Everything about William Wentworth totally explained
William Charles Wentworth (
13 August,
1790 –
20 March,
1872) was an
Australian explorer, journalist and politician, and one of the leading figures of early colonial
New South Wales. He was the first native-born Australian to achieve a reputation overseas, and a leading advocate for self-government for the Australian colonies.
Overview
Wentworth was born at sea, at least five weeks premature, shortly before arriving at
Norfolk Island, a penal settlement in the
Tasman Sea, where his parents
D'Arcy Wentworth and Catherine Crowley (who were not married) were being transported from Britain. Strictly speaking D'Arcy Wentworth, a surgeon, wasn't a convict, since although he was accused of
highway robbery he accepted transportation in order to avoid conviction. Catherine Crowley was a convict, an Irish teenager who was transported for stealing clothing.
In 1796 young Wentworth arrived in
Sydney, then a squalid prison settlement, with his parents. The family lived at
Parramatta, where his father became a prosperous landowner. In 1803 he was sent to England, where he was educated at a school in
London. He returned to Sydney in 1810, where he was appointed acting Provost-Marshall by
Governor Lachlan Macquarie, and given a land grant of on the
Nepean River.
In 1813 Wentworth, along with
Gregory Blaxland and
William Lawson, led the expedition which found a route across the
Blue Mountains west of Sydney and opened up the grazing lands of inland New South Wales. The town of
Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains commemorates his role in the expedition. As a reward he was granted another . D'Arcy Wentworth died in 1827 and William inherited his property, becoming one of the wealthiest men in the colony. He bought land in eastern Sydney and built a mansion, Vaucluse House, from which the modern suburb takes its name. But because his parents had never married, and his mother had been a convict, he couldn't become a member of Sydney's "respectable" class, known as "the exclusives." Embittered by this rejection, he placed himself at the head of the "emancipist" party, which sought equal rights and status for ex-convicts and their descendants. In 1825 he married Sarah Cox, with whom he'd ten children. He fathered at least one other child out of wedlock with Jamima Eagar, the estranged wife of
Edward Eagar(External Link
).
A wild but gifted orator and a vitriolic journalist, Wentworth became the colony's leading political figure of the 1820s and '30s, calling for representative government, the abolition of transportation, freedom of the press and trial by jury. He became a bitter enemy of Governor
Ralph Darling and the exclusives, led by the wealthy grazier
John Macarthur and his friends. Wentworth became Vice-President of the Australian Patriotic Association and founded a newspaper,
The Australian, the colony's first privately owned paper, to champion his causes. (This paper has no connection with the current
Australian, which was established by
Rupert Murdoch in 1964.)
By 1840, however, the political climate in New South Wales had changed. With the abolition of transportation and the establishment of an elected
Legislative Council, the dominant issue became the campaign to break the grip of the
squatter class over the colony's lands, and on this issue Wentworth sided with his fellow landowners against the democratic party, who wanted to break up the squatters' runs for small farmers. He was elected to the Council in 1843 and soon became the leader of the conservative party, opposed to the liberals led by
Charles Cowper. This led to a reconciliation with MacArthur and the exclusives.
In 1853 Wentworth chaired the committee to draft a new constitution for New South Wales, which was to receive full responsible self-government from Britain. His draft provided for a powerful unelected Legislative Council and an elected
Legislative Assembly with high property qualifications for voting and membership. He also suggested the establishment of a colonial
peerage drawn from the landowning class. This draft aroused the bitter opposition of the democrats and radicals such as
Daniel Deniehy, who ridiculed Wentworth's plans for what he called a "
bunyip aristocracy."
The draft constitution was substantially changed to make it more democratic, although the Legislative Council remained unelected. With the establishment of responsible government in 1856 Wentworth retired from the Council and settled in England. He refused several offers of honours, and was a member of the
Conservative Party in the 1860s. He died in England, but at his request his body was returned to Sydney for burial. His family has remained prominent in Sydney society, and his great-grandson
William Wentworth IV was a
Liberal member of Parliament 1949-77.
Namesakes
The towns of
Wentworth and
Wentworth Falls, The federal
Division of Wentworth, an electorate in
Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, and
Wentworth Avenue which runs through the suburb of
Kingston in
Canberra, are named after him.
Works
- A Statistical Account of the British Settlements in Australasia (1819)
Sources
- Barton, The Poets and Prose Writers of New South Wales (Sydney, 1866)
- Rusden, History of Australia (London, 1883)
Further Information
Get more info on 'William Wentworth'.
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