Governor King’s Administration

From Nswcorps

The new Governor, Capt. Phillip Gidley King, R.N., was already familiar with the colony, having come out on the First Fleet with both Governors Phillip and Hunter. King was then a young lieutenant and was sent almost immediately to set up the sub-colony on Norfolk Island, a thousand miles away, and apart from a spell of leave in England in 1790/91, served there as commandant till 1796.

In his History of Australia, Manning Clark describes him in the following terms:

‘In the beginning [February 1788] King’s aspirations were high- minded. He wanted to dispense with corporal punishment; within six weeks he had a boy of 15 flogged with 100 lashes for stealing rum. He was appalled by the sexual promiscuity and the drunkenness; within two years he had fathered two illegitimate children and had begun to drink heavily. ... Gradually the flaws in his character converted the fresh open-faced young officer ... into the moody, maudlin, gout-ridden officer who took the oaths of office at Sydney Cove in September 1800. Soon after he arrived, stories of King’s eccentric behaviour began to circulate in the colony ... Such were the rages which cheated him of the respect and esteem to which his talents and achievements entitled him.’

while the introduction to Volume 3 in Series 1 of the Historical Records of Australia suggest that he . . .

‘possessed little dignity, an overpowering conceit, and a jealous, suspicious, hasty and ungovernable temper.’

Whatever may have been his character, he certainly commenced his administration as a very active new broom, issuing Orders showing his intention ‘to put an end to the unwarranted and scandalous monopolies that have existed in this colony’, also refusing permission to a number of vessels to land their cargoes of spirits and, in the early years, sending away some 70,000 gallons, which doubtless discouraged other vessels from bringing too much more.

Measures such as these - and those listed below - could hardly make him a popular figure with the officers of the NSW Corps, and by July 1801 Macarthur was actively campaigning against Governor King, inciting his men to open disobedience and his fellow officers to withdraw all intercourse with the Governor. His commanding officer, however, Lt.Col. Paterson, would take no part in Macarthur’s schemings, and, after some personal affronts, even challenged Macarthur to a duel. At twelve paces apart the duel took place with pistols on 14th September 1801, and Macarthur winning the toss for first fire, he wounded Paterson in the right shoulder, thereby preventing him from a return shot. For this he was arrested and Governor King sent him back to England in November 1801 for court martial, a guilty verdict being thought unlikely in Sydney, where the court was firmly in the control of his fellow officers. This at least removed this ‘great perturbator’ from the scene for about three years, but it is evident that the antipathy of the officers and others continued unabated, for by May 1803 King was writing home to Lord Hobart seeking to be relieved of his post, though having to wait a further three years for his successor.

The Local Economy

1800 and the dawn of a new century would mark something of a watershed in the fortunes of the officers and the economy of the colony, general trends developing during this Period C including the following:

More land would continue to be cleared and made productive such that the population would become more than self-sufficient for grain, though only partly so for meat, while John Macarthur and others would experiment with breeding sheep that could stand the Australian climate and produce fine merino wool.