Judge Advocate - Ellis Bent

When the young Ellis Bent sailed into Port Jackson at the end of 1809, he carried with him the traditions of English law and a determination to put it into effect. Two years earlier, the colony’s only military coup had deposed Governor Bligh and with it the legal underpinnings of the colony’s courts. Governor Macquarie was sent to restore formal British government, and Bent to restore the lawful operation of the colony’s courts. Bent was the colony’s new Judge Advocate, to preside over all the courts. Ellis Bent was the first barrister to hold judicial office in New South Wales. He succeeded the gentleman amateur Richard Atkins who had been Judge Advocate off and on since 1796. Like Governor Bligh, Atkins was deposed by the military officers who illegally assumed government on the colony’s twentieth anniversary, 26 January 1808. After that a series of military officers acted as Judge Advocate for the rest of 1808. A year later, the rebels reappointed Atkins, having found that no one else had his skills. For most of 1809, Atkins continued judicial work as if nothing had changed… Variations in laws may have been tolerable, but what could not be tolerated was the complete overthrow of the colony’s government, even if the rebels kept up the form of the courts. The coup brought the colony’s curious legal status to a crisis, resulting in the appointment of Ellis Bent to make clear that English propriety was to prevail.As the letters in this remarkable volume show, Bent was determined to restore English law. He spent the next six years struggling to do so, sometimes finding that it was impossible…[Like] the celebrated first Chief Justice of New South Wales, Sir Francis Forbes, Bent found that it was necessary to adjust the application of English law in a new land. - From the Foreword, by Bruce Kercher, President, Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History