Robert Knopwood

Who was Robert Knopwood?

Robert Knopwood was an early clergyman and diarist in Australia.

Knopwood was the third child and only surviving son of Robert Knopwood and his wife Elizabeth, née Barton of Threxton, Norfolk, England. Knopwood was educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and graduated B.A. in 1786, M.A. in 1790. Knopwood was ordained deacon in December 1788 and priest a year later. Having inherited a fortune as a young man, he became a member of the gambling set associated with the Prince Regent and quickly lost his money. He obtained a position as chaplain in the navy, and was appointed to Colonel Collins's expedition which, after the failure of the Port Phillip settlement, landed on the site of Hobart on 19 February 1804. Knopwood's salary as chaplain to the settlement was £182 10s. per annum. He was appointed a magistrate on the following 17 March.

Knopwood kept a diary for more than 30 years. It is now in the Mitchell Library at Sydney, an interesting first-hand record of early Tasmania. From it we learn of the want of food and other hardships of the pioneers, the troubles with blacks and bushrangers, and the slowly improving conditions. It was a brutal, hard-drinking, hard-swearing age, and Knopwood does not appear to have been in advance of his time. He records dreadful floggings of convicts for comparatively trifling offences without indignation, and probably as a magistrate ordered them himself. On the other hand he interested himself in two boys both under 18 years of age, who had been condemned to death and succeeded in getting them reprieved at the foot of the gallows. He tells us that he took them to a room and prayed with them, and that everyone thanked him for what he had done.