The Rum Rebellion: Bligh versus Macarthur

John Macarthur, seen as the creator of the Australian wool industry, although his wife Elizabeth deserves the title more than he, precipitated the crisis.  Macarthur had arrived with the NSW Corps in 1790 as a lieutenant and by 1805 had substantial farming and commercial interests in the colony.[1] He had quarrelled with governors Hunter and King and had fought two duels. Michael Duffy sees his acute sense of the code of honour as the key to his character and actions. He challenged Bligh to what was, in effect, a political duel in defence of both his honour and his money.  Macarthur was as offensive, domineering, short-fused and arrogant as Bligh, but had an unscrupulous shrewdness, indeed subtlety that Bligh both lacked and could not discern in others.  Clearly, from the beginning of Bligh’s rule, Macarthur saw him as a powerful obstacle to the realisation of his ambitions. Bligh and Macarthur’s interests clashed in a number of ways.

John Macarthur

Macarthur’s wealth was regarded by Bligh as the most offensive example of private profit at public expense.  He was determined to confine and reduce it. Bligh refused to make a major land grant that Macarthur thought he had negotiated in London.  His tone was dismissive: ‘Are you to have such flocks of sheep and such herds of cattle as no man ever heard before.  No sir!’[2]  Macarthur was right to stress the shortage of herdsmen. Convict labour was scarce. No prisoners had arrived in 1805 and only about 550 males in 1806 and 1807, fewer than those freed by effluxion of time; but the shortage never affected the farm which Bligh himself had bought on the Hawkesbury. Bligh stopped Macarthur from cheaply distributing large quantities of wine to the Corps. He also halted Macarthur’s allegedly illegal importation of brewing stills. In March 1807, a still for Macarthur arrived in Sydney, sent unannounced by his London agent. Bligh impounded it as illegal. Macarthur successfully argued to have the copper body, with goods inside, sent to his private store. [3] In October 1807, Naval Officer Robert Campbell sent his nephew to retrieve the still from Macarthur’s store for return to England under Bligh’s order. However, his nephew had no official status and Macarthur successfully sued for wrongful seizure. Macarthur was less successful in a case of debt. Andrew Thompson, a pardoned convict who became Chief Constable under Hunter and a successful farmer, businessman, builder and trustee for Hawkesbury settlers, was manager of Bligh’s farms and received land grants from him. Before the 1806 floods, Macarthur bought a debt owed by Thompson, made out in bushels of wheat. After floods, price of wheat increased tenfold and Macarthur tried to enforce payment in wheat that was now ten times the price when debt was made. The court determined that the debt was for original value, not amount, of wheat. Macarthur appealed but in July 1807 Bligh intervened, dismissing the appeal.

Macarthur’s interest in an area of land granted to him by Governor King conflicted with Bligh’s town-planning interests. In December 1807, Bligh challenged Macarthur’s lease on Church Hill, given by governor King despite Phillip’s order of no private leases in Sydney town and on 20 January 1808 ordered the demolition of the fence on the lease Macarthur had begun six days earlier.[4] Macarthur and Bligh were also engaged in other disagreements, including a conflict over landing regulations. In June 1807, John Hoare a convict had stowed away and escaped in the Pacific Islands on the Parramatta one of Macarthur’s vessels.[5] In December 1807, when that vessel returned to Sydney, the £900 bond to the NSW government for assisting escape was deemed to be forfeited. The ship was consequently impounded. Macarthur now refused to pay or victual the crew, forcing them on 14 December to come ashore illegally breaching the landing regulations. In effect, he abandoned a ship worth £10,000 rather than pay a fine of £900.

Joseph Lycett, Residence of John Macarthur near Parramatta

Bligh had the Judge-Advocate, Richard Atkins, issue an order for John Macarthur to appear on the matter of the bond on the 15 December 1807.[6] Outraged, Macarthur sent an angry reply declaring his contempt for Atkins and the government. The following day, Atkins issued warrant for Macarthur’s arrest. Macarthur demanded to be brought before bench of magistrates. They granted him bail on condition he appeared again the following day where magistrates, including George Johnston, commit Macarthur to criminal trial and he was bailed to appear for trial at the next sitting of the Sydney Criminal Court on 25 January 1808. However, the Court did not define the charges.[7] The court was constituted of Atkins and six officers of the NSW Corps: Anthony Fenn Kemp, John Brabyn, William Moore, Thomas Laycock, William Minchin and William Lawson. Macarthur objected to Atkins sitting in judgement of him because he was his debtor[8] and inveterate enemy and read from a lengthy document declaiming towards the conclusion

You will now decide, gentlemen, whether law and justice shall finally prevail...You have the eyes of an anxious public upon you, trembling for the safety of their property, their liberty, and their lives. To you has fallen the lot of deciding a point which perhaps involves the happiness or misery of millions yet unborn. I conjure you in the name of Almighty God, in whose presence you stand, to consider the inestimable value of the precious deposit with which you are entrusted.[9]

This was grossly exaggerated. He then gave the Corps its rallying call:

It is to the Officers of the New South Wales Corps that the administration of Justice is committed; and who that is just has anything to dread? [10]

Macarthur’s ranting about the defence of liberty and property that were never in danger, gave Johnston excuse to claim that ‘insurrection and massacre’ were imminent because Bligh was planning ‘to subvert the laws of the country’ and ‘to terrify and influence the Courts of Justice’. [11]

Atkins rejected this, but ‘Macarthur’s protest had the support of the other six members of the court, all officers of the Corps. Atkins threatened to gaol Macarthur. Kemp retaliated by threatening to gaol Atkins who left for Government House, declaring that there was no court without him. In 1803, a similar manoeuvre had been tried. Kemp was defendant in a court case and this time Johnston, the acting commanding officer of the Corps, demanded that the Governor, King, replace the Judge-Advocate, John Harris. King buckled and replaced Harris. Bligh, however, stood firm. During the day, messages went backwards and forwards between the court and Government House over the position of Atkins. Around 12.30 pm, Bligh made it clear that he had no power to remove Atkins and without Atkins there was no validly constituted court but the officers refused to serve with Atkins. At 3.30 pm, Macarthur sought military protection due to unspecified threats. At 5.30 pm Bligh wrote to George Johnston, asking him to come to Government House.[12] It is noteworthy that Bligh wrote to Johnston in order to attempt to resolve this impasse rather than immediately resorting to action. Johnston sent a message to say he was too ill, as he had wrecked his gig on the evening of the 24 January on his way back home to Annandale after dining with officers of the Corps. It was increasingly clear that an impasse had been reached.

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[1] Craig, R.J. and Jenkins, S.A., ‘The Cox and Greenwood ledger of the New South Wales Corps 1801-1805: the account of Captain John Macarthur’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 82, (2), (1996), pp. 138-152.

[2] Ibid, Duffy, Michael, Man of Honour: John Macarthur-Duellist, Rebel, Founding Father, p. 255, n 10.

[3] Bligh to Windham, 31 October 1807, HRA, Series I, Vol. 6, pp. 160, 164-178 details the question of Macarthur’s still.

[4] Surveyor-General Grimes to Macarthur, 13 January 1808, HRNSW, Vol. 6, pp. 413-414 ordered Macarthur not to build on the lease on Church Hill with Macarthur’s response reluctantly resigning the land to please Bligh if Bligh allocated him as alternative lease. The matter escalated the following day with correspondence between Grimes and Macarthur in which Grimes made it clear that Macarthur’s proposal was unacceptable and that he was unwilling to receive further correspondence on the issue: HRNSW, Vol. 6, pp. 416-417.

[5] Macarthur’s ship and the Runaway, 27 June 1807, HRNSW, Vol. 6, p. 270.

[6] Bennett, J.M., ‘Atkins, Richard (1745-1820)’, ADB, Vol. 1, pp. 38-40.

[7] See Macarthur to Atkins, 20 January 1808, HRNSW, Vol. 6, p. 418 and subsequent correspondence on the imprecise nature of the charge, HRNSW, Vol. 6, pp. 418-420.

[8] During January 1808, Macarthur had tried to recall debt he held against Atkins but Bligh refused Macarthur’s requests to assist his recovery of debt. See Macarthur to Bligh, 29 December 1807, HRNSW, Vol. 6, pp. 395-396 and Macarthur to Bligh, 1, 12 January 1808, HRNSW, vol 6, pp. 411-412, 413. On Macarthur’s ‘trial’, see the succinct discussion in Woods, Gregory D., A history of criminal law in New South Wales: the colonial period 1788-1900, pp. 33-34.

[9]Johnston to Castlereagh, 11 April 1808, HRA, Series I, Vol. 6, p. 227.

[10] Johnston to Castlereagh, 11 April 1808, HRA, Series I, Vol. 6, p. 227.

[11] For Macarthur’s trial on 25-26 January 1808 see, HRNSW, Vol. 6, pp. 422-433 and Johnston to Castlereagh, 11 April 1808, HRA, Series I, Vol. 6, pp. 221-234.

[12] Secretary Griffin to Johnston, 25 January 1808, HRA, Series I, Vol. 6, p. 234.

The Rum Rebellion: Bligh and the New South Wales Corps

By 1808, the New South Wakes Corps was a powerful Sydney institution. Its members comprised 10 per cent of the white population of 4,000 that included their families and a large number of former soldiers. The Corps owned a great deal of property and ran many businesses in Sydney, including one-third of the town’s pubs. The numbers of Corps and ex-Corps members, therefore, formed a substantial and influential group, exhibiting what Governor King had called ‘the jealousy but too often attendant on professional esprit de corps’.[1] The rank-and-file members of the Corps were not recruited from the dregs of society as has often been claimed. Over a third were skilled men. [2] Their life in NSW was a vast improvement on what they would have had in Britain and they would fight to retain it. They were used to power and influence. But Bligh did not treat them with respect. In October 1807, Major George Johnston wrote a formal letter of complaint to the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, stating that Bligh was abusive and interfering with the troops of the NSW Corps. Before the rebellion, this was the only official complaint sent to London. However, the burden of his letter was that Bligh did not treat the Corps with the dignity it deserved. He spoke roughly to it, criticised it and insulted it: ‘his abusing and confining the soldiers without the smallest provocation’, ‘his casting the most undeserved and opprobrious censure on the Corps’.[3]

Watercolour portrait by R. Dighton: Major George Johnston, 1810

Some officers had built up capital during the 1790s and early 1800s when profits were high and through their preferential access to land grants, cheap labour by assignment of convicts and supply of provisions, livestock and equipment delivered for government purposes at the cost of the British taxpayer.  In 1808, many officers retained an interest in trade, which had become more diverse and much more competitive, but their principal economic interests now lay agricultural grants and in urban leaseholds in Sydney, where one sub-divided block changed hands for £900 just before Bligh’s arrival. Although those adversely affected by Bligh’s policies included many with no association with the NSW Corps, no coup could have occurred without the united resolve of the current officers.  Bligh had stirred the acute status anxieties of the officers by challenging their individual and collective reputation.  This was a serious affront under the code of honour that they regarded as the most important social bond of their lives.[4] He also offended members of this caste by his conduct, by his bearing and perhaps most of all, by his language. Bligh proved incapable of treating other gentlemen in the language or with the respect that the code of honour required.  Devoid of tact, quick tempered, infuriated by insubordination or incompetence, incapable of compromise, prone to indulge in mockery and abuse, he failed to respect the boundary between criticism and derision.[5] Manning Clark described him in the following terms

If anyone dared to object or remonstrate with him, he lost his senses and his speech, his features became distorted, he foamed at the mouth, stamped on the ground, shook his fist in the face of the person so presuming, and uttered a torrent of abuse in language disgraceful to him as a governor, an officer and a man.[6]

The officers of the NSW Corps, as well as most free settlers, were attracted to the colony precisely because their family background did not enable them to live as a gentleman should at home.  Commissions in the army were then bought and those who signed up for the NSW Corps could not afford to buy a commission in one of the more fashionable regiments.  The economic and, therefore, the social status of the officers were never secure. Bligh not only attacked their commercial and agricultural interests, he challenged the core of their personal identity.

Whatever his formal powers may have been, Bligh undermined what the local elite regarded as property rights, especially with respect to the urban leases.  This was fundamentally inconsistent with contemporary understanding of the rights of free Englishmen. Bligh, of course, relied on his formal authority and had the personal strength to exercise powers that his two predecessors, Hunter and King, had compromised.  They, Bligh believed, had permitted private men to grow wealthy at the expense of the Crown.  He was determined to reassert the public interest as he saw it and to act strictly in accordance with his instructions.  In most respects, his approach to governing was disciplined and purposeful.  However, even in a small settlement like Sydney, effective government required an understanding of communal expectations and an element of consent.  Bligh proved as oblivious to the fears and aspirations of the Sydney elite as he had earlier been to the delights that the crew of The Bounty had experienced in Tahiti. The scene was set for a conflict of institutional cultures between that of the navy, where authority was typically exercised in the confined autocracy of a ship and that of the army, where the exercise of authority often required interaction with a broader community.

Although Bligh had returned to England a hero in 1790 after the mutiny on the Bounty, he was on his second breadfruit voyage on HMS Providence between 1791 and 1793, when some of the mutineers captured at Tahiti were placed on trial in September 1792 and could not defend himself. As a result of the campaigns launched by Fletcher Christian’s brother and others to justify the actions of the mutineers, the view took hold in certain quarters that it was Bligh’s tyranny that had caused the mutiny. In NSW, those who wished to be rid of him realised that his reputation made him vulnerable. According to Surgeon Edward Luttrell before

Governor Bligh [came] into the colony a clamour [had] been raised against him, and an opposition formed to counteract his government’.[7]

The old rhetoric about tyranny, used against King, could be revived and intensified against Bligh, a known tyrant. The accusations, though, were long on rhetoric but short on actual examples. As early as January 1807, Elizabeth Macarthur had written to her friend at home, Miss Kingdon

The Governor has already shewn the inhabitants of Sydney that he is violent — rash — tyrannical. No very pleasing prospect at the beginning of his reign. [8]

Lieutenant William Minchin commented

...a deluge worse than that of the Hawkesbury has since swept off every path to...industry and happiness...if a Military Officer might be allowed to use the words Tyranny and oppression, I would inform you that until now I never experienced their weight. [9]

John Harris, the Corps’ surgeon, who had been dismissed from his positions of naval officer and magistrate, reported

...it is completely the reign of Robertspere [sic], or that of Terror...I have heard much said of Bounty Bligh before I saw him, but no person could conceive that he could be such a fellow...Caligula himself never reigned with more despotic sway than he does. [10]

In October 1807, a verse with direct reference to the Bounty mutiny was circulating in Sydney:

Oh tempora! Oh Mores! Is there no Christian in New South Wales to put a stop to the Tyranny of the Governor.[11]

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[1] King to Under-Secretary Cooke, 18 June 1808, HRNSW, Vol. 6, p. 656.

[2] McAskill, Tracey, ‘An asset to the Colony: The social and economic

contribution of Corpsmen to early New South Wales’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 82, (1), 1996.

[3] Johnston to Sir James Gordon, military secretary to the Duke of York, 8 October 1807, HRNSW, Vol. 6, p. 652.

[4] The emphasis on the code of honour as a critical factor in the coup was first put forward by Parsons, George, ‘The Commercialisation of Honour: Early Australian Capitalism 1788-1809’, in ibid, Aplin, Graeme, (ed.), A Difficult Infant: Sydney Before Macquarie, pp. 18-41.  The theme was developed by ibid, Duffy, Michael, Man of Honour: John Macarthur, Duellist, Rebel, Founding Father.

[5] See, Denning, Greg, Mr Bligh’s Bad Language: Passion, Power and Theatre on the Bounty, (Cambridge University Press), 1992.

[6] Clark, C.M.H., A History of Australia, Vol. 1, (Melbourne University Press), 1962, p. 216.

[7] Surgeon Luttrell to Under-Secretary Sullivan, 8 October 1807, HRNSW, Vol. 6, p. 296.

[8] See, Elizabeth Macarthur to Miss Kingdon, 29 January 1807, ML A2908, Vol. 2.

[9] William Minchin to Philip Gidley King, 20 October 1807, ML MSS 681/2, pp. 397-399.

[10] John Harris to Anna Josepha King, 25 October 1807, ML A1980, pp. 237-248.

[11] John Harris to Philip Gidley King, 25 October 1807, ML MSS 681/2, pp. 401-408.