[Bligh] has already shown the inhabitants of Sydney that he is violent, rash, tyrannical. No very pleasing prospect at the beginning of his reign.
ELIZABETH MACARTHUR TO ELIZA KINGDON, 29 JANUARY 1807
In early August 1806, William Bligh arrived in New South Wales aboard the Porpoise. Also on board was Edward Macarthur, the eldest of Elizabeth’s sons, having finished his schooling in England. John Macarthur may have hoped his son used the opportunity to forge a diplomatic alliance with the new governor but no such relationship had developed. With Bligh came news of the outside world or, more particularly, of the English world. To many it was much the same thing. Elizabeth, along with the rest of the colony, learnt of the glorious death of Lord Nelson. Ten months previously, in October 1805, he had destroyed the French and Spanish fleets, but was killed in action. ‘These particulars we have’ the Sydney Gazette noted ‘collected from the various details given in the London papers; and are therefore to be depended on.’1
William Bligh was officially sworn in on 13 August 1806—John Macarthur’s birthday. The ladies weren’t present at the official ceremonies, but Elizabeth’s social circle was joined by Bligh’s daughter, Mrs Mary Putland. Mary’s husband served both as Bligh’s aide-de-camp and one of Porpoise’s officers. The men of the Sydney Loyal Association (a volunteer militia company) and the New South Wales Corps all turned out and Bligh was presented with an address of welcome, signed by Johnston for the military, Atkins for the civil authorities and by John Macarthur for the free inhabitants.2 However the majority of free inhabitants, those emancipists from the flooded Hawkesbury, were horrified to be represented by Macarthur.
They promptly wrote to the new governor, pointing out that John Macarthur had taken a liberty they bitterly resented; he was not their representative; and if they had deputed anyone John Macarthur was the last man to be chosen as they considered him ‘an unfit person to step forward’ and attributed ‘the rise in the price of mutton to his with-holding the large flock of wethers he now has to make such price as he may choose to demand’.3 It is unlikely that Bligh took much notice of their complaint. He and former governor King swiftly made a series of land grants to each other, all illegal, but by the standards of the day not unusual. One of the properties, granted to Mrs King, was given the name ‘Thanks’.4
It was surely a happy time for Elizabeth Macarthur, with five of her six children back under her own roof (son John remained at school in England). It wasn’t a large roof however, and it now had to accommodate John’s nephew Hannibal and family friend Walter Davidson, as well as the seven Macarthurs. The cottage at Elizabeth Farm had grown very little, if at all, from the four humble rooms first erected in 1793, and the expanded family made for a lively household. It was a time for readjustment and compromise. Elizabeth was no longer in charge, and while she might have been grateful to hand over the worries, it was perhaps difficult to submit gracefully to the authority of her husband. The added presence of Hannibal and now Edward did little to make things easier.
Edward Macarthur didn’t warm to farming life and he was not as ‘strong in constitution’ as his mother could wish.5 His father attempted to teach him about running the farm but—according to William, many years later—young Edward was often heard to remark upon how ‘distasteful’ he found it all.
It is unlikely he said so within his father’s hearing. John was, after all, a former army officer and ‘the tones of command’ came naturally to him.6 As an adult Edward would write letters to his father that verged on the obsequious. Even when John Macarthur was an old man, unwell and in his bed, William only disagreed with him ‘as much as I dared.’7 James Macarthur found his father a delightful companion, albeit only when he was ‘in his happier moods’.8 Yet the boys’ love and respect for their father also shines very clearly. Edward would soon, for example, write a letter in which he hoped that his father would ‘enjoy health and happiness with every other blessing which ought to befall so good a Father.’9 This was Elizabeth’s gift to her children, to be the peacekeeper and mediator who, to the extent possible, ensured the household remained harmonious. The children revered and feared their father, but they were able to take the love and consistency of their mother for granted.
At first the Macarthurs welcomed the new governor and his daughter. In October 1806, Bligh toured Parramatta and the Cow Pastures district. In honour of the visit the Macarthurs threw a ‘splendid entertainment’ for a ‘large party of Officers and Ladies’.10 John broached the subject of government support for a fine wool industry and further Macarthur land grants on the Cow Pastures lands, but Bligh was having none of it. The friendly visitor rapidly turned nasty. ‘What have I to do with your sheep, sir?’ shouted Bligh. ‘What have I to do with your cattle? Are you to have such flocks of sheep and herds of cattle as no man ever heard of before? No, sir, I have heard your concerns, sir. You have got five thousand acres of land, sir, in the finest situation in the country but by God you shan’t keep it!’11 This is John Macarthur’s account. Bligh, questioned later, had no memory of it. But clearly he had said something to put the Macarthurs offside. Within two months Elizabeth was writing home to England about Bligh, saying he ‘has already shown the inhabitants of Sydney that he is violent, rash, tyrannical. No very pleasing prospect at the beginning of his reign.’12 She recognised that Bligh would be an obstacle to her ambitions for the family, and she was right. As Bligh wrote in his letters, he considered that with the colony’s food shortages, the immediate advantages of growing cattle for meat far outweighed any future benefits of growing sheep for wool. He was certainly not inclined to offer government assistance to build the Macarthur empire. In fact, he brought about several changes which angered the officer class.
Almost immediately, Bligh regulated the importation of wine and spirits, bringing it back into government administration and so out of private hands. He required that all transactions in the colony were made in hard currency and he strictly controlled the allocation of Crown land, food and livestock. He put limits on the use of convict labour by settlers. No one was to be arrested without a warrant, and suspects could no longer be tortured in order to obtain a confession. The poor were fed from government stores and smaller farmers were supported and encouraged. One of those farmers was Scotsman John Turnbull. So grateful was he to Governor Bligh that he gave his newborn son the middle name of Bligh. Every eldest son has since also carried that name, including Australia’s twenty-ninth prime minister, Malcolm Bligh Turnbull. The officer class found themselves embarrassed, frustrated and incriminated at every turn.13
And yet the Macarthurs and Bligh maintained a cordial relationship, at least on the face of it. John regularly dined at Government House, and Bligh was apologetic that there was no spare bed at his Sydney house to accommodate Macarthur family members when they visited town.14 Perhaps, then, Bligh was invited to the party held by John and Elizabeth a week or so before Christmas 1806. According to a somewhat overwrought piece in the Sydney Gazette:
A select party of ladies and gentleman, twenty-one in number exclusive of attendants, made an aquatic excursion from Parramatta to Captain McArthur’s estate in Cockle Bay, being highly favoured by the uninterrupted serenity of a salubrious atmosphere and after examining with inexpressible satisfaction the picturesque beauties which that romantic scene afforded, a handsome collation ushered in the evening’s festivity beneath the shelter of a spreading fig tree, whose waving foliage whispered to refreshing breezes.15
At this party the Macarthur’s new estate was officially named Pyrmont; the native beauty of the place was duly admired; and at five in the afternoon the company took their leave, being ‘much gratified with the rational festivities of the day’.
In February 1807 the Kings finally left the colony and, on the same ship, so did the Reverend and Betsy Marsden. The Marsdens were planning to sort out some family business in England before returning once more, but Betsy privately hoped they might never come back. Her husband had other ideas and his baggage contained samples of his own Merino-cross wool. In England he had the wool spun, woven and made into a suit which he wore when he was presented to King George III. The king was so impressed that he asked for a suit of his own and, after the gift was duly made up and delivered, he presented Reverend Marsden with a ram and four ewes from his Spanish flock. The Marsdens returned to Sydney with the sheep in 1810 and for a brief period surpassed even the Macarthurs in fine wool production.
Elizabeth likely attended the farewell dinner party held aboard the Buffalo the night before the Kings and Marsdens sailed, and the next day John and Edward Macarthur were among those on small craft accompanying the ship through the heads of Sydney Harbour and out into the ocean beyond. Perhaps Elizabeth was there too. As a squall approached, the boats retreated and Mrs King wrote later in her diary that she felt the parting very much.16 Elizabeth, too, farewelled several friends all at once. No wonder then, that in a letter to her goddaughter in Bridgerule she wrote that ‘I have great hopes of again being permitted to see “Old England”. Mr Macarthur has promised I shall go in a year or two, whether he can or cannot accompany me.’17 John is painted as the decision-maker here, albeit a decision-maker at pains to please his wife, but Elizabeth is also providing excuses for failing to return to Bridgerule. If the decision were her husband’s, she could not be held responsible for the subsequent disappointment of her family and friends. But now and into the future Elizabeth was more than capable of making and contributing to important decisions, and it seems likely she had more say in the matter than she was prepared to state in writing.
Just a few months later, though, all thoughts of travel were forgotten. In May 1807 the Macarthurs’ eldest daughter, Elizabeth, just turned fifteen, fell gravely ill.18 Letters imply that she lost the use of her legs, which suggests polio and if the disease followed its typical progress, young Elizabeth would first have suffered fever, pain and vomiting. Elizabeth was by now intimately familiar with the sick room. Her first experience of nursing may have occurred aboard the Scarborough when John and baby Edward were so unwell but, as mother to eight children so far, it certainly would not have been her last. At the beginning of her daughter’s illness, Elizabeth may not have been particularly concerned. Cool flannels and tepid baths for the fever, and perhaps some tisanes prescribed by the doctor.
But the next stages of polio were far more terrifying—increasingly severe muscle aches, loose and floppy limbs often worse on one side of the body.19 It was any mother’s idea of hell, but at least Elizabeth had some support. Penelope Lucas, the nominal governess and Elizabeth’s friend, was there to help, and daughter Mary, now going on twelve, was old enough to assist too. But there was little anyone could do except to keep young Elizabeth comfortable and coax her to drink and eat. Months passed, and Elizabeth watched her daughter fail to improve. She also watched her husband’s behaviour grow increasingly erratic.
John channelled his nervous energies into initiating or contesting an escalating series of civil suits and litigation. In one instance he tried to enforce payment of a promissory note where the value was set in bushels of grain. The note had been written before the Hawkesbury floods caused grain prices to skyrocket and the debtor was unwilling to now pay what amounted to ten times more than the original note was worth. Macarthur sued, lost in the lower court and took it to Bligh in the court of appeal. In July 1807 Bligh ruled firmly against John, further salting the wound by awarding the original debtor £5 in costs. In October there was more trouble when Bligh insisted that a copper boiler—part of an alcohol still that had never been assembled—be seized from John Macarthur, without a warrant. Macarthur was furious at Bligh’s appropriation of his private property and contested the seizure. This case was decided in Macarthur’s favour. By now Macarthur and Bligh had more or less declared war.
Governor Bligh, meanwhile, determined to lay the foundations of a proper city at Sydney Cove and proceeded to regularise the township’s haphazard leasehold arrangements. However his implementation of the new policies was cackhanded and impolitic. Most Sydney dwellings sat on Crown land. Officers and civil servants held fourteen-year leases but few of the lower orders had any sort of formal arrangements. Most people simply presumed they owned the land on which their modest homes stood. So they were shocked when Bligh decreed that all buildings on informally occupied allotments had to be pulled down. Convict chain gangs began to demolish buildings on Crown land, and the Sydney community was appalled. Formal lease-holders were also affected. John Macarthur had a vacant acre block in Sydney, which under the new regime was deemed to belong to the new St Phillips Church. Other targeted lease-holders included John’s comrades and brothers-in-arms. Bligh was attempting to reinstate Governor Phillip’s original agrarian vision (that all the land surrounding Sydney Cove remain Crown land) without seeming to realise that even Phillip himself had abandoned it. 20
Throughout the conflict, peacemaker Elizabeth continued to keep up appearances. She visited the governor at his Parramatta residence and apologised for her husband’s absence, saying he was unwell and in bed. Bligh immediately offered to visit John, although whether the visit was planned in a spirit of kindness or vindictiveness, it is hard to say. The following day Bligh arrived at Elizabeth Farm, just in time to meet John riding in from the paddocks. The governor expressed surprise at John’s recovery. Perhaps in receipt of some meaningful looks from Elizabeth, John parried lamely, explaining that it was his first outing since his illness. Governor Bligh was unimpressed and his relationship with John soured even further.
Bligh’s threat to demolish houses was triggering great concern. When the chief commissary clerk went to the governor in person in order to save his house, Bligh met him on the doorstep of Government House and shouted at him. The clerk pleaded that the house was worth £600 and that under English law he was entitled to possession. At this point Bligh really did lose his temper. ‘Damn your laws of England! Don’t talk to me of your laws of England! I will make the laws of this Colony and every wretch of you, son of a bitch, shall be governed by them; or there—’ Bligh pointed towards the gaol— ‘there shall be your habitation.’ The clerk bowed, wished Bligh good day and departed. He went to his immediate supervisors with the warning that the people of Sydney were in great fright, worried that their home would be next to go, and that unless steps were taken to conciliate them ‘a revolution, in my opinion, would shortly happen’.21 Significantly, at least half of the rank and file members of the New South Wales Corps held property of their own, many of them on land Bligh claimed was reserved by the government. Sergeant-Major Thomas Whittle was one, and he later alleged that Bligh told him ‘I will have the house down again by 10 o’clock and you shall neither take bricks, nor anything else away, but it shall be mine, house, and ground, and all’.22 Inevitably, tensions rose and Whittle’s friends and colleagues in uniform began to mutter among themselves.
Meanwhile, John Macarthur was in court again. Several convicts had escaped the colony in ships part-owned by the Macarthurs. Three had left mid-year in the Argo and later in the year another fled to Tahiti in the Parramatta. Such escapes were common as many sailing masters failed to resist the temptation of an extra crewman, particularly one accompanied by a juicy bribe. But the ships’ owners were liable to pay a bond to the naval officer (effectively a fine) worth almost as much as the ship itself. And when the naval officer placed armed constables on board the Parramatta to prevent any of its cargo from being landed, John and his co-owner lodged an appeal in the court presided over by Governor Bligh. Macarthur, in a move of dubious legality, sacked the Parramatta’s captain and crew, noting that the naval officer had effectively repossessed the ship and in consequence he, John, had abandoned it.23 As far as he was concerned, the crew were now in the naval officer’s hands and he would not submit ‘to the expense of paying and victualling of the officers and crew of a vessel over which [he] had no control’.24
Judge-Advocate Atkins wrote formally to John Macarthur, requesting his ‘attendance at Sydney to-morrow morning, at 10 o’clock to show cause for such [of] your conduct’.25 The letter was delivered to Elizabeth Farm by Francis Oakes, the head constable at Parramatta. John sent Oakes back with a carefully worded response, declining Atkin’s request and referring him to the naval officer. The next evening, 15 December 1807, a nervous Oakes returned to Elizabeth Farm with a warrant for the arrest of John Macarthur. Oakes arrived at about 11 pm, and the family were preparing for bed, but John invited him into the parlour, mixed him a glass of grog and sat him down while he read the warrant. Oakes was right to be nervous and would later testify that John reacted ‘very violently’.26 No one in the house was sleeping now. A furious John ordered his nephew Hannibal to make a copy of the warrant. Son Edward was sent to fetch Lieutenant Bayley, who lived close by. All the while John continued to rant at Oakes. Eventually he collected himself enough to write a note, the contents of which he surely discussed with Elizabeth as he wrote, and which Oakes was to take back to Atkins.
Mr Oakes, you will inform the persons who sent you here with the warrant you have now shewn me, and given me a copy of, that I never will submit to the horrid tyranny that is attempted until I am forced; that I consider it with scorn and contempt, as I do the person who have directed it to be executed.27
A weary (albeit possibly relieved) Oakes was then dispatched on a midnight ride back to Sydney.
Elizabeth knew better than to try to dissuade her husband from sending the inflammatory message, but she, as ever, did what she could to minimise the damage. Oakes had not gone far before he was waylaid in the moonlight by Edward Macarthur, who quietly asked that Oakes hand back the note. Oakes refused. That note was his reason, or excuse, for failing to bring John Macarthur into custody and he needed to keep it. Oakes continued his journey back to Sydney. Edward, at almost nineteen, was very unlikely to have been a willing instigator of this course of action. Like all the Macarthur boys, he worshipped his father but never stood up to him. Hannibal, only a year older than Edward, was equally unlikely to be the mastermind. Perhaps the bold suggestion came from Lieutenant Bayley, but he would have been a brave man indeed to thwart John Macarthur in such a way. No. The most likely source is Elizabeth Macarthur, once more trying to mitigate her husband’s wilder misjudgments. But we have to imagine it: a hushed yet heated conversation with Edward to send him flying out after Oakes and then a vain attempt to placate and soothe John, who soon saddled up and rode down to Sydney anyway, not far behind Oakes. By mid-morning John was arrested, bailed for £1000 by his friends in town and preparing to face the magistrates who in their wisdom had decided that ‘Mr Macarthur stands committed for criminal court’.28 His trial, however, was delayed for more than a month.
No one could envy Elizabeth Macarthur. Her daughter was still bedridden and the consensus was that the girl stood little or no chance of recovery. Her husband was set to stand trial for charges unspecified. The seizure of the Parramatta had lost the family potential profits of thousands of pounds, and Bligh’s regulation of the rum trade had likely lost them thousands more. Their leasehold in Sydney looked like being revoked without compensation. And now, at the age of forty-one, Elizabeth made the bittersweet discovery that she was pregnant again. It was seven years since her last child, William, was born and this new baby was due in the middle of 1808. Elizabeth did what she always did in the face of the seemingly impossible: she carried on.
In early January 1808 Elizabeth moved into the Sydney home of her friends Captain and Mrs Abbott, ostensibly to provide her invalid daughter with a change of air but probably also to keep a close eye on John. The Abbotts remained at their Parramatta residence. Throughout January, Macarthur and Bligh locked horns over the disputed Sydney leasehold. It had been granted by former Governor King in a very hasty manner, alleged Bligh, signed as the ship Bligh originally arrived on was sighted and backdated to 1 January 1806. Bligh was silent, however, about the 600 acre (240 hectare) grant made over by King at the same time to his daughter.29 No one had clean hands. Bligh ordered John not to build anything on his leasehold until he, Bligh, had received instructions from England. Furthermore Bligh stated that he would ‘not receive any letters on the subject’.30 John responded by engaging a team of off-duty soldiers to build a fence around the land in question. Bligh sent armed constables to pull it down again. The whole township was watching, agog, and Elizabeth was watching too, more discreetly but possibly with greater concern. But there was more to come. The criminal court would assemble on 25 January to try John Macarthur, although on precisely what charges nobody seemed to know.
During the days before the trial, a flurry of letters passed between John and the relevant officials, as John tried to determine his alleged crimes. Their answers seemed to encompass almost everything: the importation of illegal stills; libellous words aimed at bringing the governor into the disrespect, hatred and contempt of the people; causing the crew of the Parramatta to come on shore in an illegal manner; and disobeying Atkins’ warrant. It was rapidly becoming clear to everyone that whatever the legal niceties, Governor Bligh was determined to make an example of John Macarthur.
The evening before the trial, on Sunday 24 January, was a night of celebration. It was twenty years since the founding of the colony and Major Johnston, the Corps’ commander in Sydney and himself a First Fleet arrival, had been granted the governor’s permission to mark the occasion. The meal was an all-male affair, something for which Elizabeth was most likely grateful. The regimental fife band played and the wine flowed freely; by the end of the night the men were dancing drunkenly with one another. All of the officers currently in Sydney attended, although the corps’ commanding officer Lieutenant-Governor Colonel Paterson was absent, overseeing the new settlements in Van Diemen’s Land. Several civilians were also in attendance, including the men who had stood bail for John Macarthur together with other men who would sit in judgment upon him the next day. Edward and Hannibal Macarthur were also there—no doubt pleased to be counted among the ranks of men—but John Macarthur was not. He spent the evening listening to the music wafting from the barracks and walking back and forth ‘in the most conspicuous part of the town where I must have been seen by hundreds and particularly by every person at Government House’.31 He was rehearsing his speeches for the next day’s trial. If Elizabeth knew what he planned to say, she might have worried even more.
When the court sat at 10 am the scene was more circus then circumspect. Men had ridden for miles to see the show. The courtroom was full to bursting and those who could not find a space inside gathered nearby. Elizabeth was probably not there. She was needed at home, and the courtroom was no place for a lady. Perhaps Edward and Hannibal ran back and forth to provide her with updates or perhaps she remained on tenterhooks until her prayers were answered and her husband walked in the door that afternoon.
John was able to tell her that he had made the speech of his life, decrying Judge-Advocate Atkins’ ability to sit in judgment on him given Atkins’ (and by implication Bligh’s) prejudice against him. John’s speech spared nothing in the detail and the many onlookers were variously shocked and hugely entertained by what he had to say about Atkins’ ‘malignant falsehoods’, his ‘vindictive malice’, and his ‘false imprisonment of me’. At the end of it Atkins shouted, ‘I will commit you to gaol, sir!’, only to have Kemp, his fellow judge shout back, ‘You commit, sir! No sir, I will commit you!’
The court adjourned in uproar, and Atkins fled to confer with the governor. The other five judges (all officers of the corps) sent a letter to Bligh asking him to replace Atkins. By late afternoon, hot and exhausted, the judicial officers from the New South Wales Corps remanded Macarthur on bail and everyone retired for dinner.32
That evening could not have been a peaceful one for the Macarthurs. John, buoyed by his day in court, and agitated about what might come next, was hardly likely to be restful company. Elizabeth could do her best to soothe and cajole him but John’s mind was a whirlwind of accusations, resentments and plans. The next morning he was once more arrested by two of Bligh’s constables and, in full view of the town, marched into gaol. The officers who had remanded him the day before were charged, by Atkins, with crimes amounting to treason. The streets of Sydney were swarming with people ‘murmuring and loudly complaining’.33
Major Johnston, his arm injured on the night of the barracks dinner in a drunken accident, reluctantly arrived in Sydney and went straight to the barracks. There he found ‘all the civil and military officers collected, and the most respectable inhabitants in conversation with them’. Johnston’s advisors beseeched him ‘to adopt decisive measures for the safety of the inhabitants and to dispel the great alarm’. It was generally understood that the officers who served on the bench of the criminal court were to be thrown in gaol and it ‘was expected, after such a measure, nothing could limit the excess of the Governor’s cruelties’.34 The seething tensions of the colony boiled over into mutiny—the governor had to be stopped.
Johnston’s first act was to order the drums beat to quarters, calling in the soldiers. His second was to have Macarthur released from gaol. John travelled straight to the barracks and added his own voice to that of Johnston’s advisors. Years later, when testifying about that day, Johnston was careful to claim responsibility for his subsequent actions. ‘If I did not put the Governor in arrest, an insurrection and massacre would ensue, and the blood of the inhabitants would be upon me. This representation, made by all persons present, before Macarthur came, alone influenced my conduct.’ At about 5 pm in the afternoon Johnston, at the head of the New South Wales Corps and with a following of civilian administrators, respectable citizens (including John Macarthur) and various onlookers, set out for Government House to arrest Governor Bligh.