Samuel Marsden (25 June 1765 – 12 May 1838) was an English-born priest of the Church of England in Australia and a prominent member of the Church Missionary Society. He played a leading role in bringing Christianity to New Zealand. Marsden was a prominent figure in early New South Wales and Australian history, partly through his ecclesiastical offices as the colony's senior Church of England cleric and as a pioneer of the Australian wool industry, but also for his employment of convicts for farming and his actions as a magistrate at Parramatta, both of which attracted contemporary criticism.
Early life
Born in Farsley, near Pudsey, Yorkshire in England as the son of a Wesleyan blacksmith turned farmer, Marsden attended the village school and spent some years assisting his father on the farm. In his early twenties his reputation as a lay preacher drew the attention of the evangelical Elland Society, which sought to train poor men for the ministry of the Church of England. With a scholarship from the Elland Society Marsden attended Hull Grammar School, where he became associated with Joseph Milner and the reformist William Wilberforce, and after two years, he matriculated, at the age of 25, at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He abandoned his degree studies to respond to the call of the evangelical leader Charles Simeon for service in overseas missions. Marsden was offered the position of second chaplain to the Reverend Richard Johnson's ministry to the Colony of New South Wales on 1 January 1793.
Marsden married Elizabeth Fristan at Holy Trinity, Hull on 21 April 1793. The following month William Buller, the Bishop of Exeter, ordained him as a priest.
In Australia
Marsden travelled as a passenger on the convict ship, to Australia, his first child Anne being born en route. He arrived in the colony on 2 March 1794, and set up house in Parramatta, outside the main Port Jackson settlement.
In 1800 Marsden succeeded Johnson and became the senior Church of England chaplain in New South Wales; he would keep this post until his death.
Marsden was given grants of land by the colonial government and bought more of his own, which were worked with convict labour, a common practice in Australia at the time. By 1807 he owned of land. Successful farming ventures provided him with a secure financial base, although they also formed a plank of contemporary criticism of Marsden for alleged over-involvement in non-church affairs. In 1807 he returned to England to report on the state of the colony to the government, and to solicit further assistance of clergy and schoolmasters.
He concentrated on the development of strong heavy-framed sheep such as the Suffolk sheep breed, which had a more immediate value in the colony than the fine-fleeced Spanish merinos imported by John Macarthur. In 1809, Marsden was the first to ship wool to England from Australia for commercial use; this was made into cloth by Messrs W. & J. Thompson, at Rawdon, West Yorkshire, and so impressed George III that he was given a present of Merino sheep from the Windsor stud. Four years later more than 4000 lbs (1814 kg) of his wool was sold in England. Marsden was an important promoter of the wool staple, even though his contribution to technology, breeding and marketing was far eclipsed by that of Macarthur. He is believed to have later introduced sheep to New Zealand, where he would develop a somewhat gentler reputation than in Australia.
In 1795, Governor John Hunter made the chaplains magistrates. Marsden's role as magistrate at Parramatta, attracted criticism in his lifetime. History has remembered Marsden as the "Flogging Parson", with contemporaries claiming that he inflicted severe punishments (notably extended floggings), even by the standards of his day. This view of Marsden is disputed in some circles as part of an anti-clerical writing of history, in turn attributed to a dislike of Roman Catholics and the Irish.