pp. 74, 75.

  2 This and much other of the information that follows is derived from Parramatta: A Past Revealed, by Terry Kass, Carol Liston and John McClymont, Parramatta City Council, 1996.

  3 Roe, The Quest for Authority, op. cit., p. 35.

  4 Margaret Steven, John Macarthur, Great Australians series, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1988, pp. 3–6.

  5 Holt, Memoirs, op. cit., p. 87.

  6 Ibid., p. 90.

  7 Ibid., p. 89.

  8 Cox to King, 24 December 1804, Philip Gidley King, letters 1794–1807, ML.

  9 Holt, Memoirs, op. cit., p. 132.

  10 Ibid., p. 97.

  11 Ibid., p. 95.

  12 King to Portland, 1 March 1802, HRA Series 1, vol. iii, p. 422.

  13 This is Holt’s description, see next reference. A part of Brush Farm at Ryde is today a public park and the house, much enlarged, is a Prison Service Training College.

  14 Holt, Memoirs, op. cit., p. 135.

  15 This translation of Peron’s Voyage de découvertes aux Terres Australes (published in English by B. Macmillan, Bond Street, Covent Garden, London in 1809) is taken from Memoirs of William Cox JP, op. cit., pp. 37, 38.

  16 Rowley to Capt Waterhouse, Bonwick Transcripts, vol. 4, p. 1094, ML A 2,000-4.

  17 Holt, Memoirs, op. cit., p. 90.

  18 Ibid., p. 169.

  19 Ibid., p. 141.

  20 Ibid., p. 95.

  21 Memoirs of William Cox J.P., op. cit., pp. 38, 39.

  22 Clayton, op. cit., pp. 30, 43.

  23 Alan Atkinson, The Europeans in Australia, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, vol. 1, 1997, pp. 20
3–14.

  24 John Ritchie, Lachlan Macquarie, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1986, pp. 32–34.

  25 James Broadbent, Elizabeth Farm, Historic Houses Trust of NSW, Glebe, NSW, 1995, pp. 9–11.

  26 Samuel Bennett, History of Australian Discovery and Colonisation, Sydney, 1867, p. 167.

  27 Frederick Watson, HRA Series 1, vol. vii, Introduction p. vi.

  28 Colonial Secretary Index, 13 January 1810, fiche 3003; 4/1821 No 73. Rebecca’s reason was that the fertility of the land on the Hawkesbury was becoming exhausted.

  29 Bennett, History of Australian Discovery, op. cit., p. 173.

  30 Camden to King, 31 October 1804, HRA Series 1, vol. v. p. 161, and subsequent letters in 1805.

  31 Cunningham, The Blue Mountains Rediscovered, op. cit., p. 85.

  32 For example, Camden to King, 31 October 1804, HRA Series 1, vol. v, p. 161 and subsequent correspondence in 1805 King to Camden and King to Macarthur.

  33 King to Castlereagh, 27 July 1806, HRA Series 1, vol. v, pp. 748, 749.

  34 Bligh reported William’s departure on the Buffalo to Windham (now spelt Wyndham) on 19 March 1807, HRA Series 1, vol. vi, p. 131.

  35 Holt, Memoirs, op. cit., pp. 134, 135, 170.

  36 ML, reel CY 2727, Ap. 13-1 and 13-2, also Ac 42, doc 358, pp. 97–161, containing Cox’s bills on the New South Wales Corps.

  37 These details come from a local booklet entitled Some Well Known Pioneers, p. 23, among the Cox papers in the Mitchell Library. A guinea was £1 1s. It is not clear whether this was Sterling or Currency.

  38 Sydney Gazette, 25 June 1803.

  39 Holt, Memoirs, op. cit., 20 May 1803, p. 187.

  40 Sydney Gazette, 1 May 1804, p. 2.

  41 King to Hobart, 17 September 1803, HRA Series 1, vol. iv, p. 392.

  42 King to Hobart, 1 March 1804, enclosure no. 8, HRA Series 1, vol. v, pp. 546–7.

  43 Court Martial Records, British National Archives, Kew, WO 71/145.

  44 King to Camden, 1 November 1805, HRA Series 1, vol. v, pp. 604–5.

  45 Jan Barkley-Jack, The Hawkesbury Settlement Revealed: A New Look at Australia’s Third Mainland Settlement, 1793–1802, Rosenberg, Kenthurst, 2009, p. 283.

  46 Letter of 28 July 1804 to Captain John Piper, Piper Papers, microfiche CYA 358, ML.

  47 Sydney Gazette, 6 January 1805.

  48 ML, Ac 42, op. cit.