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FF Philip Gidley KingRN ,2nd Lieutenant
‘HMS Sirius’
(1758–1808)
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Philip Gidley King (1758-1808), governor,
was born at Launceston, Cornwall, England, on 23 April
1758. His family had long lived in the district and were
not impecunious. His father, Philip, was a draper, his
maternal grandfather, Gidley, was a local attorney; but
though his origin shows that for men of humble birth it
was easier to advance in the navy than in the army, it
proved a handicap in New South Wales where some of his
critics considered him 'not a gentleman'. For all that
he was neither ignorant nor narrow in his interests,
even if his references to the workings of Providence,
his advice to his young son Norfolk, his views on
alleged 'Republican sentiments' and 'seditious
principles', and his reverence for the existing British
constitution show that his religious and political
opinions were clearly those of an orthodox naval
officer.
King joined the navy as captain's servant
in H.M.S. Swallow on 22 December 1770. After five
years in the East Indies he was moved to American waters
in 1775, when fighting began against the rebellious
colonies, and became a midshipman in the Liverpool
in July. He was commissioned lieutenant in the Renown
on 25 December 1778, after an examination the previous
year when one of his examiners told King's mother that
he was 'one of the most Promising young men I have ever
met'. He returned to serve in the Channel Fleet from
January 1780, and in the Ariadne he served under
the command of Captain
Arthur Phillip.
In 1783 King sailed to India in the Europe with
Phillip who formed a high opinion of his merits; on
their return, since peace had been made, King was paid
off. In October 1786, as soon as Phillip had been
nominated to command the expedition then setting out to
establish a penal settlement at Botany Bay, he chose
King as second lieutenant in the Sirius, in which
he was sailing himself. He took King with him when he
transferred to the Supply in the hope of reaching
their destination ahead of the main fleet, and a
fortnight after they arrived selected him 'as a officer
of merit … whose perseverance may be depended upon' to
establish a subordinate settlement on Norfolk Island.
On 14 February 1788 King sailed for his
new post with a party of twenty-three, including fifteen
convicts. He discovered the difficulties in landing
which were to harass the settlement there, but got
ashore on 6 March. For two years he supervised this
little establishment, organizing the clearing of land
and the struggles against grubs, rats, hurricanes and
occasionally troublesome convicts, but on the whole
reporting favourably on its prospects. Despite the lack
of a safe harbour, of lime and of any untimbered land,
there was plenty of fish, the stock throve and the soil
was good. It could maintain 'at least one hundred
families', King told Phillip. Impressed by his work, the
governor several times recommended his subordinate for
naval promotion, but this would have raised difficulties
because of King's lack of seniority; to solve the
problem the secretary of state announced in December
1789 that King would be appointed lieutenant-governor of
Norfolk Island at a salary of £250, and next month, in
consequence, he was discharged from the Sirius;
however, before this news reached New South Wales, King
had sailed for England in March 1790 on Phillip's orders
to report on the difficulties of the whole settlement.
King's visit to London was brief but
successful. He arrived just before Christmas, saw Lord
Grenville and
Sir Joseph Banks,
discussed the problems of New South Wales, and on 2
March 1791 was promoted commander. On 11 March he
married
Anna Josepha Coombe
at St Martin-in-the-Fields and four days later sailed,
with his wife and his young protégé,
William Chapman,
as a passenger, in H.M.S. Gorgon (Captain Parker)
to return to Norfolk Island with his commission as
lieutenant-governor. On the voyage he learned at the
Cape of the continued shortages in New South Wales, so
on his own responsibility he bought some livestock
there; unfortunately many died before they reached
Sydney and the reluctance of the Treasury to recognize
such unwonted if highly warranted independent action by
junior officials gave rise to a protracted
correspondence on the question of paying for them. After
five weeks in Sydney King landed on Norfolk Island early
in November, and six weeks later Anna Josepha safely
gave birth to a son,
Phillip Parker;
apart from this, King found much trouble on his hands.
During his twenty months absence the
island had been under the command of Lieutenant-Governor
Robert Ross
and the population had grown to nearly one thousand. But
Ross was not an easy commandant and convicts, settlers,
soldiers and officials had become discontented under his
rule. King found 'discord and strife on every person's
countenance' and was 'pestered with complaints, bitter
revilings, back-biting'. Tools and skilled labour were
both very short. Thefts were common and there was still
no criminal court on the island, despite the
representations he had made in London on the need for
better judicial arrangements. However, King's able and
enthusiastic guidance helped to improve conditions. The
regulations he issued in 1792 encouraged the settlers,
who were drawn from ex-marines and ex-convicts, and he
was willing to listen to their advice on fixing wages
and prices and other things. By 1794 the island was
self-sufficient in grain, and had a surplus of swine
that it could send to Sydney. The numbers 'off the
store' were high and few of the settlers wanted to
leave, but unfortunately King had had no success in
stimulating the growing of flax which so interested the
British government. While in England he had persuaded
the government to order Captain
George Vancouver,
who was then setting out on a voyage of exploration in
the Pacific, to bring native flax-dressers from New
Zealand to Norfolk Island. Two Maoris were duly
kidnapped, but when they arrived it was found that they
knew nothing about flax-dressing: all that King could do
was to take them home. This gave him the opportunity for
a ten-day visit to New Zealand in November 1793, which
earned him unmerited reproof from Lieutenant-Governor
Francis Grose
and the Duke of Portland for leaving his post without
permission. Grose accompanied his reprimand in February
1794 with a criticism of King's treatment of the
mutinous conduct of some of the New South Wales Corps on
the island. This followed their unfounded allegations of
the lieutenant-governor punishing them too severely and
the ex-convicts too leniently when disputes arose
between them, an argument between some soldiers and Mrs
King's servants, and a drunken soldier's insolence to
King himself. King, supported by most of the corps'
officers, sent twenty mutineers to Sydney for trial by
court martial, but Grose, probably imperfectly informed
of the affair, sharply censured the
lieutenant-governor's actions and issued orders which
gave the military illegal authority over the civilian
population. King implemented these instructions, though
noting their impropriety; and in due course Portland
ordered him to withdraw them and Grose apologized for
the severity of his language. However, this precursor of
conflict with the military which was to plague King
later was followed by another portent of the future in
his increasing ill health. He had become ill on the
voyage to England in 1790 and in December 1795 was so
sick with gout 'an almost fixed compression of the Lungs
and Breast, with a difficulty of Breathing and a
constant Pain in the Stomach' that 'much doubt was
entertained of his Recovery'. Governor
John Hunter
gave him leave of absence and in October 1796 King left
Norfolk Island for England, carrying the customary
plants for Banks.
In England he somewhat recovered his
health and sought further employment. This he needed for
financial reasons if no other, for, as he told Banks,
his salary had been very small, he had 'neither kept a
shop or sold drams', and his total worldly possessions
were little more than £1500; if he were not given an
appointment, he thought he would have to retire to farm
in the west country. Phillip had wanted King to be
appointed governor of New South Wales, had continued to
advocate King's cause after Hunter had been preferred in
1794, and was partly responsible for his salary at
Norfolk Island being raised to £450 in January 1795.
Banks supported King too, and in January 1798 it was
decided that he should return to New South Wales with a
dormant commission to succeed Hunter in the event of the
latter's death or absence from the colony, though at
that time there was no question of his being recalled.
The commission was issued on 1 May, but King was to take
out a new ship which was being built for the colonial
service, whose design, as with
James Cook's
Resolution in 1772, was based in part on Banks's
requirements for a 'plant cabbin'. It was utterly cranky
and King's strenuous efforts to improve her while still
satisfying Banks had no success; when she finally sailed
in August 1799, she had to return to Portsmouth after
her first encounter with rough weather to be condemned
as unseaworthy. King was properly absolved of
responsibility for her defects, but he had found the
delay financially embarrassing and his 'cup of
disappointment and anxiety' was 'compleatly overflowed'
by the 'long detention'; however, he had the
satisfaction of being commissioned post-captain on 5
December 1798 and when he sailed in the Speedy on
26 November 1799 he carried the dispatch recalling
Hunter.
Authorized to assume office as soon as
Hunter could arrange his departure, already irritated by
the delays in England, anxious to set in motion radical
reforms in the colony and worried about his pay, King
showed none of the goodwill that had marked his earlier
relations with his predecessor but displayed in a
correspondence which each regarded as insulting an
unseemly impatience for him to be gone. King did not
assume command until 28 September 1800, but long before
then had assured Under-Secretary John King that his
taking over was 'well-liked and anxiously looked for'.
King wrote gloomily of existing conditions, insisted
that 'nothing less than a total change in the system of
administration' was necessary, and forecast that
'discontent will be general' when this took place. His
task would be 'laborious and highly discouraging' but he
would not be 'at all intimidated', and although he had
no formal instructions until raised from the status of
lieutenant-governor to governor in 1802, he improvised
them for himself from the dispatches to Hunter and
elaborated them in the orders he gave to Major
Joseph Foveaux
whom he appointed to replace himself as
lieutenant-governor of Norfolk Island in June 1800.
King's first task was to attack the
misconduct of monopolist traders and traffickers in
liquor. In March 1799 the commander-in-chief had ordered
Colonel
William Paterson,
when he was leaving England to rejoin his corps, to
inquire into his officers' trading activities, and this
gave King the chance, even before Hunter had left, to
ask Paterson to act. As soon as he assumed command King
issued a host of orders which he had already prepared,
including a new set of port and price regulations
intended to curb exploitation and the liquor traffic. He
felt compelled to allow Surgeons
William Balmain
and
D'Arcy Wentworth
to sell 4359 gallons (19,816 litres) of spirits which
they had on hand, but was able to reduce the rate of
spirit imports to about a third that of the last months
of Hunter's administration. He tried to persuade the
government in Calcutta and British consuls in the United
States to discourage the shipping of liquor to New South
Wales and, to offer the colonists an alternative
beverage, he began the construction of a brewery. It
only began production in 1804, and in his efforts to
reduce spirit drinking he faced the refusal of most
convicts to work 'in what they … call their own time for
any other mode of payment', but he cut spirit
consumption per adult male in 1801-04 to about two and a
half bottles a month. Unfortunately as time went on King
found increasing difficulty in suppressing illicit local
distillation, despite repeated orders against it, and
although he imposed a duty of 5 per cent on imports to
raise revenue, as Hunter had suggested in 1798, he did
not anticipate the later policy of reducing the profits
of illegal grog-selling by allowing unrestricted import
subject to a moderately heavy duty.
In June 1800 King had protested to Hunter
against the 'exorbitant demands of creditors' in the
colony. He felt that the poorer settlers could best be
protected by price control and by the 'establishment of
a public warehouse', such as he had advocated for
Norfolk Island in 1796 and Hunter had also referred to;
but Hunter had not told the authorities in London what
goods were needed. King's detailed requests were at once
acted on, and merchandise was sold through it at a price
only 50 per cent above cost to cover transport and
selling charges. The increasing quantities imported
commercially also weakened the monopolists' grip on the
colony's economy and improved the colonists' means of
obtaining supplies. King tried to control, though not
always with success, prices, wages, hours of work, the
employment of convicts, baking, butchers, interest
rates, weights and measures and the value of all the
many kinds of currency circulating in the colony; he
tried to reduce forgeries by introducing printed forms
for promissory notes, but they were usually ignored. He
recalled all the officers' servants in excess of two
each, and so reduced the number victualled by the Crown
from 356 to 94; he increased the number of convicts on
the public farms from 30 to 324, and had quadrupled
their cultivated acreage by 1803; later he allowed them
to decline, following orders from London and the
increase in private agriculture. He helped the private
farmers by land grants, by the issue of seed, tools,
sheep and rations, by hiring oxen, by
postponing—contrary to his instructions—the purchase of
grain by tender and keeping its price up to 8s. a
bushel, by ordering the government stores to buy direct
from the grower and by distributing government breeding
stock as a reward 'to those whose exertions … appeared
to merit that encouragement'. He also increased the size
of land grants and made reservations for pasturage
adjacent to them. The upshot was that only 56 out of 646
farmers were 'on the stores' in 1806, compared with 110
out of 401 in 1800. The smallholders had done much
better than before, particularly during the first half
of his administration, and the colony seemed to be
self-sufficient in grain, though the disastrous floods
in 1806 destroyed King's hopes in this regard.
During King's administration the
government's flocks and herds quintupled. He bought
cattle from India to improve the quality of the
government stock, and though disavowing the idea of the
government concerning itself with 'fine-woolled sheep',
and mindful of the importance to the small settlers of
the 'weight of Carcase', he was able by careful breeding
to produce 'a total change in Government Flock from Hair
to Wool', and to distribute ewes to settlers in
expectation of a general improvement in the flocks of
the colony. He began the mining of coal, which he hoped
would be a profitable export, was interested in timber
cutting and encouraged experiments in growing vines,
tobacco, cotton, hemp and indigo. Although in the
opening sentence of the first journal of his experiences
from 1787 to 1790, which was published with minor
revision as an appendix to Hunter's Historical
Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk
Island (London, 1793), King had affirmed the
contemporary opinion that Botany Bay was being founded
simply as a penal settlement, by 1791 he was expressing
great hopes for it as a Pacific base for flax
cultivation and for whaling. The flax was not a success
but whaling was, and both it and later sealing owed much
to King's encouragement. A friend of
Samuel Enderby,
he advised the British government to allow the whalers
to carry merchandise to New South Wales. He encouraged
sealers to go to Bass Strait and whaling ships to visit
New Zealand and the Pacific. In 1804 he encouraged
Robert Campbell
to make his experimental shipment of oil and skins in
the Lady Barlow in contravention of the monopoly
of the East India Co., which he had constantly urged the
government to modify, and sought permission at the same
time to open up trade between New South Wales and China.
As befitted a naval officer King's
interest was attracted by the islands and the oceans in
and around the Pacific. In 1793 he proposed a British
settlement at the Bay of Islands in New Zealand. He
continued to insist on the value of Norfolk Island, not
least because it afforded 'the most ample Refreshment to
our Whalers', and succeeded in 1807 in persuading the
British government to reverse its decision to evacuate
it. King Island, in Bass Strait, was named in 1800 by a
privateer and ex naval officer, John Black, during a
voyage from Cape Town to Sydney. In 1801 King dispatched
Lieutenant
James Grant
to complete the exploration of Bass Strait and to survey
Western Port and then to examine Hunter's River; he sent
two ships to Tahiti to try to open up a trade in pork,
and Lieutenant
John Murray
on the voyage that led to the discovery of Port Phillip,
where he urged that a settlement should be founded. In
1803 he sent Lieutenant
John Bowen
to establish a settlement on the Derwent River and next
year sent Paterson to found one at Port Dalrymple on the
Tamar. On land, he sent out
Francis Barrallier
on two expeditions, on the second enabling him to evade
his military duties by instructing him in November 1802
to go on a mission to the 'King of the Mountains', and
he encouraged the expeditions of
George Caley.
King could, of course, never forget that
he was in charge of a convict colony. He had to keep the
prisoners in subjection, but at the same time he could
not ignore the growing number of emancipists, and firmly
reminded Major
George Johnston
that the British government had not intended the
prisoners to be consigned 'to Oblivion and disgrace for
ever'. King appointed emancipists to his bodyguard and
enrolled them in the Loyal Associations, as had been
done in the New South Wales Corps. Apart from the rather
special case of appointing as military engineer,
George Bellasis,
a former officer in the East India Co. who had killed an
opponent in a duel, he placed men like
Richard Fitzgerald,
James Meehan,
David Mann,
Andrew Thompson,
Rev.
Henry Fulton
and Father
James Dixon
in administrative positions. He took firm measures to
regulate the position of assigned servants, even if at
first they were often disobeyed, and he laid the
foundation of the future ticket-of-leave system by
granting 'annual certificates' to prisoners deserving
indulgence. Though he granted pardons to about 50 per
cent more convicts every year than Hunter had done, he
had about 30 per cent more to deal with and they
included many political prisoners. Of these, especially
the Irish, King was at first perhaps unduly alarmed,
though he had been in England in the dangerous years,
1797-99; however, after initial forebodings, in both
1801 and 1802 he was able to report their 'regular and
orderly behaviour' and to compare their conduct most
favourably with that of the military officers. He was
again rather over-excited at the time of the Irish
conspiracy in 1804, but he seems to have felt more
secure after it had been suppressed and he had divided
the ring-leaders between the different settlements,
including Newcastle, which he re-established in 1804
largely in order to take them. That year, when the war
with France had been renewed, to supplement the battery
on Dawes Point King began to build the citadel at Fort
Phillip, intending that it would also be a place of
refuge in case of an internal rising; but it turned out
to be rather a white elephant.
These and other public works were
hampered by a shortage of convict labourers, until 1804
by their necessary employment on the public farms and
afterwards by the very small numbers arriving. On the
average King had few more than two hundred men working
on buildings, but he was able to complete a granary,
church and schoolhouse at the Hawkesbury, St John's
Church, a gaol and brewery at Parramatta, a barrack at
Castle Hill, saltworks, a guard-house, a printing
office, wharves, mills, a bridge and a house for the
judge-advocate at Sydney, as well as a tannery and a
manufactory for canvas, sacking, blanketing and rope; he
made progress with the fort and St Philip's Church,
built boats and struggled, though not always
successfully, to keep other buildings in repair.
King strove valiantly to satisfy the
British government's never-ceasing demand to reduce the
costs of the colony. The general success of his policies
enabled him to cut the proportion of the population
drawing government rations from 72 per cent in 1800 to
32 per cent in 1806 and the amount of their indebtedness
to the government was reduced. Fortunately trouble with
the Treasury over his expenditure when on Norfolk Island
made him meticulous in his keeping of accounts, and he
drew Treasury bills for stores at a rate about 20 per
cent less than Hunter had done in 1796-98 for only
three-quarters the number of people. In June 1802 King
imposed a 5 per cent duty on imported spirits and on
merchandise brought from east of the Cape and not of
British manufacture; though legally unauthorized this
was not questioned, and by using it for the gaol and
orphan funds he began the appropriation of colonial
revenue for local purposes. He was interested in the
girls' Orphan School, and though he regretted that he
could not establish a similar institution for boys, he
took several day-schools 'under the protection of
Government' and by apprenticeship taught convict boys to
become skilled tradesmen. He asked the British
government to send out supplies of smallpox vaccine, and
so enabled the surgeons to perform the first successful
vaccination in the colony. In March 1803 he permitted
the government printer,
George Howe,
to establish the Sydney Gazette, allowing him the
use of the government press and type. He was sympathetic
to the missionaries who visited the colony, welcomed
Maori and Tahitian visitors to Sydney, and strove to
keep peace with the Aboriginals. These, he told Governor
William Bligh,
he 'ever considered the real Proprietors of the Soil'.
He refused to allow them to be worked as slaves, tried
to protect their persons and their property and to
preserve a 'good understanding' with them; but he found
them 'very capricious', often 'sanguinary and cruel to
each other', and like his contemporaries failed to
understand what he called their 'most ungrateful and
treacherous conduct'.
He was an able and conscientious
administrator, nearly always, as Phillip had said,
'labouring for the public and doing nothing for
himself'. Yet this was not entirely true, especially as
his health grew worse and his family increased. In 1779
he had been reprimanded for appointing, without
authority, an agent to sell a prize on behalf of himself
and the rest of the crew of the Renown. On
Norfolk Island he acted as a broker for Treasury bills.
In 1801 he arranged for the government store to buy the
cargo of the Britannia, in which he had an
interest, at a 50 per cent profit instead of the 30 per
cent it was then paying for purchases from other ships,
claiming in 1804 that he had received authority to raise
the price, although in fact this only arrived three
months later. He took, again without authority, 300
cattle valued at £5600 from the government herds to
satisfy a claim to some of the 'wild cattle' which had
strayed in 1788, and ignored orders to return them; he
improperly granted 1345 acres (544 ha) to Bligh when he
arrived in 1806 as his successor, and a week later
allowed Mrs King with equal impropriety to accept 690
acres (279 ha) from Bligh, described, with delightful
irony, as 'Thanks'. None of these actions was
disinterested, but on eighteenth century standards they
were not unusual; compared with most of his
subordinates, be was a pillar of rectitude. His salary
as governor was only £1000, half that of his successor,
and when he died his property of £7000 amounted to
little more than the current value of the cattle.
A more serious source of criticism was
his hot temper which, if in part a professional
attribute and intensified by sickness, severely
handicapped him in New South Wales. If men like Banks,
Phillip,
Matthew Flinders,
Nicolas Baudin
and
Rowland Hassall
held him in the highest esteem, others in the colony
including Paterson, Captain Colnett R.N. and
Joseph Holt
found cause to complain of his 'violent passions' and
the Memoirs of
James Hardy Vaux
portray a man at first benevolent, though mildly
eccentric, becoming rather petty as well as irascible by
the time of his voyage home in 1807. Though perhaps
overfond of practical jokes he was not without a more
sophisticated sense of humour, but as time went on he
became overweight, heavy-eyed and strained, sometimes
blustering and pompous, sometimes on the verge of
breakdown, as he saw a widening gap between his hopes
and his achievements. In the end he was defeated by the
officers of the New South Wales Corps.
That he would have to fight them he knew
when he arrived in Sydney in 1800, and even before he
had assumed office he was regretting that Hunter had
allowed Captain George Johnston to go home for his trial
on charges of trading in spirits. Johnston was soon back
untried, but trials in the colony were not successful,
and King found the military arrogance which he had faced
at Norfolk Island was now exacerbated by his economic
policy. He badly needed capable law officers and a
change in the personnel of the military force, the New
South Wales Corps, but the British government ignored
his requests for these things. He was faced with
frequent disobedience and insolence which early in 1803,
immediately after he had refused to allow a cargo of
spirits to be landed from the Atlas, culminated
in the circulation of libellous 'pipes' against him and
his officials. The investigations and courts martial
which followed only revealed the animosity which existed
between the governor and the corps; no wonder that King
declared that 'for the prosperity of His Majesty's
subjects in this territory … some change is absolutely
necessary in our criminal courts'. With this Colonel
Paterson entirely agreed, asserting that 'most of the
disquiet that has agitated this settlement … is chiefly
to be attributed to the unfortunate mixture of civil and
military duties'. In November 1801 King had repeated
Hunter's action and sent home an accused officer,
John Macarthur,
charged with fighting a duel with his commander,
Paterson, itself the result of a quarrel with the
governor. But in July 1805 Macarthur returned in
triumph. He had not been court-martialled, had resigned
his commission, and had obtained an order for 5000 acres
(2024 ha) of the best land in the colony for his
sheep-breeding. King had failed to receive support in
England, just as when he complained of the proceedings
of the local courts martial as vitally affecting the
peace of the colony, the judge-advocate in London in
January 1804 coldly told him that 'for the sake of
harmony' he would 'pass over any seeming irregularity'.
Owing to these disputes, in May 1803 King had asked to
be given leave of absence while an inquiry was held into
the state of the colony. In November the secretary of
state at once accepted what he was quick to interpret as
an offer of resignation, and after King received this
reply in June 1804 his activities slowed down; but he
was not relieved until August 1806 and in the interval
he suspected that other critics, like
Maurice Margarot,
Henry Hayes,
Michael Robinson
and
William Maum,
were blackening his reputation in England. For all that
he had good friends in New South Wales, including
Surgeon
John Harris
and Rowland Hassall who managed his wife's farm, and who
corresponded with him after his departure.
When he embarked in the Buffalo on
15 August for the voyage home he completely collapsed.
He could not sail until 10 February 1807, and a stormy
passage around Cape Horn delayed his arrival in England
until November. He pressed the Colonial Office
insistently for a pension, but before it was granted he
died on 3 September 1808. He was buried in the
churchyard of St Nicholas, Lower Tooting, London.
King had always aimed at promoting 'the
prosperity of the colony, and giving a permanent
security to the interests of its inhabitants'. He knew
he could not satisfy all, and had faced 'scurrility and
abuse, clothed with darkness and assassination'. This
abuse has apparently harmed his reputation, which stands
today lower than is deserved. He worked hard for the
good of New South Wales and left it very much better
than he found it, but succumbed to sickness and the hard
conditions of his service while still relatively young.
King had two natural sons, Norfolk
(1789-1839) and Sydney (1790-1840), by Ann Inett, a
First Fleet Convict (Lady Penrhyn )from
Worcestershire. They were born when their father was
first on Norfolk Island, both were well cared for by him
and rose to be lieutenants in the navy.
His only legitimate son, P. P. King,
married Harriet Lethbridge of Cornwall. Of King's four
daughters, two settled in New South Wales: Mary (b.1805)
married her brother-in-law, Robert Lethbridge, in 1826
and Anna Maria (b.1793) married
Hannibal Macarthur
in 1812. Elizabeth (b.1797) who married an artist,
Charles Runciman, remained in England, and Utricia
(b.1795) died as a child.
After King’s death Anna and her family
returned to Australia. Anna passed away in 1844 and was
buried at St Mary Magdalene's Church near Penrith, NSW.
King is also remembered for his art
works, several of which survive. An engraving by
William Blake,
entitled A Native Family of New South Wales, and
published in John Hunter's Historical Journal of the
Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island
(1793) was made from one of his watercolors. The
original sketch is among the Banks Papers held by the
Mitchell Library, Sydney, along with several others,
unsigned but clearly by the same artist
byA.
G. L. Shaw.1967
-This article was published in
Australian Dictionary of Biography,
Volume 2, (MUP), 1967
Footnote:-In 1988 – 180 years after his
passing and burial – on the occasion of the bicentennial
celebrations the memorial slab covering King’s grave in
the old country was shipped all the way to Australia, to
be set in concrete next to the enclosure surrounding his
wife’s grave, at St Mary Magdalene's Church near
Penrith, NSW.
It is a stone without a tomb, though its
text still reads:
Here
lyeth the body of
PHILIP
GIDLEY KING
Captain
R.N. and late
Territory New South Wales
Died
Septr. 3rd. Aged 49 Years
1808
When the idea of transferring the
memorial was first mooted, it was suggested that the
former Governor’s remains be exhumed, and also taken to
Australia, but this proposal was rejected.
Indeed, even to move the stone roused
opposition on the part of some clergymen, and permission
was only granted when it was agreed that another
memorial would be erected in its stead. It was further
stipulated that this had to contain the identical
inscription with the additional words that
The original stone was moved to St Mary’s
Australia in 1988.
Once the original stone had been placed
at its new Australian site, a consecration service was
held on 31 January 1988, attended by almost 300 of
King’s descendants. It was an auspicious occasion,
recalling the early history of the colony in a most
personal way.
The Fellowship of First Fleeters
installed a FFF Plaque on Philip Gidley King’s Grave on
7th July 1991.
Refer FFF Web Site:http://www.fellowshipfirstfleeters.org.au/graves.html
Under
 see
FFF Plaque 83 – Installed 7th July 1991for
FF 2nd Lieut. PHILLIP GIDLEY
KING RNNaval Officer‘HMS Sirius’(1758-1808)
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