Proclamation - Sir Richard Bourke - King William IV Death - Queen Victoria As Sovereign
27th October 1837
"Whereas it has pleased Almighty God to call to his mercy our Late Sovereign Lord King William The Fourth; of Blessed & Glorious memory; By whose decease the Imperial Crown Of The United Kingdom Of Great Britain & Ireland, & all other dominions; is solely & rightfully come to the High & Mighty Princess Alexandrina Victoria; saving the rights of any issue of His Late Majesty King William IV, which may be born of his Late Majesty's Consort:
"We, the Captain-General & Governor-in-Chief Of The Territory of New South Wales & its Dependencies, The Chief Justice, The Members Of The Executive Council, The Puisne Judges Of The Supreme Court, the Members of The Legislative Council, The Clergy, Magistrates, Civil Officers of The Government, & The Naval & Military Officers of Her Majesty's Service, with numbers of other principal Inhabitants of The Colony,
"Do now hereby, with one full voice & consent of tongue & heart, Publish & Proclaim that The High & Mighty Princess Alexandrina Victoria, is now, by The Death of our late Sovereign; of happy & Glorious memory, become our only lawful & rightful Liege Lady Victoria, by the Grace Of God, Queen of The United Kingdom of Great Britain & Ireland, Defender of the Faith, saving as aforesaid, Supreme Lady Of The Territory of New South Wales & its Dependencies, To Whom, saving as aforesaid, We Do Acknowledge all Faith & Constant Obedience, with all hearty & humble affection, beseeching God, by Whom Kings & Queens do Reign, to bless the Royal Princess Victoria with long and happy years to Reign over us
Given At Government House, Sydney, this twenty seventh day Of October 1837
God Save The Queen
(Signed) Richard Bourke
The Day Sydney Learned It Had a Queen – The Story Behind the Proclamation
Above is the proclamation itself, as Sir Richard Bourke signed it at Government House on 27 October 1837. It reads like dry legal language now, but for the people of Sydney that spring it meant something big: the old sailor king they had toasted for seven years was gone, and the colony now belonged to an eighteen-year-old girl most of them knew only from engravings. Here is how the news got to us, what happened on the day, and what sort of town Sydney was when it heard.
Timeline
- 20 June 1837 – King William IV dies at 2:12 am at Windsor Castle. His niece, Princess Alexandrina Victoria, becomes Queen.
- 15 June 1837 – Five days before the King dies, the ship Lord William Bentinck leaves London for Sydney.
- 21 June 1837 – Passengers hear guns fired off Plymouth as the ship heads down the Channel.
- 5 July 1837 – Off Madeira, the captain speaks a Jamaica-bound ship and has the King's death confirmed.
- 8 July 1837 – William IV is buried in the Royal Vault at St George's Chapel, Windsor.
- Sunday 8 October 1837 – The Lord William Bentinck arrives in Port Jackson in the evening.
- 9 October 1837 – Sydney's papers rush the news into print.
- 25 October 1837 – A Government Gazette Extraordinary publishes Lord Glenelg's official despatch of 21 June announcing the King's death.
- 27 October 1837 – Queen Victoria is proclaimed in Sydney between twelve and two o'clock, at Government House and at the Police Office.
- 29 November 1837 – Bourke is made colonel-in-chief of the 64th Regiment.
- 5 December 1837 – Bourke's term as Governor ends, and he leaves the colony that month to a cheering crowd.
- 28 June 1838 – Victoria is crowned at Westminster Abbey.
The Sailor King Dies – Windsor, 20 June 1837
William IV was the "sailor king". He'd served in the Navy as a young man and only came to the throne in 1830, already in his sixties. By June 1837 he was failing. His wife, Queen Adelaide, sat with him for more than ten days without going to bed herself. He died at Windsor Castle at 2:12 in the morning on 20 June 1837 and was buried in the Royal Vault at St George's Chapel on 8 July.
William and Adelaide had no living children. Their two daughters both died as babies. So the Crown passed to Victoria, the daughter of his late brother Edward, Duke of Kent. She had turned eighteen only that May, just old enough to reign without a regent. The London papers that reached Sydney noted that her eighteenth birthday had been celebrated with great rejoicing in an illuminated London. That is why Bourke's proclamation carries the curious clause "saving the rights of any issue of His Late Majesty … which may be born of his Late Majesty's Consort". In law, a child born to Queen Adelaide after the King's death would still have come before Victoria.
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Sixteen Weeks at Sea – How the News Reached Sydney
In 1837 there was no telegraph and no steamer service, so news moved at the speed of a sailing ship. The ship that brought it was the Lord William Bentinck, under Captain Doutty. She had left London on 15 June with 39 passengers, a hold full of cargo and English newspapers dated up to the 14th. When she sailed the King was still alive, and the papers aboard were full of hopeful bulletins from his doctors.
On 21 June, as she worked down the Channel, people aboard heard guns fired off Plymouth. Everyone guessed what they meant. It was not until 5 July, off Madeira, that Captain Doutty spoke a ship bound for Jamaica and heard it confirmed: the King was dead, and Victoria was Queen.
She reached Port Jackson on the evening of Sunday 8 October 1837. The Sydney Herald was already printing Monday's paper, and the presses were stopped so a notice of the King's death could go in. The Sydney Monitor ran the news too. The Herald was careful to tell readers that it all rested on the captain's word, the guns and a shouted exchange at sea. It said it had no doubt the King had "ceased to live", but it would wait anxiously for the next ships from England. More detail followed on 12 October, once the editors had worked through the English papers.
The official word took a little longer. On Wednesday 25 October a Government Gazette Extraordinary printed, "with extreme sorrow", Lord Glenelg's despatch from Downing Street of 21 June. It announced the death of King William IV at Windsor Castle and the proclamation of Queen Victoria, and the Colonial Secretary, Edward Deas Thomson, signed it for the Governor.
Proclamation Day – Friday 27 October 1837
Two days after the despatch was published, the colony made it official. A Colonial Secretary's notice issued the same day says Her Majesty Queen Victoria was "this day proclaimed between twelve and two o'clock at Government House and the Police Office, Sydney." Government House was then the old house near Bridge Street, on the site of today's Museum of Sydney. The Police Office stood in George Street, so the proclamation was read before the vice-regal circle and then again where ordinary Sydneysiders gathered.
The proclamation names who was meant to be there, and it was the whole colonial establishment. That meant the Governor, the Chief Justice, the Executive Council, the puisne judges, the Legislative Council, the clergy, magistrates and civil officers, the naval and military officers, and "numbers of other principal Inhabitants". The Gazette copy carries the signatures of James Dowling, "W. G. Australia" (the Bishop of Australia signed by his see), W. W. Burton and John Kinchela. Together they declared, "with one full voice & consent of tongue & heart", that Victoria was now their "only lawful & rightful Liege Lady".
I'd love to tell you about the redcoats in the square, the band and the guns from Dawes Point. The 50th Regiment, the Queen's Own, was in garrison in Sydney in 1837 and its band played at vice-regal occasions. But I haven't been able to find a first-hand report that sets out the troops and salutes on the day, so I won't make them up. If anyone has the Herald, Monitor or Gazette reports of 30–31 October 1837, I'd be glad to add them.
The Same Day in Parramatta
Out at Parramatta, the reading fell to the town crier, a little hunchbacked man everybody called "Lord Dunn" (his wife was "Lady Dunn"). Years later John Taylor remembered standing at "the corner" of Parramatta as a boy, holding his uncle's hand. Lord Dunn had been lent a fine horse of seventeen hands for the occasion, and he read out that Victoria was "Queen of Great Britain and Ireland" and, as Taylor put it, "half a hundred other things about her" that he didn't understand. Taylor wrote that the proclamation "was made in every town and hamlet in the colony".
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Mourning and Rejoicing
The Gazette of 25 October had more than the proclamation in it. It printed the Queen's own proclamations, including one requiring people in authority to carry on in their posts despite the "demise of the Crown". It also printed the old royal proclamation "for the Encouragement of Piety and Virtue". An Order of Her Majesty in Council set out changes to the Book of Common Prayer for the Demise of the Crown, so the prayers for the sovereign in Sydney's churches now named Queen Victoria instead of King William. So the colony mourned a king and welcomed a queen in the same issue of the Gazette.
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Sir Richard Bourke – A Governor on His Way Out
There's an irony in the date. When Bourke stood up to proclaim the new Queen, he had already resigned. He sent in his formal resignation on 30 January 1837 after a long fight with the "exclusives". It came to a head over Colonial Treasurer C. D. Riddell, whom Bourke had dropped from the Executive Council. London ruled that Riddell must be restored. Lord Glenelg urged Bourke to stay, but he felt his honour was at stake and confirmed his resignation.
Bourke was an Irishman, born in Dublin on 4 May 1777 and a distant relation of Edmund Burke. As a young officer in the Netherlands in 1799 he was shot through both jaws. He governed New South Wales from 1831 and gave the colony some of its most liberal laws. He limited the number of convicts any one master could hold and allowed emancipists to sit on juries. His Church Act of 1836 put the main Christian denominations on an equal footing. In 1835 he issued his proclamation on terra nullius, and in 1837 he visited Port Phillip and named the new town there Melbourne, after the British Prime Minister.
His term ended on 5 December 1837, and he left the colony that month. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says the crowd gave him an ovation as he went, and a fund for a statue of him filled quickly. He went home by way of South America, crossing the Andes in 1838 rather than sailing round Cape Horn. In 1837 he was also made lieutenant-general (10 January) and colonel-in-chief of the 64th Regiment (29 November).
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New South Wales in 1837
The Sydney that heard of Victoria's accession was growing fast. The colony's population roughly doubled under Bourke, from about 51,000 in 1831 to over 97,000 in 1837. Convict numbers had also climbed, from some 21,000 to about 32,000, but free settlers were arriving faster under the new bounty immigration scheme. Revenue rose from £122,855 to £354,802 and exports from £324,168 to £760,054. Squatters were taking their flocks far beyond the old limits of location under the 1836 Crown Lands Occupation Act.
Water was a problem in town, and Busby's Bore was being finished that year to bring water from the Lachlan Swamps to Hyde Park. In Parramatta, John Taylor remembered a full regiment quartered in the town and passenger steamers to Sydney taking about two and a half hours. He also remembered the governor's Christmas distribution of blankets to the local Aboriginal people. Down south, Hoddle was laying out the streets of Melbourne, including one named Bourke Street after the Governor.
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Where the Sources Disagree
- When the news "arrived". The Sydney papers, as reported by Histoires Royales, have the Lord William Bentinck arriving on the evening of 8 October, with the news in print on 9 October. John Taylor's Parramatta memoir says the news came by that ship "a few hours previously" to the proclamation, which was on 27 October. The likely answer is that Taylor's memory ran together the ship's arrival and the proclamation, which followed the official despatch printed on 25 October.
- The Gazette dates. The Colonial Record indexes the proclamation and the Colonial Secretary's notice under Gazette No. 300-a of 25 October 1837, but the notices themselves are dated 27 October. They seem to have been printed as a supplement to the Gazette Extraordinary of Wednesday 25 October.
- Bourke's statue. Wikipedia says a statue of Bourke by Edward Hodges Baily was "erected" in 1837. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says the fund for it only opened after he left in December 1837, so it can't have been standing that year.
- The year. The date is 27 October 1837, not 1887, which was the year of the Golden Jubilee fifty years later.
My Earlier Posts
- Proclamation - Sir Richard Bourke - Governor Of New South Wales - Terra Nullius 1835
- The Police Offices - George Street - Sydney - New South Wales
- Museum Of Sydney - Phillip Street - Site Of Original Government House
- First Government House - Bridge Street & Phillip Street - NSW
- Governors Of New South Wales From 1788 To 2016
- Busby's Bore - A Tunnel From The Lachlan Swamps To Hyde Park
- Queen Victoria – Golden Jubilee – 1887
- Queen Victoria - Diamond Jubilee - 1898
- Governor Macquarie - Proclamation - 1816
- The Proclamation Of A Colony - 7th February 1788
Sources
- Colonial Secretary's notice, Sydney, 27 Oct 1837 – The Colonial Record (NSW Government Gazette No. 300-a)
- Proclamation of the accession of Queen Victoria in New South Wales – The Colonial Record
- Gazette Extraordinary, 25 Oct 1837 – The Colonial Record
- NSW Government Gazette No. 300-a index – The Colonial Record
- Nicolas Fontaine, "Les habitants de Sydney apprennent que Victoria est leur Reine…", Histoires Royales, 18 Oct 2024 (drawing on the Sydney Herald and Sydney Monitor, October 1837)
- "Memories of Parramatta in 1837" by John Taylor – Remembering the Past Australia
- Hazel King, "Bourke, Sir Richard (1777–1855)", Australian Dictionary of Biography
- "Richard Bourke" – Wikipedia
- "William IV" – Wikipedia
- "Coronation of Queen Victoria" – Wikipedia
- "Busby's Bore" – Wikipedia
- Western Australian Government Gazette, 18 Nov 1837 (the Perth proclamation, for comparison)