Missionary position
Are the Aussies right to see Samuel Marsden as a fanatical flogger, or do Kiwis justly revere him as a founding father? A new book suggests he was a man of his time.
Are the Aussies right to see Samuel Marsden as a fanatical flogger, or do Kiwis justly revere him as a founding father? A new book suggests he was a man of his time.
A“choleric bigot”, fumed Australian art critic Robert Hughes. A “sadistic cleric”. Others have chimed in. The Reverend Samuel Marsden, most commonly portrayed in l ess- than- flattering portly old age, was cruel, greedy, hypocritical; a pasty-faced “flogging parson”. On this side of the Tasman, the man behind the name of a handful of parks, roads, streams, a cross, a point and an exclusive girls’ school has had more benign treatment. But even here the reputation of the “bluff Yorkshireman”, as the late Michael King described him, has dimmed. Writing in 1996, James Belich said Marsden’s breed of evangelists can seem “joyless, humourless and sometimes hypocritical”. Despite the effort Marsden put into his mission, states online encyclopedia Te Ara, “his greed, and harshness as a magistrate, have raised doubts about the value of his work in New Zealand”.
Founding father? Or fanatical flogger? University of Auckland emeritus professor Andrew Sharp has spent about a decade investigating not just Marsden the churchman, magistrate, missionary leader and landowner, but also the systems of church and state that made him who he was. The result, the weighty The World, the Flesh & the Devil, rescues Marsden from “anti-Christian historiography” to reveal a man, writes Sharp, with habits and opinions “tolerably coherent and fitting to his times”.
Marsden was born in 1765, the oldest in a poor farming family of six children in the tiny hamlet of Bagley, near Leeds. In his early twenties he left the blacksmith’s forge to train to be a clergyman for the Church of England, supported by a group of evangelical friends and mentors including prominent anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce. Seventeen ninety-three was a pivotal year – he married Elizabeth Fristan, was ordained as a priest and, in August, boarded the Australia-bound store ship William to serve as chaplain to the convict settlement on mainland New Holland.
FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT
Marsden was prepared to fight the good fight, rolling up his clerical sleeves to wage constant battle against the “Prince of Darkness”, praying each day, as required by the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, for protection against the three enemies of the soul: “the world, the flesh and the devil” of the book’s title.
But conversion, he believed, had to be preceded by civilisation. “That is, they have to learn your language, you learn theirs, you teach them the rudiments of your civilisation: how to plough a field, plant turnips, drill seeds, make things out of iron,” says Sharp from his London home.
Marsden threw himself into the job at hand. On the banks of the Parramatta
River, he used his considerable strength and stamina to, as the Bible endorses, “make the barren wilderness smile”, converting hard, drought-prone land into extensive farms, gardens, orchards. He was the King’s chief adviser on agriculture and animal husbandry and played a leading role in the development of the local wool trade.
He served as a magistrate, helped set up a school and orphanage, raised funds for a church and became agent for the London Missionary Society.
“He was interested in hierarchy, control, organisation and commerce on the one hand,” says Sharp. “And being a missionary and bringing saving grace for the few that hear it and believe it on the other. The combination is a strange one to us and it wasn’t all that common then.”
But flogging, one of the charges frequently laid against Marsden, was common, part and parcel of the justice system and one step down from death by hanging. All clergymen, says Sharp, flogged or ordered flogging. “But from what I can tell, Marsden did much less than anyone else.”
The “flogging parson” reputation, he says, did not take hold until 40-50 years after his death, “and that was really Catholic propaganda – I can’t prove that but that is my hunch”.
Bigotted? Marsden had little time for “idolising Papist Catholics”, particularly Irish Catholics – he didn’t have much truck with the egalitarian doctrines of Presbyterians, Congregationalists or Quakers, either. But from Marsden’s perspective, says Sharp, the Irish convicts sent to New Holland were a risk to the settlement. “He wanted a stable, ordered society; they weren’t stable or ordered.”
Hypocritical? With a commodious parsonage, servants and substantial farmlands, Marsden’s gentrified lifestyle was a far cry from the chaste poverty expected of Catholic priests. “But that is just the Catholic-Protestant thing, different world views. Both are arguable.”
And although regarded by some as a “vulgar Methodist of low origins”, Marsden believed utterly in social and political hierarchies, famously refusing to work alongside ex-convicts on a turnpike trust, because he believed convicts should be given positions of authority only if they had redeemed their lives.
ROOT OF ALL EVIL
Many of the charges against Marsden, Sharp says, are rooted in his increasingly strained relationship with New South Wales governor Lachlan Macquarie, under whose control he worked. Marsden saw the government as “arbitrary and despotic”. He ignored some of Macquarie’s orders and Macquarie in turn made little attempt to control traders and their “plundering, murdering system”, wrote Marsden, “which has so long disgraced the European name amongst the inhabitants of these islands.”
Things came to a head when Macquarie’s secretary, John Thomas Campbell, sent a blistering attack on the reverend to the Sydney Gazette. Under the name Philo Free, he accused Marsden of trading in muskets and working for “the pecuniary advantage of the chosen few”. Marsden pursued a successful libel case.
“Marsden was no saint, though he had a lot of the Cromwellian hero in him,” says Sharp. “But he had a skin thinner than an effective leader of men should have. He was darkly suspicious of those he tangled with: most especially Campbell and Macquarie.”
To add to his woes, missionaries in the South Pacific were failing – and falling – fast, trading in spirits and muskets, taking to booze, hooking up with native women and fighting with other missionaries.
“Satan’s kingdom,” he wrote in 1800, “seems to be so fully established and his power and influence so universal among us that nothing but an uncommon display of Almighty power can shake his throne.”
Macquarie was also insisting more attention be given to converting the Aboriginals. But that idea, says Sharp, was “wacky”. The Aboriginals were not settled and hundreds of different languages were spoken across the continent.
“They just couldn’t do it while these people weren’t settled, and they had no reason to settle.” Marsden found more “fertile soil” among the “New Zealanders”.
He knew they were cannibals, describing them as “a savage race, full of superstition”, but through his acquaintance with several
Marsden was prepared to fight the good fight, rolling up his clerical sleeves to wage constant battle against the “Prince of Darkness”.
Maori, most notably Te Pahi, a senior rangatira from the north-western Bay of Islands, and Te Pahi’s nephew, Ruatara, he recognised Maori as “men of mind and reflection” with far more potential for both “civilisation” and evangelisation.
“He talks about how the Maori are a wild, passionate people, but noble, and what would control them is the power of religion and belief in Christ. That is much different from the normal Enlightenment mind, which was that the power of reason would do it. He thought the same about himself – he was emotionally volatile and controlled it with knowledge of the Bible and Christ’s message.”
CIVILISING THE MAORI
From 1808, he began planning a mission in New Zealand, funded by the Anglican Church Missionary Society. True to his “civilise then evangelise” mission, he enlisted a small troop of “missionary-artisans”: carpenter William Hall, twine spinner John King and school teacher Thomas Kendall, who were charged with teaching European agriculture, instructing Maori children and preparing “a grammar of the New Zealand language”.
There were delays, including the fallout of the massacre of the crew of the Boyd in 1809, but on November 28, 1814, Marsden, the missionary families of Kendall, King and Hall, and a group of Maori, including Ruatara, Hongi Hika and Korokoro, left Port Jackson, Sydney, for the Bay of Islands.
The small mission at Rangihoua was beset with difficulties. The land was poor, the leaderless families quarrelled and they were reliant for desperately needed supplies on Maori who only wanted to trade for muskets and gunpowder, neither of which they had ready access to (Marsden was opposed to arming the mission and was reluctant to see missionaries trading in arms).
But Marsden did not, says Sharp, as some have charged, simply sail away from the young mission. “I can’t explain how historically insensitive that idea is,” says Sharp. “Missions throughout the world were left to fend for themselves. That was the missionary culture Marsden brought these people from – they were expected to sacrifice certainly their comfort and maybe their lives to do the job. I think Marsden did his best to make sure they were properly provisioned, but it wasn’t always his best best.”
Kendall turned to gun trading. He delved into Maori religious beliefs, then had an affair with Ruatara’s sister-in-law. The Reverend John Butler, leading a new group of settlers in Kerikeri, caused further friction, accusing Marsden of serious misconduct in his business transactions.
As Marsden wrote to the missionary society: “All the difficulties in New Zealand that I have met with have been in governing the Europeans. They will not do what is right. They will not live in unity and brotherly love.”
It was not until the arrival of missionary Henry Williams in Paihia in 1823, and the sacking of Butler and Kendall in Kerikeri and Rangihoua, that the Anglican missions entered a period of relative peace.
LOOK OF A RUGBY HOOKER
Founding father? Much importance has been placed on the sermon Marsden gave at Te Hohi on December, 25, 1814, as marking the arrival of the gospel in New Zealand. Some claim Marsden delivered the sermon in te reo, others say Ruatara translated for him. Sharp believes there would have been no such expectations.
“Marsden was not a fool. He knew Maori didn’t understand. But it was more like a ceremony to make things look right and imposing. And it worked.”
If anyone is a “founding father”, he says, Marsden’s name should be among them. “He set up the first white settlements, got ships protected and set up decent relationships between Europeans and the Maori.” But the idea that he did this to pave the way for colonisation “is just wrong”. Marsden’s goal for “the New Zealanders” was unity, self-government, a “settled way of being” and an ongoing trading relationship with New South Wales and beyond.
“It would be a civilisation run by Maori – they would be the producers and the distributors and the traders.”
Yes, Marsden was proud, ever-fearful of Satan’s reach. He was a poor delegator and by the end of his life looked like a “degenerate rugby hooker”.
“But he was an extraordinary person. He couldn’t have done what he did if he hadn’t been and he couldn’t have stirred up such love and hatred if he hadn’t been rather remarkable.” THE WORLD, THE FLESH & THE DEVIL: THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF SAMUEL MARSDEN IN ENGLAND AND THE ANTIPODES, 1765-1838, by Andrew Sharp (Auckland University Press, $75)