and to solicit further assistance of clergy and schoolmasters. While in London he obtained an audience of George III, who presented him with five Spanish sheep from his own flock, and these sheep became the progenitors of extensive flocks of fine-woolled sheep in Australia.
On his return to New South Wales in 1809 he turned his attention to the state of New Zealand, and finding he could not persuade the Church Missionary Society to do much for him, he at last, in 1814, at his own risk, purchased the brig Active, in which he sent two missionaries to those islands. On 19 Nov. Marsden, accompanied by six New Zealand chiefs who had been staying with him at Parramatta, made his first voyage to New Zealand. He was received with cordiality by the natives, and found no difficulty in procuring land for a mission-station. This was the first of seven voyages which he made to New Zealand between 1814 and 1837. No one ever exerted more influence over the native chiefs than himself, and he must be regarded as one of the most important of the settlers and civilisers of the country.
As chaplain in New South Wales he endeavoured, with some success, to improve the standard of morals and manners. He established orphan schools and female penitentiaries, and made Parramatta a model parish. Unfortunately the governors did not always give him assistance or help, and in 1817 he had to bring an action for defamation of character against the governor's secretary for an article published in the 'Government Gazette,' In 1820 a commission was sent out from England to investigate the state of the colony and to inquire into Marsden's conduct, but the charges made against him were in no-instance substantiated. At Parramatta he set up a seminary for the education of New Zealanders, but this was given up in 1821. His salary as chaplain was raised to 400l. a year in 1825; later on, when Sydney was erected into a bishopric in 1847, he became minister of Parramatta parish. He paid a last visit to the Maoris, in his usual capacity of peace-maker, in 1837. He died at the parsonage, Windsor, on 12 May 1838, and was buried at Parramatta, where some Maoris subscribed a marble tablet to his memory (Taylor, New Zealand, p. 601). On 21 April 1793 he' married Miss Ellen Tristan. She died at Parramatta in 1835. Marsden published: 1. 'An Answer to certain Calumnies in Governor Macquarie's Pamphlet and the third edition of Mr. Wentworth's "Account of Australia," ' 1826. 2. 'Statement, including a Correspondence between the Commissioners of the Court of Enquiry and S. Marsden relative to a Charge of illegal Punishment preferred against Doctor Douglass,' 1828.
[Nicholas's Narrative of a Voyage to New Zealand, performed in the years 1814 and 1815, in company with the Rev. S. Marsden, 2 vols. 1817; A Short Account of the Character and Labours of the Rev. S. Marsden, Parramatta, 1844; J. B. Marsden's Memoirs of S. Marsden, 1859, with portrait; Rusden's Hist, of Now Zealand, i. 102, 152; Bonwick's Romance of the Wool Trade, 1887, pp. 82-6.]
MARSDEN, WILLIAM (1754–1836), orientalist and numismatist, born at Verval, co. Wicklow, Ireland, on 16 Nov. 1754, was the sixth son and tenth child of John Marsden by his second wife Eleanor Bagnall. John Marsden was engaged in 'extensive mercantile and shipping concerns' in Dublin, and was a promoter (in 1783) and director of the National Bank of Ireland. The family had settled in Ireland at the end of the reign of Queen Anne, and was probably of Derbyshire origin. William Marsden received a classical education in schools at Dublin, and was preparing to enter Trinity College there, with a view to the church, when, at the suggestion of his eldest brother, John Marsden, a writer in the East India Company's service at Fort Marlborough (Bencoolen) in Sumatra, he obtained an appointment from the company. He left Gravesend on 27 Dec. 1770, and reached Bencoolen on 30 May 1771. During an eight years' residence in Sumatra, Marsden did good official service as sub-secretary, and afterwards as principal secretary, to the government. He amused his leisure hours by writing verses and by acting female parts in a theatre at Bencoolen built and chiefly-managed by his brother. He also mastered the vernacular tongue, a study which bore fruit later on in his 'Dictionary of the Malayan Language.' Marsden's employment by the company practically ceased on 6 July 1779, when he left Sumatra for England. He invested his savings, and in January 1785 established with his brother John (who had also returned from Sumatra) an East India agency business in Gower Street, London. On 3 March 1795 Marsden, who since 1780 had enjoyed much leisure for learned studies, was induced to accept the post of second secretary of the admiralty, and was promoted to be first secretary (with a salary of 4,000l. a year) in 1804. He discharged his duties ably during this eventful period of naval history. He resigned the secretaryship in June 1807, and received a pension for life of 1,500l., which in 1831 he voluntarily relinquished to the nation.
