A Forger's Progress

by Alasdair McGregor

  ‘I saw Captain Sanderson strike him 6 or 7 times with the whip violently’, Wharton later testified under subpoena. ‘The beating continued from their coming out of the Barrack … it might be a minute or two altogether. … I saw several marks on his coat – I counted 6 or 7 myself.’18 A more prudent man than Greenway might have licked his wounds, physical and emotional, and withdrawn quietly. He would have accepted that while he may have the sympathetic ear of the governor, the gulf between convicts and the exclusives, and their allies among the military, was deep and broad, and one he was unlikely to cross.

  Greenway may not have been dressed in a convict uniform, but the epithet ‘convict’ was as good as embroidered on the lapel of his blue velvet frockcoat. Sanderson and his haughty brother officers had no time for the likes of Greenway; he held no legitimate place in colonial society and was no better than a trumped-up arriviste in their eyes. His ‘spirit of English Independence’ meant nothing to them, and according to Sanderson ‘should have been attended to in that quarter where it might have been of Service and kept him hence’.19

  Blind to the consequences, Greenway would not let the matter rest, and swore a criminal charge of assault against Sanderson before Judge Advocate Wylde. The ensuing trial, held on 30 April 1817, is an example of the wider challenge of the colony’s transition from a convict garrison under military jurisdiction to a civil society founded in English common law. The case caused a sen-sation, and even as late as 1823, Irish emancipist lawyer and merchant Edward Eagar drew on its proceedings in a report to Lord Bathurst.20

  Had Greenway not had the protection of the judge advocate, his plight may indeed have been dire. The rostered officers who were to sit in judgment on Sanderson were drawn from the very ranks of his brothers in the 46th Regiment. The secretary of Social and Military Virtues No. 227, Lieutenant Douglas Leith Cox, was among them, and two of the presiding officers also stood bail for the accused. As Ellis points out, had the officers been left to their own devices ‘they probably would have ended by ordering Mr Greenway to the chain-gang or the gallows’.21 In even notifying Sanderson of Greenway’s complaint, the judge advocate communicated with the accused ‘in the most polite and delicate manner’. For his part, Sanderson ‘felt much offended with the Judge Advocate for attending at all to Greenway’s complaint, and declared his intention of horsewhipping Greenway again, wherever he met with him’.22

  On the day of the trial, Frederick Garling, the Supreme Court solicitor acting as prosecutor, made opening remarks ‘upon the conduct of Captain Sanderson relative to the assault’. Although Garling was simply doing his duty, his words caused uproar. Rather than letting the proceedings continue in an orderly fashion, the presiding officers, according to Edward Eagar, ‘immediately took fire, reprobated the conduct of the Solicitor in presuming to make any remarks upon the conduct of an officer, and ordered him to desist’. The judge advocate and the military members of the bench then clashed openly over the rights of the solicitor. Luckily for Greenway and Garling, John Wylde had been an eminent London barrister and was more than a match for his fellow judges. The officers were obliged to give way, ‘but they openly … and with considerable violence, reprobated the conduct of the Solicitor’.23

  Sanderson was allowed to address the court without swearing an oath, whereupon he asserted that Greenway’s attempt at an apology did nothing but aggravate his original offence. The second letter had been a ‘breach of the peace’, and by the captain’s imperious reasoning, the assault on the hapless architect was ‘brought on by his own conduct’. Sanderson then used the forum to voice a wider suite of grievances, including ‘strong observations on the Government’. He mouthed off about the ‘insolence of convicts’ until his polemic became too much for Wylde, who intervened.24

  Although presiding on the bench, Lieutenant Leith Cox was not barred from giving evidence for the defendant. He had been present in the barrack yard on the day of the assault, but his evidence, in Eagar’s words, ‘did not appear to be very candid’ and he initially denied discussing the incident with Sanderson. Torn between perjury and his belief that he was ‘honour bound not to reveal the communication of his Brother officer’, he eventually did admit to a ‘friendly and confidential communication’ with Sanderson.25 The judge advocate duly reproached the lieutenant for considering the fellowship of arms before the truth and the rule of law. Leith Cox’s response was to insult Wylde publicly.

  And so the highly charged trial careered to its inevitable conclusion. It was obvious that the case against Sanderson was clearcut, and even in a setting so hostile to the prosecution, the ‘Court was compelled to find Captain Saunderson [sic] Guilty’.26 He was fined £10. But in an extraordinary and intimidating display, the:

  Military Members compelled the Judge Advocate … to state, ‘that it was the opinion of the Court that … [he] had acted with unnecessary and ungentlemanly harshness … in allowing the Prosecutor’s Solicitor to pursue the course he did … And, although they were in strictness of Law compelled to find Captain Saunderson [sic] Guilty, yet that his conduct was that which, as an officer and a Gentleman, he was perfectly justifiable in.27

  Such a ‘censure upon himself and a eulogy upon the Prisoner’ were humiliating in the extreme for John Wylde. In concluding his remarks, Eagar allowed his sense of irony to seep through the formality of his prose: ‘This display of Military Justice was exhibited to a crowded Court, and deeply impressed the public with a sense of what was to be expected from such a Tribunal, as well as the degradation a British Judge was obliged to undergo’. In Captain Edward Sanderson’s conviction for assault, Greenway had scored a victory of sorts, but the bruises to his pride remained unhealed.

  As if he had been deaf and blind to the haughty disdain for him and his class so forcefully mouthed before, and even from the bench, he decided to take further action and sued Sanderson for civil damages in the Supreme Court. Greenway won again, and this time was awarded £20 for his troubles. But this, and the preceding trial, were nothing but Pyrrhic victories, and served only to harden the resolve of his enemies. As Ellis colourfully concluded, ‘He became more than ever a marked man, as he moved about immersed in his dreams, righting the building trade’s wrongs and contending with an increasing horde of the evil, idle and careless’.28

  The courtroom drama confirms the wider rumblings in colonial society and the growing tensions between the governor and the emancipists on one side, and the exclusivists and the military on the other. Macquarie had reason enough to doubt the intentions of the officers of the 46th Regiment to prompt him to write to Prince Frederick, Duke of York and commander-in-chief of the British Army, in July 1817 and request the regiment’s recall. He expressed his disappointment and frustration at the officers’ rejection of his policy of inclusion towards emancipists: ‘Their Indiscriminate Rule of Exclusion … I Could not but Consider premature, Illiberal, and I may add, Almost Unjust, towards the Very few Whose Reformation … had rendered them rather Meriting of Pity and Regret for their former Deviations … than of a perpetual Brand to disgrace their future Lives’.29

  Macquarie was further disquieted that his old army colleague from his days in India and Egypt, Colonel George Molle, had ‘latterly thrown off the Mask and Shewn [sic] the same Disposition … as his Officers had previously done’. Officers of the 46th Regiment displayed ‘Mutinous Licentiousness’ and generally chose not to accept social invitations from the governor when emancipists were likely to be present. Similarly, emancipists were not welcome in the officers’ mess.

  Macquarie kept a wary eye on the colonel and his officers, but continued to receive them without comment on their views – that is, until ‘After the Arrival of Captain Sanderson … in 1815’. Macquarie identified Sanderson as one of the principal agitators of dissent, and Greenway’s case (without mentioning it by name) was prominent in his lengthy letter to the Duke. The governor reported that:

  This Officer having Used Most unbecoming and disrespectful Language … to the
Bench of Magistrates before whom he had been Summoned for a Misdemeanour, I found it due to those Gentlemen’s wounded Feelings to Admonish and reprove Capn. Sanderson … Resentment, perhaps mingled with Even Worse Motives, immediately led Capn. Sanderson to Set about forming a Faction among his Brother Officers … in which he has succeeded but too Well.30

  The 46th Regiment was in any case replaced by the 48th in late 1817.

  Greenway’s role as acting civil architect had begun with promise. Throughout 1816, Macquarie and Captain John Gill had sent him hither and yon, and finally after several years in limbo he was again a proud professional man. His prospects had looked bright, but the Sanderson affair soon pushed him to the brink of oblivion once more. It seems that the timeliness of Macquarie’s frenetic building program, and the refuge of its accompanying patronage, were all that kept Greenway from self-destruction – at least for now.

  A MANSION FOR THE VICEROY: GOVERNMENT HOUSE, 1816–20

  On New Year’s Day 1817, a ‘Select Party of Friends’ dined with the Macquaries at Government House, Parramatta. They celebrated the incoming year and also toasted the seventh anniversary of the governor assuming command in New South Wales.1 Earlier that day, a confident Macquarie had personally marked the occasion by compiling a list: a ‘Schedule … of Public Buildings & other Improvements’.2 In addition to ‘those now in progress’, Macquarie slated an ambitious total of 26 new buildings for Sydney, Parramatta, Liverpool and Windsor, all to rely on Greenway’s expertise. Among others, there were to be a female factory at Parramatta; a new church and parsonage at Windsor; a new church at Liverpool; and, in Sydney itself, a barracks for male convicts, and a new church, courthouse and fort. At the top of Macquarie’s Sydney list was ‘A new Gov.t House & Offices’, and there was nothing arbitrary about it being the first building noted.

  Government House was much as Arthur Phillip had left it nearly a quarter of a century before, and had long since become an embarrassment to its occupants. Termites threatened to demolish the cramped and shoddily built structure long before any labourer’s hammer could be swung in earnest. The outbuildings were in a particularly bad state of repair. In March 1816, nine months before he composed his list of essential buildings, Macquarie had not minced his words when describing the state of his accommodation to Colonial Secretary Bathurst:

  The old Government House and Offices, built by Governor Phillip twenty-Eight [sic] Years ago, remain as I found them; and upon late Inspection they have been found so Much decayed and rotten as to render them extremely Unsafe any longer to live in … Indeed, if it were possible to repair them, they are in point of Size Altogether Inadequate to the Residence and Accommodation of even a private Gentleman’s Family and Much less that of the Governor in Chief.3

  The house and its outbuildings were ill sited, built on the ‘Declivity of a Hill’. The shallow Sydney soils meant that the hill was ‘full of Springs’, and there was a ‘Constant Dampness in every Room in the House’.

  Macquarie presumed that Bathurst would sympathise with the predicament of the governor and his family:

  I entertain the fullest Assurance that Your Lordship Will Approve of My Building a suitably Spacious and Comfortable Government House with Corresponding good Offices on a New Site in a More eligible part of the Government Domain. I am persuaded Your Lordship Will not Consider it reasonable, or at all Suitable to their relative Ranks, that the Governor of this Country and his Family should be many degrees Worse Accommodated than the Lieutenant Governor … or … any respectable Civil or Military Officer in the Colony …4

  Macquarie proposed the commencement of new premises as soon as public buildings then under construction were completed. He assured Bathurst that the works would not be a drain on Whitehall’s exchequer:

  I shall take the Utmost Care that the New Government House and Offices shall be built on as Economical a Plan as possible, and that No part of the Expence [sic] Shall be drawn for on England but that they shall be entirely built by the Government Mechanics and Labourers, and that All Materials … shall be paid for from the Colonial Police Fund.5

  But such reassurances counted for naught. Bathurst’s response nine months later, in January 1817 (and just a few weeks after Macquarie had compiled his list), was stingingly emphatic. Although admitting that the governor required an ‘improved Residence’, as a stickler for process Bathurst maintained that:

  I can see no reason why the plan of Building proposed should not have been first submitted to His Majesty’s Government, accompanied by an Estimate of the Expence [sic], and approved by them before the Work was commenced. In acting otherwise you have incurred a heavy responsibility, and should the plans when transmitted … not meet with the Sanction of the Treasury, it will be impossible for me to authorize the Expence incurred.6

  Residing today in the files of the State Records Authority of New South Wales is an unsigned drawing of a vast and extravagant building entitled: ‘Original design for a Government House, supposed to be by Greenaway [sic]’.7 ‘Supposed’, but if the drawing were not by Macquarie’s architect, then who else? Its grandiosity is assuredly all Greenway, swept up in a vision of gubernatorial splendour. The drawing is also undated; its true chronology would be intriguing to determine alongside Macquarie’s assurances of fiscal restraint and Bathurst’s stern warning of a ‘heavy responsibility’.

  In the perspective view, the building sits high on the hill of Greenway’s imagination, a grand domed and colonnaded edifice that might easily have found its rightful place as part of Edwin Lutyens’ lofty salute to British imperial pretensions in New Delhi a century later. But a palace befitting a viceroy of India, the jewel of empire, was one thing, for as Broadbent and Hughes observed, such a grandiose proposal ‘was hardly calculated for a penal colony with a Governor on [£2000]8 per annum’.9

  As the two authors also noted, the drawing bears the hallmark of someone familiar with the full-blown style of John Nash or the sweeping landscape contrivances of Humphry Repton. Arabesque-like drives dance across Greenway’s informal parklands and career through ornamental gates, their stone piers adorned with lions couchant, while at a level fittingly lower than the palace stands the first imaginings of Greenway’s design for the governor’s stables. With a nod to Nash’s own house of East Cowes Castle on the Isle of Wight, Greenway’s flat-roofed and turreted sketchy line drawing shows much of the intent of the eventual neo-Gothic stables.

  In 1836, in one of his last discursive reminiscences before his death, Greenway recalled that he made ‘two sketches of a suitable House for the Governor, [and] made two sketches of a suitable House for the Stables, one in the Greek style of architecture from Roman models, another in the castelated [sic] style, which last met with the approval of the Governor …’ With his typically indignant sense of ‘if only they’d listened’, Greenway saw the opportunity squandered for a grand residence ‘with all the state apartments for public occasions … a museum, library and domestic chapel’. He dreamt of a ‘quadrangle, partly opened on the south side … The north front, about 180 feet, formed the principal entrance, with hall, staircase, vestibule, morning appartments [sic], &c. The side of the quadrangle 300 feet, looking toward the east, with a view of the Harbour, contained the domestic apartments’. He was convinced that:

  [T]he whole … would have been long finished, not costing the Government more if so much … as the present proposed structure, of less than half the magnitude and importance to the Colony, but for the ill-timed interference of the Commissioner of inquiry, urged on by the illiberal, envious, and interested few.10

  Greenway’s letter to The Australian coincided with the deliberations of a committee looking into the siting of a new Government House. The committee did not consult Greenway, nor did the architect favoured with the project ever visit Sydney. The Gothic-revival design was the work of Edward Blore, whose other works included the completion of Buckingham Palace following on from John Nash. By coincidence, Blore, like Greenway, had been a pupil of Nash.<
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  In Macquarie’s dealings with their lordships in London there was no more cunning manoeuvre than the timing of his revelations regarding a new governor’s residence. Despite the stinging rebuke contained in Bathurst’s despatch of January 1817, Macquarie would not let go of the issue of a replacement for Government House. He continued to virtually shake the rickety structure to the point of collapse in the hope of sufficiently shocking Bathurst into acquiescing to his needs. In his despatch in reply of the following December, Macquarie barely concealed his wounded pride – how could His Majesty’s minister not understand his needs? He referred to the ‘Circumstance of the White Ant having got into the Timbers’ and confidently predicted that ‘it will Inevitably tumble down of itself in a very few Years’. The kitchens, servants’ quarters and stables were in their ‘Most Ruinous State … [and] Cannot possibly Stand three Years longer’.

  Because of this ‘inadequate ruinous State’, Macquarie proposed a replacement:

  of both the Dwelling House and Offices … It was my Intention to Build them on a Neat and Commodious Plan, suited to the Rank and Dignity of a Governor of this Country, but by no means on an expansive Scale … It was not my Intention to have drawn on the Treasury for a Single farthing on Account of those Buildings …11