Henry Williams (missionary) - Dismissed From Service With The CMS

Dismissed From Service With The CMS

In following years Governor Grey listened to the voices speaking against the CMS missionaries and Governor Grey accused Henry Williams and the other CMS missionaries of being responsible for the Flagstaff War; The newspaper New Zealander of 31 January 1846 inflamed the attack in an article that referring to "TREASONABLE LETTERS. Among the recent proclamations in the Government Gazette of the 24th instant, is one respecting some letters found in the pa at Ruapekapeka, and stating that his Excellency, although aware that they were of a treasonable nature, ordered them to be consigned to the flames, without either perusing or allowing a copy of them to be taken." In a thinly disguise reference to Henry Williams, with the reference to "their Rangatira pakeha correspondents", the New Zealander went on to state: "We consider these English traitors far more guilty and deserving of severe punishment, than the brave natives whom they have advised and misled. Cowards and knaves in the full sense of the terms, they have pursued their traitorous schemes, afraid to risk their own persons, yet artfully sacrificing others for their own aggrandizement, while, probably at the same time, they were most hypocritically professing most zealous loyalty."

Official communications also blamed the missionaries for the Flagstaff War. In a letter of 25 June 1846 to William Ewart Gladstone, the Colonial Secretary in Sir Robert Peel's government, Governor Grey referred to the land acquired by the CMS missionaries and commented that "Her Majesty's Government may also rest satisfied that these individuals cannot be put in possession of these tracts of land without a large expenditure of British blood and money”. Hone Heke, who was born at Pakaraka, the location of the land Henry Williams had purchased. Heke took no action against the CMS missionaries during the Flagstaff War and directed his protest at the representatives of Crown with Hone Heke and Te Ruki Kawiti fighting the English soldiers and Māori tribes that remained loyal to the Crown.

The first Anglican bishop of New Zealand, George Augustus Selwyn, took the side of Grey in relation to the purchase of the land, and in 1849 the CMS decided to dismiss Henry from service when Henry refused to give up the land acquired for his family at Pakaraka.