[2][3] Born in Farsley, near Pudsey, Yorkshire in England as the son of a Wesleyan blacksmith turned farmer, Marsden attended the village school and spent some years assisting his father on the farm.

In his early twenties his reputation as a lay preacher drew the attention of the evangelical Elland Society, which sought to train poor men for the ministry of the Church of England.

With a scholarship from the Elland Society Marsden attended Hull Grammar School, where he became associated with Joseph Milner and the reformist William Wilberforce, and after two years, he matriculated, at the age of 25, at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Marsden was given grants of land by the colonial government and bought more of his own, which were worked with convict labour, a common practice in Australia at the time.

Successful farming ventures provided him with a secure financial base, although they also formed a plank of contemporary criticism of Marsden for alleged over-involvement in non-church affairs.

In 1809, Marsden was the first to ship wool to England from Australia for commercial use; this was made into cloth by Messrs W. & J. Thompson, at Rawdon, West Yorkshire, and so impressed George III that he was given a present of Merino sheep from the Windsor stud.

This view of Marsden is disputed in some circles as part of an anti-clerical writing of history, in turn attributed to a dislike of Roman Catholics and the Irish.

The day was windy and I protest, that although I was at least fifteen yards to the leeward, from the sufferers, the blood, skin, and flesh blew in my face", as floggers "shook it off from their cats" (referring to the cat-of-nine-tails scourging lash).

He continued "The next prisoner who was tied up was Paddy Galvin, a young lad about twenty years of age; he was also sentenced to receive three hundred lashes.

[8] Holt's memoirs express his impression of Marsden, as "a busy meddling man, of shallow understanding" who thought himself "a great lawyer".

Marsden's attitudes to Irish Roman Catholic convicts were illustrated in a memorandum which he sent to his church superiors during his time at Parramatta: "The number of Catholic Convicts is very great... and these in general composed of the lowest class of the Irish nation; who are the most wild, ignorant and savage Race that were ever favoured with the light of Civilization; men that have been familiar with ... every horrid Crime from their Infancy.

No Confidence whatever can be placed in them... [If Catholicism in Australia] were tolerated they would assemble together from every Quarter, not so much from a desire of celebrating Mass, as to recite the Miseries and Injustice of their Banishment, the Hardships they suffer, and to enflame one another's minds with some wild Scheme of Revenge.

"[9]Despite Marsden's opposition to Catholicism being practised in Australia, Governor Philip Gidley King permitted monthly Catholic Masses in Sydney from May 1803, although these were to take place under police surveillance.

[10] In 1806, Marsden was the originator of the New South Wales "Female Register" which classed all women in the colony (excepting some widows) as either "married" or "concubine".

Only marriages within the Church of England were recognised as legitimate on this list; women who married in Roman Catholic or Jewish ceremonies were automatically classed as concubines.

The document eventually circulated within influential circles in London, and is believed to have influenced contemporary views of the Australian colony as a land of sexual immorality, some of which survived into 20th-century historiography.

[17] Marsden was a member of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) (founded in 1799) and remained formally based in New South Wales, but developed an interest in evangelising New Zealand from the early 1800s onwards.

A small community of Europeans had formed in the Bay of Islands, made up of explorers, flax traders, timber merchants, seamen, and ex-convicts who had served their sentences in Australia (as well as some who had escaped the Australian penal system).

[23] In 1814, Marsden had purchased the brig Active, for £1,400, mostly with his own money as the Church Missionary Society refused to provide funds for a ship.

[31] At the end of the year Kendall, Hall and King returned to start a mission to the Ngāpuhi under Ruatara's (and, later, Hongi Hika's) protection in the Bay of Islands.

[36] Hongi Hika met George IV, who gifted him a suit of armour; he also obtained further muskets when passing through Sydney on his return to New Zealand.

[39] Marsden later went to some trouble talking to all Australian printers to prevent Kendall from publishing a Māori grammar book, apparently largely out of spite.

He wrote: New Zealand promises to be very favourable to the vine as far as I can judge at present of the nature of the soil and climate[40]Marsden was on a visit to the Reverend Henry Stiles at St Matthew's Church at Windsor, New South Wales when he succumbed to an incipient chill and died at the rectory on 12 May 1838.

[45] A portrait of Marsden based on Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore appears in Patrick O'Brian's book The Nutmeg of Consolation.