In Hobart's letter to King informing him of the decision to recall him,
the former refers not only to the unfortunate difference "between you and
the military officers," but to the fact that these disputes "have extended
to the commander of H.M.S. _Glatton_." Highly indignant, King replied to
this in the following paragraph of a despatch dated August 14th, 1804:--
"In what relates to the commander of His Majesty's ship _Glatton_,
had I, on his repeated demands, committed myself, by the most
flagrant abuse of the authority delegated to me, by giving him a
free pardon for a female convict for life, who had never landed
from the _Glatton_, to enable her to cohabit with him on his
passage home, I might, in that case, have avoided much of his
insults here and his calumnious invective in England; but after
refusing, as my bounden duty required, to comply to his
unwarrantable demands, which, if granted, must have very justly
drawn on me your lordship's censure and displeasure, with the
merited reproach of those deserving objects to whom that last mark
of His Majesty's mercy is so cautiously extended, from that
period, my lord, the correspondence will evidently show no
artifice or means on his part were unused to insult not only
myself as governor of this colony, but the military and almost
every other officer of the colony."
There is, of course, another side to this. Captain Colnett, of the
_Glatton_, asked for the woman's pardon on the ground that she had
supplied him with information which enabled him to anticipate a mutiny of
the convicts on the passage out. On the return of the _Glatton_ to
England, the _St. James Chronicle_ informs its readers that at a dinner at
Walmer Castle Colnett dined with William Pitt. Perhaps over their wine the
two discussed Governor King, and hence perhaps Hobart's letter of recall.
During King's period of office there were, besides the Irish rebels, many
prisoners whose names are famous, or infamous, in story. Pickpocket George
Barrington, who came out in Governor Phillip's time, once the Beau Brummel
of his branch of rascality, had settled down into a respectable settler,
and was in King's government, superintendent of convicts, at £50 a year
wages. Sir Henry Browne Hayes, at one time sheriff of Cork city, was sent
out for life in King's time for abducting a rich Quaker girl; he was
pardoned, and returned to England in 1812, leaving behind him a fine
residence which he had built for himself, and which [Sidenote: 1808]
is still one of the beauty spots at the entrance of Sydney harbour.
Margarot, one of the "Scotch martyrs," also fell foul of King, who sent
him to Hobart for seditious practices. The governor seems to have punished
Scotch and Irish pretty impartially, for Hayes and Margarot were coupled
together as disturbing characters and both sent away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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