received with regard to the complaints of his officer. Official relations were continued with apparent concord. His officers sat on boards with those of the colony in naval affairs. At King's request he allowed two of them to remain in the colony to assist in forming a new settlement. He carried Flinders' charts to the Admiralty for King, who said it was "the first safe opportunity" he had had. But on the day of his leaving, Colnett's wrath was great at the loss of his Briseis, for he wrote to King that by the Admiralty he "always had the honour of being treated like a captain of one of His Majesty's ships, and not as a master of a petty coaster.[1] It was on the report of such a man[2] that Lord Hobart founded his unjust rebuke.
King kept unfaltering on his way. In Dec. 1804 he called Lord Hobart's attention to the appearance, in a list of pardons, of a free pardon to a female convict sentenced for life. It was
"given in conformity to my promise to the commander of H.M.S. Glatton, after her being here one year, and nothing but a respect for my word induced me to extend that indulgence to the object benefited by it. Had I, my Lord, abused the authority delegated to His Majesty's Governor of this territory by granting Captain Colnett a free pardon for this woman before she landed, for the purpose of returning to England with him, and bad acquiesced in other requisitions equally, if not more, extravagant and opposite to the dictates of my bounden duty, your Lordship and the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty would not have been troubled with any communication from Captain Colnett respecting his unprovoked and provoking conduct."
- ↑ MS. original; in possession of P. G. King, Esq., Banksia, Double Bay, Sydney. Governor Macquarie gave the woman a free pardon in 1810.
- ↑ There was another cause of umbrage between King and Colnett. The former, in order to secure "full advantage to the inhabitants and His Majesty's subjects in general," was unwilling to grant lands on the islands where fishing was pursued. Colnett applied for and was refused a grant of 100 acres at King's Island. This refusal, King stated, "was one cause of his unofficer-like treatment to me."—Despatch to Lord Hobart, 20th Dec. 1804.
Captain Colnett, when leaving, wished to obtain receipts in full for the convicts transported by the Glatton. There were three, two men and one woman, unaccounted for. King gave a certificate acknowledging the numbers landed, with the addition that he had received information" that the missing three were "stowed away in the Glatton without the knowledge of the captain or officers of the ship."—Despatch, 16th May, 1803.
Chance has thrown in the author's way a bound copy of Colnett's MS. statements, which, without knowledge of his official correspondence in the colony, would form a heavy indictment against the Governor. By the light of that correspondence the charges only prove King's difficulties and his resolution.
