William Cox

by Richard Cox

  William married in 1789 and as food prices climbed during the 1790s he must have found it increasingly difficult to feed a steadily growing family. It was also explicit in Marshall’s writings that the owners of landed properties could become richer by improving them and that a tenanted estate gave ‘power and authority over persons as well as things’.40 To cap this, the gentry controlled the local administration in the countryside. The Commissions of the Peace, whose magistrates were known as Justices of the Peace, were chosen from among the local squires and possessed great powers, with control over all manner of appointments. The system had originated with the Tudor monarchs, who employed gentlemen to work for the Crown unpaid, in return for privileges.41 This power, which also carried political opportunities, was to be mirrored in the colony, where William was a JP from 1810 until his death in 1837, though without exploiting his position politically.

  Another dispiriting aspect of English society, happily not replicated in New South Wales, was the political system of the Rotten Boroughs. This remained corrupt until the Reform Bill of 1832. An example local to Wimborne makes the point. The Bankes family had owned the ancient royal castle of Corfe on the Isle of Purbeck, 15 miles to the south of their Wimborne seat, since 1635. During the Civil War it had been reduced to ruins, though with a small village round it. But Corfe retained two seats in parliament. Ralph Bankes sat in parliament for one of those seats in 1659 and thereafter it was effectively a family possession. In William Cox’s time Henry Bankes, having returned from his Grand Tour, was elected in 1784, 1789 and 1793. A list of the 1784 election expenses included ‘To 45 voters at 13s each’.42

  William had neither the land nor the capital to maintain himself as a gentleman, which explains what he tried to achieve in the colony, not least for his sons. But that was in the future. In 1789 he came to a turning point, when he married Rebecca Upjohn at Devizes on 1 February. She was two years older than him and would prove herself practical and efficient. Sadly, little is on record about her life in Australia, apart from her later taking a leading role in the Hawkesbury community. Although there is an extant drawing of William’s second wife, there is no known picture of Rebecca. As female historians have observed, the activities of women in running their households and bearing children were not deemed worthy of recording, especially the work of pastoralists’ wives in New South Wales.

  The Upjohn family came from Dorset and many were labourers.43 But Rebecca’s direct ancestors were citizens of repute in Shaftesbury in north Dorset. This small market town stands on the edge of an escarpment, looking south over the Vale of Blackmore, with a famously steep street of medieval houses called Gold Hill. Rebecca’s grandfather, Edward Upjohn (1686–1764), was a mason and clockmaker, who had been a trustee of the Holy Trinity church there, while her great-grandfather owned land by the church in 1721.44 Her father, James Upjohn, was a successful goldsmith and clockmaker in London, which must be why William himself entered the same line of business.

  A short account of James’ life and travels was printed in 1784, five years before Rebecca’s marriage.45 In it he relates that his own father was ingenious in making the movements of watches. When he was 21 he left home after a quarrel and went to work for a watchmaking friend of the family, making balance wheels and ‘Fusee Engines’. In 1743 he arrived in London, again getting work through family friends in the trade, which was a small and close-knit one.

  In 1745, at the age of 23, James married Mary Garle, whose brother and father he was employing to make watch springs. Of her he wrote: ‘I married for Honey and not for Money, and had a fortune in a Wife, and not a Fortune with one, which to me was far preferable’, remarking that ‘she took the Man with the comical name of Upjohn’.46 They settled in St Martin Le Grand in London, near Red Lion Street, Clerkenwell, where Rebecca was born in 1762.47 She was his ninth child. A recently published study of the Upjohn ancestry shows that he became rich enough to have retired at 60.

  Indeed James Upjohn’s work was highly valued. He made a pair of musical clocks in 1770 that were valued at £4000 and gold enamelled repeater watches set with diamonds at £300. These were very large sums for the time. He did regular business in the West Country, which would have been continued by his second son, also James, who became his partner and was 36 at the time of Rebecca’s marriage. As suggested earlier, William’s work at Robert’s fusee chain factory all but certainly explains how he met James Upjohn Jnr and so Rebecca. Her father, who was now very well off, presumably welcomed her marrying a gentleman, albeit not a wealthy one, or he would not have permitted it. He is very likely to have helped the couple financially. Perhaps he forgot his own marrying for ‘Honey not Money’. Certainly Rebecca, judging from her actions in the colony, inherited her father’s energy and capabilities. Whether she also shared his whimsical sense of humour is not known. William Cox was never noted for his humour.

  After the marriage, the couple rented a property in Devizes from 1790 until 1795, overlapping with their purchase of one in 1793. The one William bought was an old timbered house in St John’s Alley, in the town centre, not far from the old stone market cross and a variety of larger stone-built houses.48 His own ‘tiered’ house, with the upper story projecting above the ground floor, was far from grand, in fact might have reminded him of his birthplace, the beamed Poet’s House in Wimborne. The timbered houses of the alley still stand, in their narrow passageway, very close to the town centre and St John Street, where he had his business.

  The Devizes house where William and Rebecca lived before emigrating, 4 St John’s Alley (Author’s photo)

  William and Rebecca’s first four children were baptized at St John’s church in Devizes (Author’s photo)

  As mentioned earlier, he is described in the County Records as having been a farmer; being a landowner would have helped him to qualify for a commission in the Militia. What only became clear in July 2011, when a clock dealer advertised for sale (for £8250) a handsome longcase clock made by William Cox in 1791–93, was that he ‘made’ clocks, a craft learnt both from his brother and his father-in-law. ‘Made’ is in quotes because it would be truer to say that the maker assembled them, as the dealer explained to this author. The delicately painted dial face of the one advertised came from Wilson in Birmingham, the centre sweep calendar was bought in, the clock’s working parts were cast by a specialist firm, the longcase and the finials were made by a craftsman. Finally William put his name to it. The clock, which stands 92 inches high, was the third Cox clock the dealer had acquired. A study of Wiltshire clockmakers confirms him as having been listed in a 1791 trades directory as a ‘Watch and clockmaker’ at 1 St John’s Street (a short walk from his house). A watch made ‘William Cox of Devizes’ was reported lost in the Kentish Post of 15 December 1795, so he evidently had buyers from outside Wiltshire. He was also a bondsman for marriage licences. 49

  Devizes was described in the Directory of 1791 as a ‘populous town … distant twenty two [miles] from Salisbury … the buildings are old and of the most part of timber … The post passes through from London to Bristol at nine’clock and takes letters from Devizes to the westward; returns every night from Bristol … to London. Three stage coaches stop at the Bear Inn in this town every morning and evening on their way to and from Bath’.50 Thus communications, vital to a businessman, were good and William would have no problem keeping in touch with his father-in-law, who in all probability helped him to find buyers outside Wiltshire.

  Longcase clock made by William at Devizes around 1791 (Author’s photo)

  This raises the question of how, being in trade, William became an officer in what was effectively the gentleman’s club of the Militia. The Memoirs describe him as ‘of good estate and served in the Wiltshire Militia’.51 But he does not appear in the Militia records, of which Major Peters, the archivist, writes ‘for the period in question are scant and for the officers virtually non-existent’. Peters also comments: ‘the fact that William was a watch maker I feel does not mean he wa
s just “in trade”, but in a highly skilled and respected profession. As such it would not have been too difficult for him to have been commissioned in the Wiltshire Militia.’52 And, of course, William had been born into the minor Dorset gentry and been well educated. What is indisputable is the entry of his commissioning into the regular army in the London Gazette of 7 July 1795, which states ‘William Cox, Gent, to be Ensign, without Purchase, vice Stopford, promoted’.

  Peters writes: ‘It was fairly commonplace for Militia officers to transfer their commission to a Regular Army Regiment, especially during the period from 1795 when there was a danger of invasion from France and of a Rebellion in Ireland, which the French threatened to support’. William was to learn all about the Irish rebellion when he sailed to New South Wales in charge of men convicted for their part in it. The Memoirs say that: ‘During the French wars he got a taste of the anxieties of hostility, but he longed for action’ and so joined the 117th Foot.53 France had declared war on England and Holland on 1 February 1793. The Militia’s use outside the country was not permitted, but there is nothing to prove that he transferred to the regular army because he longed for action. Burke’s Colonial Gentry even states that he served in the French Wars, of which his Army List regimental postings provide no evidence.54 It is much more probable that what he longed for was regularly paid employment.

  William’s rank of ensign was the lowest for a commissioned officer, which he must have held in the Militia. The Militias in southern England were ostensibly formed as a defence against potential invasion by the French, but the underlying reason was for the control of rural domestic unrest. Officers from the gentry were allocated sections of a county for their men to guard. William would have certainly needed money to be accepted. The way it worked was that the Clerks of the Peace assessed the right of landowners or their sons to obtain commissions, which they did by proving income from their land under the provisions of Act 42 of Geo. 3rd chap 90. Their requests have survived for the nicely bureaucratic reason that they were passed to the land tax assessors. To be a major required £400 a year from land, a captaincy £200. There was even a Londoner who claimed rank because he owned land in the county and another because his father was a member of parliament. An ensign needed £100.55 Patronage was also exerted by the Lord Lieutenant of the county, who had to approve commissions, in this case George Herbert, 11th Earl of Pembroke. Since William’s name does not appear in any of the clerks’ declarations it is not known how he came to be accepted.

  William made this change at the very time when Eden was researching the rural situation. The constantly rising cost of living must have been forcefully brought home to him both by the cost of maintaining his own multiplying family and by the humiliating dependence on the parish of the families of Devizes men who had been embodied into full time service as Militia soldiers. As far back as 1780, order forms had been issued with which the Churchwardens and Overseers of the Poor were to authorize paying the dependants of any Militia soldier who was ‘a Volunteer in actual Service in the said Militia’.56

  James Upjohn’s money can plausibly explain how William had been able both to join the Militia and buy a house, albeit an old and poky one. Upjohn’s wide business contacts probably put William in touch with would-be purchasers of handsome longcase clocks and of watches. But Upjohn died in 1795. Rebecca had five surviving brothers.57 With so many brothers, she was most unlikely to have received a large inheritance, since she had a husband to support her, while any income from her father surely ended on his death, along with his business introductions. The market for high quality clocks in the area of Devizes would have been limited. A 1791 directory lists only 39 people as ‘Gentry’ there, headed by the local MP and Speaker of the House of Commons, Henry Addington, and including one lady, a Mrs Long (but not William). Business contacts in the metropolis, to which buyers from all over the country resorted, must have been invaluable.

  William’s joining the regular army in the same year that his father-in-law died could be a coincidence, but most probably was not. However, joining the regular army, quite apart from it being held in low esteem before the Napoleonic Wars, did not represent financial salvation for a married officer. It was considered impossible to support a family on less than a captain’s pay. The erratic progress of William’s short army career in England looks very like a constant search for more money. The couple’s first son, William Jnr, had been born on 13 November 1789, James a year later on 1 November 1790, Charles on 13 December 1792, but not baptized until 5 November the following year. George was born on 18 February 1794 and baptized on 14 March. During those years of the 1790s Rebecca was fully occupied with child bearing and rearing, wherever they were living.

  After only six months in the 117th Regiment, William transferred to the 68th, which had been raised in Durham in 1758 and to which city he is likely to have been posted, although the history of the regiment at this time is confused. Having been stationed in Gibraltar, it was moved to the West Indies in 1793, when its complement included 369 rank and file soldiers. In Grenada it fought a virtual army of local brigands, while disease out there ‘exacted a terrible toll … the main causes being malaria and yellow fever’. The 32nd Foot lost 32 officers.58 The 68th was so denuded of men that when it returned home in March 1796 all its remaining rank and file were transferred to the 63rd. It was at around this time, on 20 January 1796, that William transferred to the 68th, in which John Macarthur had served earlier.

  The 68th had begun an intensive recruiting campaign in various counties in November 1796 and for some of the time the headquarters was in Leeds. Officers were rewarded financially for obtaining recruits. A War Office circular of 14 March 1795, aimed at discouraging ‘a set of People’ who had not been in the army from profiting from recruitments, set the rate at ‘Fifteen Guineas on account of a Recruit enlisted for General Service, and Ten guineas on account of Recruit for the Fencibles [reserves]’.59 On 17 February 1797 William was promoted to lieutenant. However, in that February the regiment was posted to Ireland, where it remained at Malahide for about a year. Although he is briefly mentioned in regimental records, whether he went to Malahide is not clear. What is likely is that he had made welcome bonus from the recruiting, since he was always good with men. What is certain is that the couple were away from Wiltshire when their sons Henry and Frederick were born, in March 1796 and June 1797 respectively, because they were christened together at Devizes on 2 February 1798.60

  While the 68th was in Ireland, William transferred again, this time to the New South Wales Corps, as a lieutenant, on 28 September 1797 (with his rank in the army dating back to 17 February 1797). Although he had now achieved some promotion, to climb in the officer corps, except very slowly, required purchase and he could not have afforded it. Lachlan Macquarie once commented bitterly that it had taken him 32 years to reach the rank of colonel.

  The transfer to the New South Wales Corps seems to have been purely for the financial opportunities it offered and the hope of a new life.61 In family terms, emigration would not have been a problem for either husband or wife. Both their fathers were now dead, both had siblings who could look after their mothers. The Corps is claimed to have had a low reputation and that a high proportion of the rank and file were the dregs of the army and had been taken from the Savoy Military Prison.62 This is challenged by the military historian Geoffrey Grey, who points out ‘that in fact the overall quality of the regiment was not demonstrably worse than that pertaining elsewhere in the British army of the day’. Ex-Savoy recruits never reached 10 percent of the strength, while other regiments had been brought up to strength with men from county gaols and Irish deserters from other regiments.63 So, as regiments went, the Corps was just about acceptable and had yet to acquire its nickname of ‘the Rum Corps’, as the result of its officers’ extensive trading in spirits. As to the clockmaking, William appears to have abandoned it on joining the regular army, and in Sydney there were already clockmakers, advertising in the Sydney Gazett
e newspaper. In any case, as his actions showed, his objective was to acquire land and farm.

  William Cox as a young officer (Courtesy of Christopher Cox)

  According to a family letter written a century later, in 1903, William sailed out to New South Wales on a convict ship in 1797, two years before he arrived officially on the Minerva in January 1800.64 If he did, he might have arranged to buy a farm from John Macarthur well in advance of his official arrival, which is implied in the Memoirs of Joseph Holt, the Irish rebel who travelled into exile on the Minerva. On arrival at Port Jackson William almost immediately offered Holt a job as farm manager, for a property ‘he had in prospect’.65

  This possibility of a 1797 visit is difficult to substantiate, although the Army List shows that he had been on half pay in June 1798. A further son, Francis Edmund, was recorded by the surgeon of the Minerva transport as having been born at the Cove of Cork on 17 March 1799, when the couple were waiting for the ship to sail.66 Although this birth is unknown to family historians and is not mentioned elsewhere, the surgeon’s record is precise, down to details of the post-natal illness suffered by Rebecca and its treatment. This means that the baby had been conceived around June 1798. The family had been back in Devizes for the double christening at the parish church of St John the previous February, although William might not have been there himself. The baptismal record simply names him as the father. Did he make the 1797 trip?

  This is one of those timeline problems which can be so difficult to resolve. William only joined the New South Wales Corps on 28 September 1997. He must have been with Rebecca in England in June 1798. The family kept the house at 4 St John’s Alley in Devizes until it was sold at some time before July 1798.67 William would have to have been there to sign the agreement. This allows a space of nine months for him to have made the journey to and from the colony. The fastest sailing of a convict transport on record had been that of the Matilda in August to October 1791, which took 127 days. A more normal voyage took five months, if all went well, but could be much longer. William’s voyage back on the Buffalo in 1807 took nine months.