Edward Gibbon Wakefield - Final Years in Britain

Final Years in Britain

Wakefield returned to England early in 1844 to find the New Zealand Company under serious attack from the Colonial Office. As usual he threw himself into the campaign to save his project. Then in August, 1844, he had a stroke followed in the months ahead by several other minor strokes and he had to retire from the struggle, there is also a possibility that his mental health was not too sound in the succeeding months. Fortunately his son, Edward Jerningham Wakefield, returned from New Zealand about this time and was on hand to care for him. In August, 1845 he went to France to recuperate and to give himself a complete break from New Zealand affairs. However it did not serve his purpose and he returned to London two months later in a semi-invalid state.

By January 1846 Wakefield was back to his scheming. By now Gladstone was Colonial Secretary. Wakefield approached him early in the New Year with a fairly radical plan, that both the Government and the New Zealand Company should withdraw from New Zealand affairs and the colony should become self governing. While it might have been a good idea Wakefield wanted it accepted immediately and became at first heated and then distressed when some months later, it was still being considered.

Then during August 1846 he had another, potentially fatal stroke. His friend, Charles Buller took up the negotiations. In May 1847 the British Government agreed to take over the debts of the New Zealand Company and to buy out their interests in the Colony. The directors accepted the offer with alacrity and Wakefield found he was powerless and unable to influence the decision, which did not please him.

Perhaps fortunately he almost immediately had a distraction. Without warning his youngest brother Felix, who had been in Tasmania since the early 1830s, reappeared in England accompanied by eight of his children, having abandoned his wife and youngest child in Australia. Felix had no money and no prospects and was unable to provide for his family. Wakefield found him somewhere to live and farmed out the children among various relatives but it was another year before his health was strong enough to take over the role of surrogate father, Felix being apparently unable to do anything for his family.

Meanwhile Wakefield was getting involved in a new scheme. He was working with John Robert Godley to promote a new settlement in New Zealand, this one to be sponsored by the Church of England. This plan matured to become the Canterbury Settlement. The first ship sailed from England in December, 1849 with Robert Godley in command of the expedition. With them also sailed Edward Jerningham Wakefield, his health and finances ruined by his dissipated life style in London. Then the first immigrant ships sailed from Plymouth in September 1850, bound for Canterbury and others followed.

In the same year, 1850, Wakefield co-founded the Colonial Reform Society with Charles Adderley, a landowner and member of parliament for Staffordshire.

Brother Felix was causing problems back in Britain and causing Wakefield a great deal of grief. Perhaps fortunately Felix decided that settlement in New Zealand was the solution to all his problems, not realising that he created most of them himself. Reluctantly Wakefield sponsored his passage to Canterbury where he was allocated 100 acres (0.40 km2) of land (40 hectares) near Sumner. He and six of his children arrived in Lyttelton in November 1851. A short time later one of other settlers described him as "the worst man we have in Canterbury".

During 1851 and 1852 Wakefield continued to work for the Canterbury Association and also to work towards making New Zealand a self-governing colony. The New Zealand Constitution Act was passed on 30 June 1852. There was general satisfaction among New Zealanders about this although they were less happy to discover that the new government was to be saddled with the remaining debts of the defunct New Zealand Company.

Wakefield now decided that he had achieved everything he could in England. It was time to see the colony he felt he had created. He sailed from Plymouth in September 1852 knowing he would never return. His sister Catherine and her son Charley came to see him off. Then at the last minute his father appeared. Edward Wakefield was now 78 years old; he and Wakefield had not spoken since the Ellen Turner abduction twenty six years before. However they were reconciled, and the elder Edward died two years later.