George Clarke

Gunsmith, missionary, teacher, protector, judge Born Wymondham, Norfolk, England | Died Grove Cottage, Te Karaka, Waimate North

Key dates

The young tradesman

George Clarke was born at Wymondham, Norfolk, England on 27 January 1798, the son of William Clarke, a builder and craftsman. Between the ages of eleven and twenty he served as a gunsmith's apprentice under his father — a practical trade that would follow him across the world with complicated consequences. In 1818 he went to London to broaden his experience, and there came into contact with the Church Missionary Society. He joined their training school at Islington, though he was never ordained; throughout his life he served as a catechist and lay missionary.

It was through this world that he met Martha Elizabeth Blomfield, daughter of the Reverend Ezekiel Blomfield of Wymondham. They had attended school together as children. The CMS, which regarded a wife as essential for a missionary in what it called 'a heathen land,' likely facilitated the match. They married at Swanton Morley, Norfolk, on 14 March 1822 — five weeks before they sailed for New Zealand.

The voyage and the years at Parramatta

The voyage nearly killed Martha. She suffered nausea and a serious chest infection for the entire journey, and by June 1822 the ship's surgeon had abandoned hope for her. Only a week in Rio de Janeiro revived her. The Clarkes arrived at Samuel Marsden's establishment at Parramatta in October 1822 and remained there for over a year. Marsden — founder of the New Zealand mission and the CMS agent in the South Seas — was determined that Clarke should not go north until everyone understood his role was to be teacher, not gunsmith. Their first child, George Junior, was born at Parramatta on 29 June 1823.

In January 1824 the family finally sailed on the French corvette La Coquille and arrived at the Bay of Islands on 3 April 1824. They took up residence at the new CMS station at Kerikeri, in the Mission House adjacent to the falls — a building that still stands today as the oldest surviving wooden building in New Zealand's North Island.

Kerikeri and learning the language

The world Clarke arrived into was volatile. Hongi Hika, the great Ngāpuhi rangatira, was then at the height of his musket wars. Clarke came to respect and genuinely like Hongi, even while he disapproved of the warfare. He threw himself into learning te reo Māori with enough speed and fluency to assist Marsden on his next tour of the country. He established a school for Māori children at Kerikeri and taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and practical crafts. The school grew steadily through the late 1820s.

Waimate North

Between 1830 and 1831, with William Yate, Richard Davis, and James Hamlin, Clarke co-founded the Waimate North mission station — the most ambitious CMS enterprise in New Zealand. Fifteen miles of road had to be cut through rough bush; two rivers bridged. The bridge across the Waitangi River — a single span of sixty-four feet, engineered without a middle pier because the current was too swift — demanded everything Clarke had learned from his builder father. He designed and constructed it himself. From 1831 to 1839 he and Richard Davis managed the CMS model farm, supervised the sawyers and fencers, taught school in the mornings, and preached at local marae on alternate Sundays.

Te Tiriti and the Protectorate

In 1840, Clarke was the interpreter at the signing of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. He knew the chiefs, he knew the language, and he understood — with unusual clarity for his time — what was at stake. Governor Hobson then appointed him the country's first Chief Protector of Aborigines, tasked with setting up the first government organisation to protect Māori interests and implement the promises of the treaty.

He built the Protectorate into a functioning department with five regional sub-protectors, and from 1842 published Te Karere o Nui Tireni — Aotearoa's first Māori-language newspaper — for four years. He mediated intertribal disputes, intervened in inter-racial confrontations, and when the Wairau Affray of 1843 left twenty-two settlers dead, his assessment — that they had provoked the confrontation — was unpopular but has been vindicated by history.

The role was impossible. He was expected simultaneously to protect Māori from unfair land transactions and to negotiate those transactions on behalf of the Crown. No one was satisfied: settlers regarded him as an enemy of progress; Māori were rightly suspicious of any official also involved in buying their land. When Governor George Grey took office in 1845, Clarke's days were numbered. Grey viewed the Protectorate as an obstacle to land acquisition. It was abolished in 1846.

Clarke's farewell to the Governor stands as one of his finest moments. He reminded Grey that New Zealand had been an independent country before 1840, that Māori regarded the Treaty as their Magna Carta, and that they should be led — not forced — into engagement with British law. It was advice that would not be taken for another century and a half.

Later years

George and Martha returned to Waimate North and Grove Cottage, where they spent the rest of their lives. He was dismissed from the CMS in 1849, another casualty of Grey's campaign against missionary land-holders. In 1861 he was appointed Civil Commissioner in the Bay of Islands, and in 1865 Judge of the Native Land Court — a fitting final role for a man whose life's work had been the relationship between land, law, and people.

He died at Grove Cottage, Te Karaka, Waimate North, on 29 July 1875. His funeral was conducted by Māori ministers. Martha survived him by seven years, dying on 8 December 1882. They had fifteen children, whose descendants spread across New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, England, Kenya, and beyond.