Samuel Marsden – “The Flogging Parson”
Samuel Marsden may be remembered as the strait laced severe authoritarian of the colony, but many also consider him as one of Australia's first missionaries. A product of Yorkshire Methodism, Marsden was committed to sort out the drunkenness and licentiousness of the New South Wales colony.
The Reverend Samuel Marsden arrived to take up the post of Assistant Chaplain in the convict settlement of New South Wales in March 1794, six years after the arrival of the First Fleet.
Needless to say, he did not like what he saw. "Major Grose", he recorded "...being so very bad and licentious a character, opened a door to all kinds if immorality, irreligion and idleness. Drunkenness and profaneness prevailed not only among the convicts but amongst all ranks and orders".
A nuggety Yorkshireman, Marsden was 29 when he arrived in the colony. Marsden matured at the time that evangelical Methodism was making an impact on the Yorkshire in which he lived. He had been taken from the blacksmith's forge by the Elland Society, a group of clergymen, who were impressed by his piety. The society subsidised his scholarship at Hull Grammar School, and then at Cambridge.
Marsden owed his appointment in the new colony to the patronage of the British philanthropist William Wilberforce. It was he who overcame the colonial authorities reservations about Marsdens humble origins and blunt manners.
Before sailing, Marsden was duly ordained as a priest of the Anglican Church, and made a propitious marriage with Elizabeth Fristan of Hull, daughter of Sir Thomas Fristan.
Marsden was an apostle of an evangelical religion, which placed great stress on the efforts of the individual to work on earth for an uncertain salvation. God intervened directly in mens affairs. God was the author of the "little good that is in man".
He interpreted social and material advance as a sign of God's favour. "I am not born of noble birth, nor heir to any great inheritance ... God hath highly exalted me from my low situation and rank to minister before him in holy things".
In 1795 Marsden made a trip to Norfolk Island where discussions with Governor Phillip King, aroused his interests in the Maoris of New Zealand, a people who had cultivated the flax plant. The descriptions of the Maoris fired Marsden's imagination. Throughout his life in the colony, he had displayed complete indifference to the Aboriginal people of Australia. Their communal existence based on nomadic hunting and fishing, were in direct contrast to the creed of industry, agriculture and self-improvement. The moaris
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