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PART ONE - WILLIAM
Who was this man, who made the decision to leave his native land and in so doing peopled
another part of the world with his descendants?
A Cornishman by birth, he probably looked like one: short, stocky, dark-haired, biue-eyed,
with a florid or brown complexion, well defined eyebrows, and an air of sturdy independence
and some integrity. Certainly some of his descendants in Australia are of that very same mould,
though somewhat taller, For William, if the known heights of two of his children are relevant,
was very short indeed. They (Richard and Jane) were about five feet tall, probably less. And so
may William have been.
He was baptised on 8 January, 1797 in the parish church of Calstock, which is situated high on
a hill above the village of that name straggling along the Cornish bank of the River Tamar, the
ancient boundary of Devon and Cornwall.
George II! had been king for 37 years when William was baptised, and on the continent
Napoleon Bonaparte had just embarked on his conquest of Europe. Elsewhere, Beethoven was
working on his Sonate Pathetique (his first piano concerto would follow), and Jane Austen was
halfway through Pride and Prejudice.
William's parents were Robert and Mary Honeycombe, her maiden name having been Row.
He was their third child: they already had two daughters. They had another son, Robert, born in
1809 during the Peninsular War in Spain; he was their seventh and last child and died in 1821,
aged 11. They had already lost a daughter, Temperance, who died when she was also 11; and
another daughter, Jennifer, died in December 1825, aged 20; she was buried on Christmas
Day. Nothing is known of the three surviving daughters, Betsy, Mary and Ann, and nothing is
known of William's early life.
We also know nothing of his parents, other than what the parish registers reveal: that Robert
was baptised in Calstock on 24 March 1769 - a year before Captain Cook sighted Australia
and landed at Botany Bay. Robert married Mary Row in the parish church of Calstock, up on
the hill, on 18 April 1792 - at the height of the French Revolution and a few months before
France became a Republic. Mary was three years older than Robert, and they were evidently a
sober, church-going family, as their fourth daughter was christened Temperance.
Robert, born in 1769, was himself one of eight children, in fact the seventh. His childhood and
that of his four brothers must have been heavily rural, something like that of the young William
Cobbett. who was born in Surrey six years before Robert, in 1763,
Cobbett wrote: 'I do not remember the time when I did not earn my living. My first occupation
was driving the birds from the turnip-seeds, and the rooks from the peas. When I first trudged
afield, with my wooden bottle and my satchel swung over my shoulder, I was hardly able to
climb the gates and stiles; and, at the close of day, to reach home was a task of infinite difficulty.
My next employment was weeding wheat, and leading a single horse at harrowing barley.
Hoeing peas followed, and hence I arrived at the honour of joining the reapers in harvest,
driving the team, and holding plough. We were all of us strong and laborious, and my father
used to boast that he had four boys, the eldest of whom was but 15 years old, who did as much
work as three men in the parish of Farnham. Honest pride, and happy days!'
Cobbett's father was a yeoman farmer, as Robert's may well have been. We do not know what
Robert's occupation was, but most probably, being a younger son, he would have been
apprenticed to some craftsman and become a carpenter or stonemason by trade.
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