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Author: Wentworth, W. C.

Biography:

WENTWORTH, William Charles (1790-1872: ADB)

William Charles Wentworth was a towering figure in Australia’s early colonial history, famed for his cruel wit, foul temper, and thunderous oratory. He was born in 1790, probably aboard the convict-ship Surprize, which was bearing his mother to the prison-camp at Norfolk Island. She was Catherine Crowley (d 1800), who had been convicted of theft at the Staffordshire Assizes in 1788. His father was D’Arcy Wentworth (1762-1827), an Irish surgeon who migrated freely to Australia after standing trial four times for highway robbery. Wentworth rose from these unpromising beginnings to extraordinary wealth and fame. He attended school in England from 1803 to 1809. In 1813, he was one of the first Europeans to cross the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. In 1816, he returned to England to study at Middle Temple. After being called to the Bar in 1822, he went to Cambridge, where his poem Australasia earned him second prize in the Chancellor’s Medal for poetry. The poem is frequently anthologised to this day. In 1824 he returned to Sydney, where he founded the Australian newspaper. On 24 Oct. 1829 at St. Philip’s, Sydney, he married Sarah Morton Cox, a milliner; of their ten children, one was born in 1825 and one in 1827. As a member of the Legislative Council of New South Wales, he advocated fiercely for representative government. He largely achieved this aim in 1853, when his proposed constitution for the colony was adopted, though his proposal for a colonial House of Lords was rejected. He retired to England in 1856. There on 20 Mar. 1872 at Merley House, Wimborne, Dorset, he died, survived by Sarah (d 1880) and seven of their children. His body was returned to New South Wales, where it received the colony’s first state funeral. Wentworth’s convict ancestry cast a shadow over his life. Despite his fame, wealth, and conservative politics, he was never fully accepted by the “exclusives,” the wealthy free settlers who comprised the upper class in colonial Sydney. As a writer, Wentworth is mainly remembered for his historical interest. Australasia, a polished poem in heroic couplets, sets forth Wentworth’s vision for Australia as “a new Britannia in another world.” Its form and message do not endear the poem to readers today, but it remains a key document of early colonial politics, along with Wentworth’s other major publication: A Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales (London, 1819). (ADB 16 Feb. 2022; ODNB 17 Mar. 2022; ancestry.co.uk 17 Mar. 2022) MF

 

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