he had built for himself, and which [a]1808] is still one of the beauty spots at the entrance of Sydney harbour.
Margarot, one of the "Scotch martyrs," also fell foul of King, who sent him to Hobart for seditious practices. The governor seems to have punished Scotch and Irish pretty impartially, for Hayes and Margarot were coupled together as disturbing characters and both sent away.
The "martyrs," it will perhaps be remembered, were Muir, Palmer, Skirving, Gerald, and Margarot, transported at Edinburgh for libelling the Government in August, 1793, and most harshly dealt with, as everyone nowadays admits.
King was a Cornishman, a native of Launceston. When he went home in 1790 he married a Miss Coombes, of Bedford. By this lady he had several children. The eldest of them, born at Norfolk Island in 1791, he named Phillip Parker, after his old chief. This youngster was sent into the navy to follow his father's footsteps, and in a later chapter of this book he will be heard of again.
The ex-governor wrote in September, 1808, a letter from Bath.
"As this letter may probably reach you before you sail, I just write to say that I came here on Tuesday with Mr. Etheridge, on his return to London, merely to see Admiral Phillip, whom I found much better than I possibly could expect from the reports I had heard, although he is quite a cripple, having lost the entire use of his right side, though his intellects are very good, and his spirits are as they always were."
This letter was to the boy Phillip, then a year-old sailor, on the eve of his departure on a cruise in the Channel. Seven days later the writer had slipped his moorings, and years earlier than his old comrade had "gone before to that unknown and silent shore."