Governor King - Road to the Rebellion - Philip Gidley King and the inevitable path to the Rebellion

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Welcome back to the channel. Thanks for joining us. We're going to talk about that time before the Rum Rebellion, before Blie and before that infamous military coup that would be a defining moment in Australian history.

[00:00:17]The colonies in crisis. The year is 1800 and Philip Gidley King arrives as the third governor of New South Wales. He is not surprised to find the New South Wales CP that will later be known as the Rum Corps is in control of the colony.

[00:00:33]Rum's currency and fear is the control mechanism. It is going to be that defining chapter where the vision of the colony set up by Philip will transition to a colony that would lead to the foundations of modern day Australia.

[00:00:49]We're going to talk about Phil Gibli King and what sort of man was he. Then there's this jewel between two senior military officers. One of them is actually the commanding officer of the New South Wales Corps. He one of them will be shot and how that leads to the rise in power of John MacArthur. Then there's a little group of poems that were mocking and how that almost brought down his governorship. And then we're going to talk about that final chapter, the Castle Hill Rebellion and the rise of the convicts and how King would lose his authority and the Rumcore would now be a war unto itself.

[00:01:40]Philip Gidley King was born on the 25th of April 1758 at Lawniston Cornwall, England. In 1770 at the tender age of 12, he will join the Royal Navy as a captain servant. It is a place where young boys would join the Navy and it's the lowest possible rank, but it was where you would go if you were going to spend the rest of your life at sea. It was also a training ground for young officers.

[00:02:08]In between 1775 and 1778, King is now serving with the Royal Navy during American War of Independence where he sees no battle and he learns the art of decisive decision making.

[00:02:23]In 1780, uh in 1778, sorry, he will sit his left tenants exam and pass. In 1780 he'll be posted to the channel fleet. Now that is a fleet which is closest to England and it is where they would bring their elite naval officers for further training.

[00:02:45]Now whilst he's there in 17780 to 1783 he's serving under Captain Arthur Phillip the same man that would lead the first fleet.

[00:02:58]Philip is really impressed with King.

[00:03:00]King is a loyal. He's disciplined. He's dependable. He's persistent. And in 1783, uh, Philip will be ordered to take a vessel to India. And King will go with him as his left tenant. Now, it's a good opportunity for King because he's never done a really long passage like this.

[00:03:19]He's never sailed in the tropics and the monsunal conditions which are all going to be great training for him during the passage of the first fleet. At the end of 1783, the Navy is decided to downsize who wants to get rid of some of its officers. And what we're do is if a ship was decommissioned, the whole crew would be paid off. officers would then be given uh half pay, half naval pay to be able to allow them to go and pursue life in ci civilian street or whatever they wanted to do, but they could be recalled for active service if they were needed.

[00:03:56]A lot of naval officers would then dive off and try to get a political career, but King doesn't do that. King is a naval officer. He wants to be a naval officer and he continues to study. By 1786, Arthur Phillip has now been ordered to lead the first fleet and he is in need of some officers and one of the first officers he chooses will be king. He'll be a young lieutenant and second in charge of the Cyrus. When they get to Cape Town, Philip is so impressed by him, he will make him the commander of the HMS supply. Now, the supply was a much smaller and faster vessel. In actual fact, the supply will be the first vessel to reach Botney Bay in 1788.

[00:04:42]Philip's faith in King extends to the point where he will allow him to set up their second settlement in the colony on Norfolk Island. It's a great opportunity for King because it'll really highlight his strengths and leadership, but it's also going to show some flaws.

[00:05:07]King's responsibility to set up the colony at North Holland wasn't a promotion. Um, it was more like a test and if anybody in London had been paying attention, it should have come as a warning.

[00:05:22]It was a remote windswept isolated island in the Pacific. And in 1788, getting supplies there is extremely unreliable. established in the place was extremely difficult. But King approached this like a naval operation. He set out to make this work. The problem he had was there was a mixture of marines, convicts, and a handful of settlers.

[00:05:50]He established order. He established rations. He set up work parties and work orders and work authorities. And if anything slipped from the discipline he believed was necessary, he handed out punishment pretty swiftly.

[00:06:07]From the outset, Norfuck Island looked like it was working really well. The crops got established, buildings were erected, the colony stabilized, but it also was going to show some really significant flaws in King's authority.

[00:06:27]History will say king would react very quickly. Some would say too quickly and some would say he overreacted.

[00:06:38]For example, if discipline slipped, if things weren't happening, he would hand out the punishment. If he felt there was rumors going around, he heard rumors going around about anything he didn't approve of, he would confront that person immediately.

[00:06:53]Officers that challenged him were immediately treated very harshly.

[00:06:59]Norfuck Island was alive with tension.

[00:07:02]He clashed with so the marines. He clashed with officers. He clashed with convicts. It clashed with settlers. But from the outside, Norfolk Island looked like it was going really well. Philip approved, London approved, and it had transitioned King from being a naval officer to an administrator.

[00:07:26]It had hardened King. When King left the colony in 1790 and came back in 1800, it was a very different place.

[00:07:40]King knew Hunter and he obviously knew Philillip.

[00:07:44]He had read hunters returns whilst they've been withheld, whilst they've been manipulated. He had a pretty good insight into difficulties that are being experienced in the colony. But he arrived as a disciplined, determined administrator that was looking forward to a greater responsibility.

[00:08:10]What he did anticipate was the determination and power of the Rumord.

[00:08:26]When King arrived in the colony in 1800, like all governors that arrived in the colony, they had a set of instructions.

[00:08:36]Uh these instructions were like orders.

[00:08:38]It was a mandate. It was a guidance on what London expected them to do and it set out the policies and the priorities that they were to implement whatever London required of the colony. For king he does not receive these instructions for two years. So essentially he's arrived here as a governor with zero authority and the core know that. So they don't see king's authority being legitimate at all. The other thing is they've just got rid of Hunter. So they're very confident in their influence over the colony. And that's presenting a huge problem for King. What King really does see when he arrives in the colony is there's inflated prices.

[00:09:29]He can't believe there's free trade.

[00:09:32]There's a lot of prostitution, a lot of alcohol abuse, and the convicts are treated like livestock. They're just traded like they would like livestock.

[00:09:43]And that's not what the colony was set up to do. The reason that is is a rum core controls the rum trade in the colony. Now, I've talked about this in previous videos, so I'm going to step over it very quickly. The rum trade came about by a single American ship arriving and the captain wouldn't sell his whole cargo unless he could sell the rum with it. The then was an inram governor Bon Gross who regretfully makes a decision to buy the rum that opens up the rum importation. Before that time rum was restricted in its trade into the colony.

[00:10:25]It got to the point where rum core officers were actually charting a whole vessel to bring in rum. The reason they did that is rum had become a default currency. There was no legal tender in the col in the colony at the time. So if you wanted something done, it was a barter system or it was paid for by government. So if you wanted something done, rum became a a good way of paying for things. The reason being it was rationed. So settlers and convicts could get their hands on rum, but it was rationed.

[00:11:02]It was obviously a very desirable drink.

[00:11:05]It was transportable. It was measurable.

[00:11:07]So it was made a really good default currency. And that is how the rum currency took hold.

[00:11:14]Now the other problem was that the rumcore controls all trade in and out of the colony and all the stores. They also control a lot of the food production. So they could control the price and distribution of anything that went through the stores. That is any trade that in and out of the colony. That's not what the colony was set up to do.

[00:11:37]The other thing is the rum corps controlled the courts. The jud judge advocate was a military officer. So king couldn't implement any of the policies.

[00:11:48]Not that he had any but any policy he had come up with he couldn't implement because he didn't have control of the courts.

[00:11:58]Then there was a problem with the convict labor. Now the convicts were given to free settlers about two convicts per free settler to assist them in producing food for the colony.

[00:12:12]When convicts when gross was interim governor, he allowed some of the army officers to accumulate more convict labor. Now that distorted the economy the way the economy was set up, London were paying for the convicts. that is they were paying for their food or paying for their clothes. They're paying for their upkeep. They're paying for accommodation whatever that may be to grow the colony to pay for things like roads, bridges, government buildings.

[00:12:45]But when these convicts in an increasing number were used to work and produce food or do things for private gain for men of the rum corps that distorted the value of the econom the economy and that's what was really giving London a lot of problems and that was one of the reasons that king was sent down here.

[00:13:08]They told him that the wrong cause a problem. The rum core was a problem to London, but we're at war with French. We don't have a spare regiment to come down to the colony to replace the Rumcore.

[00:13:23]So, and the Rumor have been about six years. So, there weren't really a fighting force anymore. So, they said to King, "Go down there and uh we're not going to be able to replace the core.

[00:13:35]You're just going have to work it out for yourself." Without a set of instructions, that's going to prove to be frightly difficult.

[00:13:43]King being the military and naval commander he was tried to assert his authority but without those instructions it was really really difficult. The other thing he tried to do is tighten the regulations and reduce the amount of private trade that was going on. Without the control of the courts, that was virtually impossible.

[00:14:04]And they tried to pull back the call's influence in the general economy and the and the way the colony was run. But without those instructions for London, the core completely ignored him. What they did do is the core just sat and watched King and how he operated. What they learned very quickly, as we know, he was decisive. He was quick to react.

[00:14:34]History will say sometimes King was a little too quick to react. And some will say he actually was pretty emotional in some of his decisions.

[00:14:45]What the core quickly worked out is that King could be provoked.

[00:14:51]And if they could provoke him, they could set the stage, draw the battle lines for a collision course between Governor King and the Rumor.

[00:15:10]As early as 181, the relationship between Governor King and the New South Wales Court has deteriorated.

[00:15:19]It has become personal and it is visible to everybody in the colony and it's escalating out of control. And the flash point will be when two senior officers of the New South Wales Corps get into a duel. That'll be John MacArthur and William Patterson. William Patterson is a commanding officer of the CP at the time.

[00:15:44]Now he deals with a situation that MacArthur doesn't agree with. So MacArthur writes him a letter calling him incompetent, corrupt, and not suitable for command. That letter is totally inappropriate to send to a commanding officer. So Patterson will go straight back and order him to apologize. Now there's a number of letters change hands between the two.

[00:16:07]Historians have said and I think even at the time it was said there like 2,000 coupe but it it had actually come to a conclusion where MacArthur will challenge his senior officer Patterson to a duel.

[00:16:24]Now King intervenes and he says he orders Patterson not to get involved not to participate in the duel but Patterson ignores that. On the 14th of September 18001, the jewel will go ahead and Patterson will be shot in the fire. Now to try to intervene and try to diffuse the situation because the rumcore whilst it ran the economy of the colony, it was MacArthur that was really the most influential person and ran the politics of the colony. So King probably thought if I can get rid of this guy out of the colony just for a while we can get some sort of control. So he offers MacArthur a common position at Norfolk Island. It was like a temporary exile and MacArthur says no going. So King tries to arrest him and the New South Wales court refuses to arrest MacArthur because he's got so much influence. They don't want to be involved. So King is then forced to put the core the whole core on notice and says he will notify London that there is mutiny going on. So the core is forced to back down and arrest MacArthur. Now this is the mistake I think King makes and historians all agree. He should have tried to try MacArthur in the colony, but he felt he couldn't do that because he had so much influence. He wouldn't be able to get us through the courts. And in actual fact, probably in hindsight, he was right. So he sends him to London for the court marshal.

[00:18:09]MacArthur gets to London and he sweet talks the bureaucrats and the authorities in London pretty quickly because he's been developing a wool industry here in Australia and that is his long-term plan and he sells those senior people in London the idea of the wool industry and I think they can see there's a lot of money to be made but they still got this problem what are they going to do with MacArthur and his court marshal so they do a deal and he resigns his commission from the New South Wales Corps. He's now a civilian and can't be court marshaled.

[00:18:46]So much was his influence that Lord Hobart, the secretary for the colonies, will order King to grant MacArthur 5,000 acres. That is the largest grant that was ever offered to anybody at that time. At that time, 100 acres was as large as a married officer could get. So he offers that 5,000 acres which will be at modernday Camden on the banks in the Npian River in what was then cow pasture.

[00:19:18]MacArthur will return to the colony more powerful and more influential than ever and he's not answerable to Patterson who was his commanding officer and it's just an example on how king did not have control of the colony but did not have the support of London either.

[00:19:53]In 183 the relationship between Governor King and the New South Wales call reach zone low and it's all over four what they call liable poems. There were four little diddies that were written by somebody in the colony that were a satirical humor attacking the governor's weakness, his poor decision-making, and his bad temper.

[00:20:20]To everybody in the colony, it was just good fun. It was read amongst the barracks. It was read in the taverns. It was passed around. It was just good fun.

[00:20:31]But the king, it was direct attack on him, a direct attack on his authority as a governor and a direct attack on the colony. And he went to the courts and he said he wanted to find the authors and have them punished. He came down typically like king like a ton of bricks. Eventually they find three officers that they think might have been disseminating information. There was a Hobby and a Bailey and a captain camp.

[00:21:00]They would court marshall these three men. Hobby and and Bailey go first. Um and once they're um once they're finished at court marshall, they then court marshal Captain Kemp. Halfway through that the judge gets arrested. So they have to go and find a new judge.

[00:21:20]King gets involved um with a major Johnson who second in Jamaica second in charge of the New South Wales corps. Um they can't resolve the matter.

[00:21:31]Eventually they appoint a new judge who was a guy by the name of Richard Atkin.

[00:21:37]Eventually Kemp's trial is executed. all the information sent off to the judge advocate general a uh sir Charles Morgan I think he is in England and he acquits everybody says that the whole thing is a storm and a teacup not worth his time and effort and that just goes to show how a little thing like a poem got blown out of proportion by king by overreacting following on from that king is going to write to Lord Hobart and request a leave of absence. He's suffering from ill health and he wants a break away from the colony.

[00:22:16]Hobart will read that and read it as a letter of resignation and accept it.

[00:22:21]Now, historians have two schools of thought here. Some say it was an immediate resignation. Some say it didn't get resigned. He'll be recalled later. But needless to say, there is a letter floating around that arrived in a colony marked top secret in May 184 where it says, "Yes, we accept your letter of resignation, but we don't have anybody to replace you." England is at war with France again. So, it's Napoleonic Wars, so they don't have anybody to send to the colony yet. So, and they want somebody that has no experience in the colony. They're there looking for somebody who hasn't been poisoned by subsequent events. So, they're going to find someone brand new.

[00:23:03]It's going to take a little while.

[00:23:05]King's problems only get worse from here because he has to deal with the conve.

[00:23:21]The convict uprising in 184 was a very dangerous incident for the colony and a very trying time for governor king.

[00:23:30]The reason this came about is that in the mid 1790s there was a rebellion in Ireland. By 1798 400 of the rebels were transported to the colony in New South Wales.

[00:23:43]Now in the colony at the time there was already a distrust of the Irish. That's just the way things were in those days.

[00:23:50]But the arrival of these rebels brought with it political tension that wasn't already here and an element of fear. Now the tension was that there was a hatred of the English from those Irish rebels and they were hardened soldiers. They had been fighting the English for quite a while. So I think the rest of the colony actually feared them as well. But this worked well for the core because the core now could paint themselves as true protectors of the colony and it allowed them to maintain control and power over the over the over the colony.

[00:24:29]It was a balancing act for King because King had to maintain security but he also had to maintain fence for settlers, convicts and emancipated convicts including the Irish. So it was a very very difficult time. But by March 4th, 184, everybody's worst fears had come to light when 300 of those rebels had decided that they were going to rise up against the colony. There was led by a guy by the name of Philip Cunningham.

[00:25:01]And the plan for them was fairly simple.

[00:25:04]They were going to gather up whatever weapons, whatever they could gather around Castle Hill. They'll then move to Paramea, seize Paramea, gather more weapons, gather more people, march on Sydney Cove, take some ships, and sail out of the colony for freedom. For them, it was a simple task. Liberty or death.

[00:25:27]These guys were, as I said, hardened soldiers, very determined, very organized. When the news got out of the uprising, it spread around the colony like wildfire. When King heard, he immediately declared martial law. It was the second time that martial law had ever been declared in the colony, and only once, one of seven will ever be declared in Australia.

[00:25:51]Now, he called for the mobilization of troops. He called for writers to dispatch orders. And he ordered the army to set up a defensive perimeter around Sydney in case the convicts try to attack Sydney. For the army, for the core, it was a little less simple. They were very dysfunctional and they sort of hesitated. They questioned king's orders. They were going through what what the hell does he want us to do?

[00:26:17]They were arguing about who was going to do it and who was going to lead it. It would be left up to a major George Johnston to take the initiative. He's the same officer that'll overthrow Governor Bllye later.

[00:26:32]Johnson rounds up as many of the core as he can get his hands on. He'll call on settlers that are willing to sympathize and by the morning of the 5th of March they've arrived at Vinegar Hill.

[00:26:44]Now that is where the uh convict rebels have assembled. Philip Cunningham calls for Johnston to parlay. Johnston does but when they gets close enough he takes initiative and grabs Cunningham. that causes the whole of the line to collapse. This the convict rebels just scatter into the ridges. The army advances. There's a few shots fired, but over the next few days, they'll round up the rebels. Some will be flogged. Some will send to North Island. Cunningham will be executed.

[00:27:19]The army, the core sees themselves as victors. And they paint the picture that King had panicked. King thinks otherwise. King says the core deliberately hesitated to undermine him and embarrass him so they could paint the picture to London. It was a military, not the governor that had restored order. It was obvious to the core. It was obvious to King and it's now obvious to London that King has lost control of the core.

[00:27:55]What King does to counter this is he uses emancipated convicts. He gathers the people around him that he can trust are people like, you know, they're like teachers and overseers and tradesmen. He gather those people around him and they're emancipated convicts. He's giving them a chance to contribute to the colony. This is a practical thing for king because the colony needs more skilled people and these convicts have those skills you can use. He's giving them a second chance. But for the core, this is insanity because they see convicts and exconvicts is unreliable, untrustworthy, and it's downright dangerous. They believe the only people that should have those positions of trust are free settlers and officers.

[00:28:48]So what this has done is is increased the divide in the colony. The core is now become increasingly resentful to King and what he's doing and King has become increasingly determined to govern the colony and to break down the core.

[00:29:11]After the convict rebellion, King would remain as governor for another two years.

[00:29:18]Now we know that he did ask for a leave of absence which was denied by London.

[00:29:22]We also know the reason they did that is they were looking for a new governor that had no previous exposure or experience in the colony. Both Hunter and King were officers on Philip's first fleet and they were looking for someone brand new. Also, they're at war with France and I think the problems in the colony are on the other side of the world and just not a priority. So, King just had to sit and wait.

[00:29:51]His health is struggling. He's battling the rumors. He's battling the courts.

[00:29:57]But through all these struggles, his achievements were longlasting.

[00:30:05]He developed the livestock industry in the colony because when he arrived here he noticed that the livestock that were managed by settlers and emancipated convicts were doing much better than the livestock of government farm. So he would promote the livestock industry to the point where they were now selling breeding stock of sheep and cattle back to London. The Newcastle coal industry had been going and they've been mining coal for a little while, but he would develop that further to an export coal industry where they would be exporting coal back to London and other destinations. He also took the initiative with the whaling industry.

[00:30:47]Before King's time, whaling was just opportunistic in the waters around the colony. What he did is he regulated it and licensed it and he opened it up to all private whalers on all the New South Wales waters which was pretty much the whole of east coast of Australia.

[00:31:05]And what that did it developed a lot of investment and a lot of interest in whaling and they were processing the whales here in Australia and selling the product overseas. History will say that King was a great administrator. He did something the previous governors couldn't do. He stabilized the economy.

[00:31:27]He also expanded the settlements of Sydney Cove, Paramea, Hawksbury, and Newcastle. He built roads, he built bridges, he built uh wards, he built uh hospitals, he built schools. Um he he his building program was fairly significant for the time. He actually built more schools than Hunter and Philip combined. He also saw the creation of the first Australia's first newspaper in 183.

[00:32:01]It would be uh managed and run by George Hal who was a printer that was a convict and was emancipated. And this is where King took emancip emancipated convicts one step further. He gave them the same privileges and rights as a free settler.

[00:32:20]That's something that Philip and Hunter did not do. In 187, King will return to England. History clearly states that King didn't fail as a governor. But what he did do is he paid an extremely high price for that battle with the Rumcore and trying to govern a colony that just simply didn't want to be governed yet.

[00:32:51]He would pass away on the 3rd of September in 188.

[00:32:55]He's only 50 years old.

[00:33:00]Want to thank you guys for watching yet again. It's another amazing story. about our governors and the stories we don't know much about really.

[00:33:12]I certainly didn't until I started researching them. And when a word governor was used when I was growing up, I always expected this person that was distant and remote and surrounded by servants and didn't have trials and tribulations and understood the the troubles of a common man and woman. But they did. They were deeply human. They were deeply troubled by the challenges that laid before them. And they experienced the same troubles that and struggles that the every man on the street did. I think you know the drill. YouTube likes those uh subscribers and comments. That helps their algorithm, helps us bring this content to you. We want to hear the comments. We need to understand what you guys think, what sort of stories you like to listen to, what we can do, and bring stuff to you the way you want to hear it. But until next time, you guys take care, you stay safe, and we'll catch you later.