'Sir Henry Browne Hayes' ,An Illustrated History
If ever there was an Irish-Australian story mired in crimes and misdemeanours, steeped in colour and controversy, then surely the epic tale of Sir Henry Browne Hayes is it.
This is a crackerjack yarn that for the past 230 years has never been correctly told in print, or on the screen because his life story had remained hidden and misunderstood. Sir Henry was an idiosyncratic 'buck' and a committed Freemason whose life has only recently been understood,
His life is a gripping adventure story; a knighted Irishman shipped to the penal colony where he became embroiled in two rebellions and with the titans of that time, George Johnston, Governor Philip Gidley King and William Bligh. It is, in short a story that cuts to the core of both nations' convict histories.
At the very least his story oozes with a multi-coloured array of storylines:
*Sir Henry was guilty of all the seven deadly sins.
* Lust He fathered three illegitimate children before he was 21;
· Gluttony He earned his knighthood for organizing a glutton's feast for the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland;
· As Sheriff of Cork he was slothful in processing the first shipment of Irish convicts to New South Wales;
· Became a well known buck, a gambler with a short temper and quick fists;
· He assaulted his commanding officer in the militia which earned him a court martial.:
· Greed and envy drove him to abduct, marry and probably rape a wealthy Quaker heiress.
· When tried in Court for his crimes, he was found guilty and sentenced to hang;
· His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in the Antipodes;
* En route to New South Wales on a convict transport ship, he bribed the ship's captain to let him travel first class, in the best cabin on board the ship while all the other convicts were kept in chains in an overcrowded hold, deep inside the ship. :
* He assaulted the new Surgeon General of New South Wales, because he protested to Captain Brooks, that a convict was given his cabin . This assault earned Sir Henry an extra six months jail when the ship arrived in Sydney;
* He was imprisoned once more when he defied Governor King’s edict, not to form a Masonic lodge;
* He was jailed again following the bloody,1804 'Vinegar Hill' rebellion, because Governor King suspected that Sir Henry helped to mastermind it.This time he was sent to the Norfolk Island prison colony.
Four years later he was imprisoned for his outspoken support of Governor Bligh, accusing the Rebel Officers who deposed him of treachery and guilty of treason;
·
Altogether Sir Henry was imprisoned five times, during his ten year stay in New South Wales;
· He was finally pardoned in 1812 and booked his passage back to England on the 'Isabella';
· En route to England, the 'Isabella's' captain was drunk most of the time and often locked in his cabin with one of the five prostitutes returning to England, The ship eventually struck a reef close to an uninhabited island in the Falklands. Fortunately all the passengers and crew were saved.
Marooned on an uninhabited island for months, the ship's crew and passengers were eventually rescued.and Sir Henry returned to Cork.
He died there in 1832 at seventy years of age.
~ Sir Henry's Character
Several biographers, among them the eminent Corkonian and Australian Judge, Sir Redmond Barry (1813-1880), described Sir Henry thus; "Of the Cork Bucks who flaunted it when the eighteenth century was in its last quarter, none was more conspicuous than Sir Henry Browne Hayes" and then Sir Redmond described the 18th century 'buck' subculture,."Among the gentry of the period was a class called "Bucks," whose whole enjoyment and the business in life seemed to consist in eccentricity and violence."
Young Henry was rebellious and selfish, quick to take offence and settled arguments with his fists. Like other wealthy young bucks in Cork, he was attention seeking, gambled, drank, whored and used violence to earn 'respect'.. He was an adept cheat at cards, a skill he later used when marooned on a Falkland island and described by Joseph Holt in his autobiography 'A Rum Story".
If ever there was an Irish-Australian story mired in crimes and misdemeanours, steeped in colour and controversy, then surely the epic tale of Sir Henry Browne Hayes is it.
This is a crackerjack yarn that for the past 230 years has never been correctly told in print, or on the screen because his life story had remained hidden and misunderstood. Sir Henry was an idiosyncratic 'buck' and a committed Freemason whose life has only recently been understood,
His life is a gripping adventure story; a knighted Irishman shipped to the penal colony where he became embroiled in two rebellions and with the titans of that time, George Johnston, Governor Philip Gidley King and William Bligh. It is, in short a story that cuts to the core of both nations' convict histories.
At the very least his story oozes with a multi-coloured array of storylines:
*Sir Henry was guilty of all the seven deadly sins.
* Lust He fathered three illegitimate children before he was 21;
· Gluttony He earned his knighthood for organizing a glutton's feast for the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland;
· As Sheriff of Cork he was slothful in processing the first shipment of Irish convicts to New South Wales;
· Became a well known buck, a gambler with a short temper and quick fists;
· He assaulted his commanding officer in the militia which earned him a court martial.:
· Greed and envy drove him to abduct, marry and probably rape a wealthy Quaker heiress.
· When tried in Court for his crimes, he was found guilty and sentenced to hang;
· His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in the Antipodes;
* En route to New South Wales on a convict transport ship, he bribed the ship's captain to let him travel first class, in the best cabin on board the ship while all the other convicts were kept in chains in an overcrowded hold, deep inside the ship. :
* He assaulted the new Surgeon General of New South Wales, because he protested to Captain Brooks, that a convict was given his cabin . This assault earned Sir Henry an extra six months jail when the ship arrived in Sydney;
* He was imprisoned once more when he defied Governor King’s edict, not to form a Masonic lodge;
* He was jailed again following the bloody,1804 'Vinegar Hill' rebellion, because Governor King suspected that Sir Henry helped to mastermind it.This time he was sent to the Norfolk Island prison colony.
Four years later he was imprisoned for his outspoken support of Governor Bligh, accusing the Rebel Officers who deposed him of treachery and guilty of treason;
·
Altogether Sir Henry was imprisoned five times, during his ten year stay in New South Wales;
· He was finally pardoned in 1812 and booked his passage back to England on the 'Isabella';
· En route to England, the 'Isabella's' captain was drunk most of the time and often locked in his cabin with one of the five prostitutes returning to England, The ship eventually struck a reef close to an uninhabited island in the Falklands. Fortunately all the passengers and crew were saved.
Marooned on an uninhabited island for months, the ship's crew and passengers were eventually rescued.and Sir Henry returned to Cork.
He died there in 1832 at seventy years of age.
~ Sir Henry's Character
Several biographers, among them the eminent Corkonian and Australian Judge, Sir Redmond Barry (1813-1880), described Sir Henry thus; "Of the Cork Bucks who flaunted it when the eighteenth century was in its last quarter, none was more conspicuous than Sir Henry Browne Hayes" and then Sir Redmond described the 18th century 'buck' subculture,."Among the gentry of the period was a class called "Bucks," whose whole enjoyment and the business in life seemed to consist in eccentricity and violence."
Young Henry was rebellious and selfish, quick to take offence and settled arguments with his fists. Like other wealthy young bucks in Cork, he was attention seeking, gambled, drank, whored and used violence to earn 'respect'.. He was an adept cheat at cards, a skill he later used when marooned on a Falkland island and described by Joseph Holt in his autobiography 'A Rum Story".
- Among his youthful achievements, Henry sired three children out of wedlock with three different women, before he was twenty one. Fortunately for the children, his father Atwell accepted them as his grandchildren and helped to raise them.
Dr. Richard Caufield(1823-1887) of Cork in “Notes and Queries” December 24th, 1877, described a more mature Henry,‘as "a man of middle stature and of a haughty dispossession. He had married Miss Smith (sic) of Balliantray, who was blind in one eye. He always carried about him two watches, and a hat cocked up at both sides with a rosette. When he was a captain in the South Cork Militia, he usually encamped under a tent covered with silk and was otherwise equally extravagant.” And writing later in the 1895 Journal, Herbert’s “Irish Varieties”, pp 82-3 Dr. Caufield added that Henry was "one of a number of amateur actors who” played for the benefit of poor widows in the Cork Theatre…" a skill that helped him evade the Law and bounty hunters in Cork for two years.
And commenting on Henry's extravagant life style, Dr. Caufield observed that "Mr Hayes “gave us splendid dinners at his country villa, which was a world to see, the most perfect piece of ingenious design and workmanship for elegant and comfortable retirement that could be seen in any part of the Kingdom.”
But his lavish lifestyle came at a cost, and the nasty side to Henry's character emerged. Once he had spent his wife's entire dowry, he sank into debt,and turned to his father in 1794 to 'lend' him the money When his father hesitated, Henry placed an advertisement in the local newspaper,and made it appear that he and his six children were pressured into vacating 'Vernon Mount'. His ploy to embarrass his father worked and Atwell quickly paid Sir Henry's debt. It was a ruse that Henry knew he could not try again on his father..
. - He next subjected young Mary Pike to a horrific abduction at gunpoint and forced her to marry him in the belief that as her husband he would have control of her money. And was worse he callously involved his ailing sister Ann Catherine in the abduction, ruining both her and Mary Pike's life.
- When his plan unraveled the sick Ann Catherine was forced to hide from the law and in a state of continuous fear died a year or so later.
- Mary Pike never married, she was left mentally scarred from her horrific experience, eventually years later dying in an asylum.
- Henry never apologised to Mary Pike nor to his sister, for the hurt and humiliation he had inflicted on them.
- His lack of conscience or remorse marked him as a psychopath.
