Thomas Fyshe Palmer

A society called the 'Friends of Liberty' was formed in 1793, and met in the Berean meeting-house in the Methodist Close, beside the house where Palmer lived in the Overgait.

One evening in June 1793 Palmer was attended a meeting, when George Mealmaker, weaver in Dundee, brought a draft of an address to the public which he purposed circulating as a handbill.

Other officials of the 'Friends of Liberty' corroborated, and the evidence proved nothing relevant to the charge beyond the fact that Palmer had ordered one thousand copies to be printed, but had given no instructions as to distribution.

The conviction of Palmer, following close on that of Thomas Muir, raised indignation among the Whig party throughout the kingdom; and during February and March 1794 attempts were made by the Earl of Lauderdale and Earl Stanhope in the House of Lords, and by Charles James Fox and Richard Brinsley Sheridan in the House of Commons, to obtain the reversal of the sentence.

Palmer left in the Surprize, along with the so-called Scottish Martyrs, Thomas Muir, William Skirving and Maurice Margarot, embarking in February but sailing in April 1794, with a gang of convicts for Botany Bay.

The vessel arrived at Port Jackson, New South Wales, on 25 October, and as Palmer and his companions had letters of introduction to the governor, they were well treated, and had houses assigned to them.

[2] Whilst serving his seven-year sentence in Sydney Palmer did not suffer the usual convict restraint, and he engaged in business enterprises.

[2] Palmer and Ellis intended to trade on the homeward way, and provisioned their vessel for six months; but their hopes of securing cargo in New Zealand were disappointed, and they were held up for half a year.

[2] Adverse storms drove them about the Pacific until their provisions were exhausted, and they were compelled to put in at Guam, one of the Marianas Islands, then under Spanish rule.

Two years later an American captain touched at the Isle of Guguan, and, having found out where Palmer had been buried, he had the body exhumed and taken on board his vessel, with the governor's permission.

[2] His nephew, Charles Fyshe Palmer visited his Uncle in the prison hulk at Woolwich in 1794, was Member of Parliament for Reading from 1818 to 1834, when he retired.