[1][2] At various times Caunter further held the offices of marine storekeeper, master attendant, Chief Magistrate, Treasurer and Chaplain in Penang.

[11] Caunter, then aged 36, first arrived in Penang aboard the Nepture on 7 May 1795 with an appointment as marine storekeeper and master attendant, functions he took over from John Beanland.

[15][16] It was at this time customary for the British court on the island to follow the jurisprudence of the local communities, ruling for instance in accordance with Malay law.

He was suspicious especially of the faction of James Scott, the business partner of the late founder of the British settlement in the island, Captain Francis Light.

[18] MacDonald had denounced the confluence of mercantile and political interests, writing to the Council in Calcutta about the perceived undue dominance and influence of the mercantile house of Scott & Co.[19] Caunter took several persons into custody whom he suspected of conspiring to set up a jurisdiction independent of the East India Company, to go on trial when MacDonald returned.

Caunter's twins Sarah Sparke and Richard McDonald were born at Government House in March 1798, but his wife Harriett died in labour.

[20][21] Major MacDonald resumed the superintendency on 28 October, but in December illness forced him to leave for Calcutta, where he died the following year.

Caunter consequently again became Acting Superintendent in December 1798, relinquishing the position of marine storekeeper and master attendant to Captain John Baird.

[26] Security considerations made it desirable for Prince of Wales Island to control a buffer of land on the opposite shore.

[27] The French were considered a growing threat; in addition, piracy had become frequent since the growth of the port of George Town, the main settlement on the island.

Shortly after Caunter handed over the Government of the island to Leith, the latter appointed him to negotiate the cession of a coastal strip of land on the mainland called Seberang Perai.

[45] In Penang, Caunter was additionally appointed chief commissioner of the court of small debts (on which he sat with Stamford Raffles)[46] (1809), chairman of the committee of assessors (1809) and Acting Chaplain (1810).

[47] In June 1811 Caunter, then the Police Magistrate, first commissioner of the Court of Requests and Acting Chaplain of Penang, applied for sick leave.

[48] On 24 November Acting Governor Phillips granted Caunter, who had been exercising his functions, permission to travel to Calcutta for the recovery of his health, and to absent himself from the island for a period of four months.

[50] His son Hobart a few years later referred to his father having found his final resting place in the ocean, "Just as prepar'd to cross the homeward wave".

Those plants are now, I understand, to be offered to public sale, which will, I presume, answer the views of Government equally well with purchasing them on the Company's account, as it matters not by whom, so that they are propagated on the island.

The Surprise was a British brig that arrived a few days earlier from the Moluccas with five slaves sent over by the Resident at Banda, R. T. Townsend, to look after those nutmeg plants at Penang.

In May 1803, Hunter wrote from Calcutta to the Governor-General of India, "Besides the extensive plantation belonging to the Honourable Company, several thousand trees are now on the estates of individuals, both European and Chinese.

[55] The folio manuscript, from which this work was drawn, was entitled "Outline of a Flora of Prince of Wales's Island ... Noble Marquis Wellesley, Governor General," by Dr. William Hunter (1755-1812), and dated from "Calcutta, 18th May, 1803."

Captain Light's large pepper estate, Suffolk, lay immediately north of Caunter's extensive plantation (Jelutong of today).