Sir Francis Forbes

Sir Francis Forbes was the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Australia. He was Chief Justice under the governorships of Brisbane, Darling, and Bourke. As well as determining in court how the law should be applied, he was a member of both the Legislative and Executive Councils. In the crucial years when Australia was transforming itself from a prison to a free colony, no one was had a more beneficial influence than Forbes. Naturally, Forbes made many enemies.

Forbes had an old and distinguished Scots lineage. The estates of his ancestors were in Aberdeenshire near the river Don. Two of them, Edinglassie and Skellater, became the namesakes of two properties he acquired in New South Wales.

Being Highland chieftains, the heads of the Forbes clan were often engaged in battles, sometimes in local disputes, sometimes with invaders from across the border. Their loyalties were divided by Jacobitism, and the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden in 1746 meant exile for some of them. One of them, Benjamin Forbes, went off to fight with the French; the other, George Forbes, a medical practitioner, went to Bermuda. George Forbes was the grandfather of Francis Forbes. In 1770, he built a summer house on Smith’s Island in St George’s Harbour. When George Forbes died in 1778, his widow made this house her home, and Francis and her other grandchildren spent many holidays there.

George Forbes died at a time of trouble for Bermuda. The American Revolution was underway. The Royal Navy was restricting the sea trade, and many Bermudians were impoverished. Many Bermudians were sympathetic to the American revolutionaries. George Washington proposed that the Bermudians raid a local magazine and pass the gunpowder to his forces; in exchange he would ship them some foodstuffs. A group of rebel Bermudians accomplished this coup. In addition, negotiations with the American revolutionaries were undertaken by a member of the prominent Tucker family, the family from which Francis Forbes’s mother, Mary Tucker, hailed. Nevertheless, the authority of the Governor of Bermuda was never openly challenged, and the Royal Navy’s grip on Bermuda was never weakened. George Forbes’s son, Francis followed his father into the medical profession. He was known to have strongly supported the American Revolution and had properties in Georgia.

Francis Forbes, the medical practitioner, and Mary Tucker, gave birth to a son in 1784. This son, also called Francis, was to be the Chief Justice of New South Wales. These family connections became important in Sir Francis Forbes later life. When Justice James Dowling first saw him, he described him as having a “round head republican look”. Sir Francis’s skull was on display because he never wore a wig. Dowling later said that “from early education, his mind [was] imbued with American sympathies”. Dowling became Chief Justice after Forbes retired. Governor Ralph Darling accused Forbes of subscribing to “Yankee principles”.

Despite his background, Francis Forbes was appointed Attorney-General of Bermuda and King’s Advocate in the Court of Vice-admiralty in 1810. In 1816, Francis Forbes was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Newfoundland. His relationship with the Admiral-Governors of Newfoundland were unpleasant.

In 1824, Francis Forbes – with his Jacobite ancestry and family history of American sympathies – became the first Chief Justice of New South Wales, the premier colony of Australia.

Forbes’ favourite home was a small cottage and farm on the western bank of the Nepean River at Emu Plains at the foot of the Blue Mountains. There he grazed his horses, and grew grape vines, pears, and apples. He named the farm Edinglassie after the Forbes clan’s ancestral estate. He also had a farm on the Hunter River, which he named Skellater, again after an ancestral estate.

Not only was Forbes of Jacobite ancestry, he was also believed to be a “Jacobin”, so he was an interesting choice to administer justice and make law for a British prison colony in the South Pacific.