He pleaded for clemency and either his family influence or his conversion to Christianity saw him gaoled for 18 months until he was transported to Sydney.
[1] The chaplain sent with him to Australia a letter to Reverend Samuel Marsden that said, "Edward Eagar has really become a new creature.
In 1812 he met with two newcomers, Thomas Bowden and John Hoskin, and they formed the first membership of the first Methodist church in Australia, known as Wesley Mission, on 12 March 1812.
Eagar wrote to the Methodist Conference in England to "send us a Minister lest we die in our sins".
The Minister, Reverend Samuel Leigh, arrived in 1815, and Eagar introduced him to Governor Macquarie.
However, Judge Jeffery Hart Bent did not let him forget he had been a convict and had been discarded from practice as a lawyer.
Eagar's son Geoffrey became the first accountant of the Bank of New South Wales, a leading public servant, a member of the Legislative Council and eventually Treasurer of New South Wales,[5] described as the best Treasurer of the nineteenth century,[2] and a long-serving Cabinet Minister.