Lachlan Macquarie

31 January 1761

Lachlan is born on Ulva, second child of carpenter Lachlan Macquarie, a cousin of the sixteenth and last chieftain of the clan Macquarie, and Margaret, the only sister of Murdoch Maclaine, chieftain of Lochbuy in Mull.

1772

The family moves to Mull, to a 75 acre estate leased from the Duke of Argyll.

1776

At age 15, young Lachlan volunteers for British Army – the same year the United States declares its independence from Britain.

1777

Lachlan becomes an ensign in the 2nd battalion of the 84th Regiment, Royal Highland Emigrants. He serves at Halifax and other parts of Nova Scotia, in Canada.

January 1781

Macquarie is commissioned a lieutenant in the 71st Regiment of Highland Foot, and performs garrison duty in New York and Charleston, in the closing stages of the American War of Independence.

1783

Returning to Scotland, after a year serving in Jamaica, Macquarie lives a farmer's life for the next few years, with his mother and 6 January 1788: The “First Fleet” under command of Gsiblings, at Oskamull, on Mull.

1787

Macquarie returns to the army, taking a lieutenant’s commission in the 77th Regiment of Foot, beginning his first tour in India. There he sees much active service in Britain’s struggle to gain control of the subcontinent.

26 January 1788

The “First Fleet” under command of Governor Arthur Philip, lands at Botany Bay on Australia's eastern coast, to form the penal colony of New South Wales - the British name given to most of the continent of 'New Holland' (Australia). This event is generally considered a direct result of Britain’s defeat in the American War of Independence.
In total, there are 717 convicts (180 of them women) in the fleet, guarded by 191 British Marines under 19 officers.
Those who arrive with the First Fleet have only two years provisions with them and no knowledge of farming in Australian conditions.
They almost starve to death before relief ships arrive with fresh stores.

1793

Lachlan Macquarie marries Jane Jarvis, the youngest daughter of Thomas Jarvis, Chief Justice and Member of Council of the Island of Antigua, but their marriage is brief and childless.

July 1796

Jane Jarvis dies from tuberculosis at Macau, the Portuguese enclave in China, near Hong Kong. The following January, Jane’s body is buried in the European Cemetery in Bombay, arranged by Macquarie.

1801

Macquarie is appointed deputy-adjutant-general to the 8000-strong army under Major-General David Baird sent to Egypt to ‘expel’ the French.
The army is engaged in little action.

Back in India, Macquarie is promoted to major with the 86th Regiment. A year later, he returns to England, to attend to financial matters and to enjoy the social whirl of London after years abroad. He is twice presented to the King and Queen, dines with the aristocracy, attends balls and the theatre, has his portrait painted by noted Cornish artist, John Opie, and finally, after 12 months, travels to Scotland to visit family and friends.

11 February 1802

Back in India, Macquarie is promoted to major with the 86th Regiment. A year later, he returns to England, to attend to financial matters and to enjoy the social whirl of London after years abroad. He is twice presented to the King and Queen, dines with the aristocracy, attends balls and the theatre, has his portrait painted by noted Cornish artist, John Opie, and finally, after 12 months, travels to Scotland to visit family and friends.

26 March 1805

Macquarie becomes secretly engaged to his distant cousin Elizabeth Henrietta Campbell of Airds, whom he met in 1804.

25 April 1805

Macquarie sails for India on board the East Indiaman City of London. He arrives in Bombay on 12 August and one week later he visits the gravesite of his first wife, Jane.

November 1805

In documents from the time, Macquarie describes his preparations for joining the 86th Regiment as part of the next British military expedition against Holkar and the Maratha Confederacy in Gujarat.

1806

Macquarie returns to Britain, carrying government dispatches and to take up the Lieutenant-Colonelcy of the 73rd. Regiment of Foot. After sailing from Bombay to the Persian Gulf, where he narrowly escapes drowning, he then travels overland to London via Baghdad, Moscow, and St Petersburg.

3 November 1807

He marries Elizabeth Campbell, after a two and a half year engagement. The bride was 29, and the groom 46.

26 January 1808

In New South Wales, the original convict colony has managed to ‘hang on’ for 20 years, a struggling, chaotic prison camp, with barely 5,000 European inhabitants, largely around the site of the first landing – although the main port has moved from Botany Bay to Port Jackson (now Sydney Harbour) and a few settlements have been established 20 to 30km inland from Sydney Town, site of the initial landing of 1788.
On this date, the officers of the colony’s garrison - and the real power in the colony - the NSW Corps, lead the ‘Rum Rebellion’ mutiny, which overthrows the then 4th Governor, William Bligh (earlier of ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ fame, in 1789).

15 September 1808

The couple’s first child, Jane, is born, but unfortunately dies on December 5, the same year.

April 1809

Lachlan Macquarie is appointed Governor of New South Wales, designated to take over from Bligh. The next month, he and his wife Elizabeth sail with the 1st Battalion, 73rd Regiment of Foot, from Yarmouth.

28 December 1809

Macquarie’s flotilla arrives at Sydney Town, Port Jackson, His first job is to replace the officially disbanded NSW Corps, which has clung to power, in the vacuum left by Governor Bligh’s departure, under officers, such as the Rum Rebellion leaders Major George Johnston and John Macarthur (the ‘father’ of the Australian sheep industry whose background, including service in the American War of Independence, was similar to that of Macquarie himself).

1810 - 1811

Early in his administration, Macquarie pursues a policy of allowing deserving ‘emancipists’ (ex-convicts now settled in the colony) to enjoy the same rights as ‘free settlers’. In 1810 he makes two emancipists magistrates and invites them and other emancipists to dine at government house.
This policy brings him into early and continuing conflict with an influential, conservative, section of local society. This group, known as the ‘exclusives’, seeks to keep for itself civil rights and judicial privileges. Many of these free settlers also have influential friends in English political circles.

1 January 1810

Macquarie officially becomes the colony's first military governor. Previous holders of the office had all been navy men. Macquarie and his well-disciplined 73rd Regiment troops fill the power vacuum and Macquarie begins an autocratic style of rule in the colony, which he sees as a settled community as well as a penal settlement.
However, his term of office also coincides with an increase in the numbers of convicts sent to the colony. His solution is to commence an ambitious programme of public works (new buildings, towns, roads) to help absorb these numbers.

1812

The first detailed British Government inquiry into the convict system in NSW supports Major General Macquarie's policies. However, the committee thinks that fewer pardons (‘tickets of leave’) should be issued and opposes the governor having the power to grant them. Macquarie has been using ‘tickets of leave’ to release talent among the convict base, to staff his infrastructure programmes.

1813

Macquarie seeks to overcome an acute currency shortage by purchasing Spanish silver dollars (then worth 5 shillings in British currency), punching out the centres and creating two new coins - the 'Holey Dollar' valued at 5 shillings, and the ‘Dump’ at one quarter of that, 15 pence (one shilling was at the time 12 pence). This doubles the number of coins in circulation, increases their total worth by 25 per cent and prevents the coins from leaving the colony. It is to be hoped the profit was used for the public benefit.

28 May 1813

Failure to find a way across the Blue Mountains, which surround the colony to the west, north and south, has kept the settlers confined to the coast and stifled New South Wales’ growth and prosperity from its beginning. On this date, Gregory Blaxland, William Charles Wentworth and Lt. William Lawson, finally arrive on the western edge of the range, effectively discovering a way across the Blue Mountains, giving pastoralists access to the western plains. By November, Macquarie has made the trip across the mountains himself, as far as the modern site of Bathurst, 300km west of the coast and Macquarie names Australia's first inland city on the spot.

June 1813

Macquarie becomes a champion of exploration. He appoints John Oxley as surveyor-general and sends him on expeditions up the coast of New South Wales and inland to find new rivers and new lands for settlement. Oxley discovers rich new farming lands on the northern coast and inland regions of New South Wales, and in what is now Queensland, he also explores the present site of Brisbane.

1 1814

Macquarie’s regiment, the 1st / 73rd of Foot, is sent to Ceylon, to suppress a revolt by the King of Kandy.

2 1814

As the civil needs of the colony take precedence, the Second Charter of Justice is issued for New South Wales. It defines a system comprising three new Courts of Civil Judicature in New South Wales: The Governor's Court, the Lieutenant-Governor's Court and the Supreme Court.
Under the Charter, English law is to be followed as far as possible. Where new ordinances or laws are needed, they are to be consistent with English laws as far as the particular circumstances of the colony would allow. However, the retention of power in the ‘Governor’s’ courts does not please everyone.
Jeffrey Hart Bent, the brother of the Judge Advocate, recently arrived in the colony as the first judge of the new Supreme Court, is one. Bent has allegiances with the military and ‘exclusive’ settlers. He block’s Macquarie's efforts to allow emancipist attorneys to appear before the Supreme Court.

28 March 1814

After six miscarriages, Elizabeth gives birth to a son, named Lachlan.

1815

The end of the Napoleonic Wars feeds the flow of both convicts and settlers to the now expanding New South Wales, as the sea lanes became free and as unemployment and crime in Britain rise – fuelled by cuts in military personnel numbers.

1816

Macquarie’s autocratic style brings his feud with the ‘exclusive’ faction to a crucial moment: He has flogged three trespassers (all free settlers) on the ‘Government Domain’. This incident is just one of several which Bent and others take to the British Government as examples of Macquarie's ‘authoritarian excesses’.

1817

This year Macquarie becomes the first to use the name ‘Australia’ in dispatches back to Britain.
However, despite the new name, corruption and graft have become the order of the day in the colony’s financial system, fuelled by the problems of everyday survival and the lack of a stable monetary system. Despite the Holey Dollar move of 1813, the use of rum, promissory notes, British Treasury bills, foreign coins and barter continue to be rife.
Macquarie establishes the Bank of NSW – the first bank in Australia – to tackle the situation.

1819

The British Government sends English judge John Thomas Bigge to inquire into the affairs of the colony. Bigge's report is critical of Macquarie, and claims he has abused his office, in particular his spending on public works. Bigge also recommends that no governor should again be allowed to rule as an autocrat.
Macquarie attempts to resign, twice, unsuccessfully and a serious illness almost kills him.

1 1821

Macquarie is finally allowed to end his term as Governor and return to Britain to defend the charges made against him.
By now, Macquarie’s ‘reign’ has delivered a public building and town-planning programme that has established a solid infrastructure for the colony.
Macquarie can list 265 works carried out during his term. They include, in Sydney Town, new army and convict barracks, a hospital, and castle-like stables (now housing the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music), all of which stand today.
He has established five planned towns, in the Sydney hinterland, and roads across the Blue Mountains to Bathurst.
Exploration has reached deep into the inland and settlement and agriculture are following, north and south along the coastline and inland beyond Bathurst. Agriculture is creating the conditions for the colony to become almost economically self-sufficient.

2 1821

The non-Aboriginal population of the colony (including Van Diemen's Land) is by now approximately 37,000, of whom at least 8,000 are free settlers or born in the colony.

February 1822

Macquarie, Elizabeth and seven-year-old Lachlan depart for England. After settling on his estate on the island of Mull, Scotland, he sets about defending himself against claims in Bigge's report. However, worried about Elizabeth's health, Macquarie leaves the same year, taking his family, with servants and a tutor, on a grand tour through France, Italy and Switzerland.

1 July 1824

Macquarie dies, aged 63, after contracting severe kidney inflammation, at 49, Duke Street, St James, in London, in the presence of Elizabeth and son Lachlan.

25 August 1824

With Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane presiding, the new New South Wales Legislative Council, set up to advise governors of the colony in future, holds its first meeting at Government House. The Council’s first Act, a Currency Act, is passed on 28 September.
Lachlan Macquarie of Jarvisfield is to be the last autocratic ruler in Australia. He has helped turn a chaotic prison camp into the basis for one of the worlds’ major democracies, in 11 years. Today, he is widely regarded among historians as the ‘Father of Australia’.

The Macquarie Mausoleum at Gruline on the Isle of Mull