Samuel Marsden
Samuel Marsden was an English-born priest of the Church of England in Australia and a prominent member of the Church Missionary Society. He played a leading role in cross-cultural interchange with Māori people and bringing Christianity to New Zealand. Marsden was a prominent figure in early New South Wales, partly through his role as the colony's senior Anglican cleric and as a pioneer of the Australian wool industry. He is also remembered for his harsh punishments meted out as a magistrate at Parramatta, his bigoted social views and his self-serving financial dealings, all of which attracted contemporary criticism.
Early life
Born in Farsley, near Pudsey, Yorkshire in England as the son of a Wesleyan blacksmith turned farmer, Marsden attended the village school and spent some years assisting his father on the farm. In his early twenties his reputation as a lay preacher drew the attention of the evangelical Elland Society, which sought to train poor men for the ministry of the Church of England. With a scholarship from the Elland Society Marsden attended Hull Grammar School, where he became associated with Joseph Milner and the reformist William Wilberforce, and after two years, he matriculated, at the age of 25, at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He abandoned his degree studies to respond to the call of the evangelical leader Charles Simeon for service in overseas missions. Marsden was offered the position of second chaplain to the Reverend Richard Johnson's ministry to the Colony of New South Wales on 1 January 1793.Marsden married Elizabeth Fristan at Holy Trinity, Hull on 21 April 1793. The following month William Buller, the Bishop of Exeter, ordained him as a priest.
New South Wales
Rapid rise in power and wealth
Marsden travelled as a passenger on the convict ship, to New South Wales, his first child Anne being born en route. He arrived in the colony on 10 March 1794, and the Lieutenant-Governor, Francis Grose gave him the position of assistant chaplain at Parramatta, inland from the main Port Jackson settlement. Marsden was advised to be "submissive and corteous" to the military government of the New South Wales Corps, and was quickly rewarded by Grose with a 100-acre land grant at Marsfield, supplemented with free convict labourers.However, Marsden took issue with the extortion and the alcohol-driven economy of the officers, and in 1795 sided with the newly appointed Governor John Hunter to attempt to reform the system. In return, Hunter gave Marsden significant political and social power by naming him as the magistrate for Parramatta and also giving him a further land grant of 374 acres.
Marsden, receiving dual salaries as both a chaplain and magistrate as well as deriving an income from the produce of his landholdings, further built upon his wealth in 1797 by purchasing some of the first flock of valuable merino sheep imported into the colony. He also established a business partnership with the merchant Robert Campbell, one of the most prominent export traders operating in Sydney.
By 1802, Marsden owned six properties totalling 619 acres, including several houses and twelve convict servants. He had succeeded Richard Johnson as the senior Church of England chaplain in New South Wales and retained his position as magistrate at Parramatta, making him one of the wealthiest and most influential identities in the colony. By 1806 his landholdings rose to, which started criticisms against Marsden for his financial self-interest taking precedence over his religious role.
The "Flogging Parson"
In the early 1800s, there was a large increase in the proportion of Irish Catholic convicts being sent to New South Wales. Marsden was a staunch Anglican and Tory with an "inveterate hostility" toward Catholics and the Irish. In his role as magistrate, he became known as the "Flogging Parson", with the historical record showing he handed down severe punishments, even by the standards of his day on the accused. The Australian historian, Robert Hughes in his book, The Fatal Shore, describes Marsden as, "a grasping Evangelical missionary with heavy shoulders and the face of a petulant ox." Hughes declares that Marsden's "hatred for the Irish Catholic convicts knew no bounds".In 1800, ten Irish prisoners were interrogated and tortured after rumours surfaced of an Irish plot for insurrection in New South Wales. Marsden was one of several magistrates who ordered 100 to 500 lashes to be given as a means to extort information. Marsden himself described his interrogation of Paddy Galvin to Governor Philip Gidley King:
"Mr Atkins and I ordered him to be punished very severely in hopes of making him inform...punished on his back and also his bottom when he could receive no more on his back. Galvin was just in the same mood when taken to the Hospital as when he was tied up... I am sure he will die before he will reveal anything"
Joseph Holt, who was transported to Sydney for his role in the Irish Rebellion of 1798, also gave a vivid account in his memoirs of the interrogation of Irish convicts. He related:
"I have witnessed many horrible scenes; but this was the most appalling sight I had ever seen...the blood, skin, and flesh blew in my face" as floggers "shook it off from their cats" ...The next prisoner who was tied up was Paddy Galvin, a young lad about twenty years of age; he was also sentenced to receive three hundred lashes. The first hundred were given on his shoulders, and he was cut to the bone between the shoulder-blades, which were both bare. The doctor then directed the next hundred to be inflicted lower down, which reduced his flesh to such a jelly that the doctor ordered him to have the remaining hundred on the calves of his legs"
Marsden's attitudes to Irish Roman Catholic convicts were illustrated in a memorandum which he sent to his church superiors during his time at Parramatta:
Despite Marsden's opposition to Catholicism being practised in Australia, Governor King permitted monthly Catholic masses in Sydney from May 1803 under police surveillance. When the Irish convicts actually organised a brief rebellion in 1804 at Castle Hill, Marsden fled Parramatta with the loyalist women and children to the safer location of Sydney until the uprising was over.
Involvement in the orphanage and the Female Factory
Marsden was an active leader in the creation of the first orphanage for girls in the colony, which opened in 1801. His altruism, however, was tempered by a strong dislike of any criticism of the institution. When a member of the public voiced an opinion that one of orphans was of scandalous reputation, Marsden sentenced that person to 100 lashes.Marsden was also the originator of the New South Wales Female Register which classed all women in the colony as either "married" or "concubine". Only marriages within the Church of England were recognised as legitimate on this list; women who married in Roman Catholic or Jewish ceremonies were automatically classed as concubines.
Related to this was Marsden's involvement in the establishment in 1804 of the Parramatta Female Factory which was a labour camp facility for female convicts who were not otherwise suitably employed or married. The inmates at the Factory, which was a dirty enclosed loft above the jail, were forced to spin the coarse wool, which was sold to the government by landholders such as Marsden, into yarn to make the convict clothing. The conditions for the women were awful and prostitution of the inmates was rife. Marsden complained of the conditions but praised both the cost-savings to the government and that the work was keeping the women from "idleness and dissipation".
Marsden was the main proponent for the construction of a new building for the Female Factory, which was completed in 1821. However, conditions for the women were worsened after the move. The superintendent of the Factory was paid based on the clothing produced by the women, so they were worked as hard as possible. Meagre rations, overcrowding and poor sanitation led to some dying of disease and hunger, while their infant children were removed and taken to the orphanage. Discipline was severe and punishments included having their heads shaved and working a treadwheel. Marsden viewed the treatment of these female convicts in the new building with satisfaction, praising "such order and discipline".
Visit to England and planning for a New Zealand mission
In 1807 he returned to England to report on the state of the colony to the government, and to solicit further assistance of clergy and schoolmasters. He promoted the need for secular and religious educators to be sent to New South Wales and encouraged his associates to donate quality books so that he could establish a public library. He also organised the purchase of premium sheep and Suffolk cattle to add to his herds in the colony.While in England, he met the young Maori chief Ruatara, who had gone to Britain from New Zealand in the whaling ship Santa Anna and been stranded there. Marsden had previously met Ruatara and his uncle Te Pahi in Sydney where he had been impressed by the mannerisms of the Maori men and their willingness accept Anglican religious instruction. Marsden and Ruatara returned to New South Wales together on the convict transport Ann, where Marsden discussed establishing a Christian mission at Ruatara's homeland at Rangihoua in the Bay of Islands of New Zealand. They arrived in Sydney in February 1810 and Ruatara, who was accepting of the plan for the mission at Rangihoua, later travelled with Marsden on his voyage to establish the mission in 1814.
Views and interactions with Aboriginal Australians
Only months after his arrival at Parramatta in 1794, Marsden acquired an Indigenous Australian boy aged around three years old. The boy's mother had been shot by the whites and Marsden wrote that the child had been taken from the dead mother's breast. Marsden named the boy Tristan Maumby and he was brought up in the Marsden household, attending school and trained in the ways of a house servant. At the age of 16, Tristan accompanied the Marsden family on a voyage to England. While the vessel was anchored at Rio de Janeiro, Marsden beat Tristan for drinking alcohol. Tristan subsequently robbed Marsden of a considerable sum of money and absconded into the streets of Rio. Marsden made no attempt to find Tristan and proceeded with his journey to England.During the late 1790s and early 1800s, the Hawkesbury and Nepean Wars between the colonists and the local Aboriginal people were at their height. As a magistrate, Marsden was central in organising operations against the Aborigines. He regularly used the ruthless tactics of interrogation, hostage taking and forcing young tribesmen to guide soldiers to capture or kill the supposed leaders of the Aboriginal resistance. By these methods Marsden was able to capture notable figures such as Tedbury and Musquito, and kill others such as Talloon. During the conflict, he also obtained another Aboriginal child whose mother was axed to death. Marsden named the boy John Rickaby but he died soon after. While trying to arrange a punitive expedition against "the natives", Marsden was quoted as saying "there never would be any good done until there was clear riddance of them", and that "the Aborigines are the most degraded of the human race".
This attitude to the original inhabitants continued throughout his life. During the 1820s, as the British pushed into the interior of the continent, Marsden received large land grants on the country of the Wiradjuri people. His economic interests far outweighed any concern for the Wiradjuri in the subsequent Bathurst War, with his stock-keepers participating in the conflict which resulted in the Indigenous people being forced off the land.
When a proposal for a 10,000 acre reserve to provide for the displaced Wiradjuri was raised, Marsden objected as he thought it would interfere with the colonists' ability to access land. He again dismissed the Aborigines as "degraded and idle" who would be "submerged and destroyed" by superior Europeans. Marsden also actively sabotaged another Aboriginal reserve run by the evangelist Lancelot Threlkeld for the Awabakal people of Lake Macquarie. Marsden refused to provide funding for the mission, despite Threlkeld making pioneering inroads into the study of Awabakal language.