Britain till the end of April. The sufferings they endured on the passage, and the indignities put upon them, were fully detailed in the ‘Narrative’ which Palmer wrote after landing. The vessel arrived at Port Jackson, New South Wales, on 25 Oct., and as Palmer and his companions had letters of introduction to the governor, they were well treated, and had contiguous houses assigned to them. In two letters (now in the possession of the Rev. H. Williamson, unitarian minister, Dundee), dated June 1795 and August 1797, Palmer speaks enthusiastically of the climate and natural advantages of the infant colony, which had been founded in 1788. ‘I have no scruple,’ he writes, ‘in saying it is the finest country I ever saw. An honest and active governor might soon make it a region of plenty. In spite of all possible rapacity and robbery (on the part of the officials), I am clear that it will thrive against every obstacle.’ Besides cultivating the land, the exiled reformers constructed a small vessel, and traded to Norfolk Island, establishing a dangerous but lucrative business. At the close of 1799 Palmer and his friend James Ellis—who had followed him from Dundee as a colonist—combined with others to purchase a vessel in which they might return home, as Palmer's sentence expired in September 1800. They intended to trade on the homeward way, and provisioned the vessel for six months; but their hopes of securing cargo in New Zealand were disappointed, and they were detained off that coast for twenty-six weeks. Thence they sailed to Tongatabu, where a native war prevented them from landing. They steered their course for the Fiji Islands, where they were well received; but while making for Goraa, one of the group, their vessel struck on a reef. Having refitted their ship, they started for Macao, then almost the only Chinese port open to foreign traffic. Adverse storms drove them about the Pacific until their provisions were exhausted, and they were compelled to put in to Guguan, one of the Ladrone Islands, then under Spanish rule, though they knew that Spain and Britain were at war. The Spanish governor treated them as prisoners of war. At length Palmer was attacked with dysentery, a disease that had originated with him when confined in the hulks, and, as he had no medicines with him, his enfeebled constitution succumbed. He died on 2 June 1802, and was buried by the seashore. Two years afterwards an American captain touched at the Isle of Guguan, and, having ascertained where Palmer had been buried, he caused the body to be exhumed and conveyed on board his vessel, with the governor's permission. The remains were taken to Boston, Massachusetts, and reinterred in the cemetery there. Of Palmer's immediate relatives three is no survivor, the last of them being his nephew, Charles Fyshe Palmer, who was member for Reading from 1818 to 1834, when he retired. A monument was erected in the Calton burying-ground, Edinburgh, in 1844 to commemorate Palmer, Muir, and their fellow-martyrs in the cause of reform. Palmer's publications were few and fragmentary, being mostly magazine articles and pamphlets. To the ‘Theological Repository’ he contributed regularly in 1789–90, under the signature ‘Anglo-Scotus.’ In 1792 he published a controversial pamphlet entitled ‘An Attempt to refute a Sermon by H. D. Inglis on the Godhead of Jesus Christ, and to restore the long-lost Truth of the First Commandment.’ His ‘Narrative of the Sufferings of T. F. Palmer and W. Skirving’ was published in 1797. Several of his letters have been published in the biographies of leading contemporary unitarians.
[Millar's Martyrs of Reform; Monthly Repository, vi. 135; Belsham's Memoir of Theophilus Lindsey, p. 352; Turner's Lives of Eminent Unitarians, ii. 214; Heaton's Australian Dict. of Dates, 1879, p. 160; Boswell's Johnson, ed. Birkbeck Hill, i. 467, iv. 125 n.; Annual Reg. 1793, p. 40; Scots Mag. 1793, pp. 565, 617; Christian Reformer, iv. 338; Monthly Mag. xvii. 83; Trial of Palmer, ed. Skirving, 1793; local information.]
PALMER, WILLIAM (1539?–1605), divine, of Nottinghamshire descent (Hawes, Hist. of Framlingham, p. 231), was born about 1539 (epitaph). He was educated at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and graduated B.A. in 1559–60. He was elected fellow of that house in 1560, while Grindal, who remained his constant patron, was master. He took holy orders in 1560, and three years later became Grindal's chaplain. From 24 Sept. 1565 to 14 Aug. 1574 he was prebendary of Mora in the cathedral church of St. Paul's; from 20 Dec. 1566 till 11 Oct. 1570 vicar of St. Lawrence Jewry; and from 17 June 1570 to 12 April 1573 prebendary of Riccall, in the cathedral church of York.
According to the catholic historian, Nicholas Sanders, Palmer persisted in attending Thomas Percy, seventh earl of Northumberland [q. v.], on the scaffold, in 1572, against the earl's express wish. On 13 Oct. 1575 he was collated to the prebend of Norwell Palishall in the church of Southwell. This prebend he held till his death. On 13 March 1576–7 he officiated at the enthronisation of Edwin Sandys [q. v.], archbishop of York (Strype, Annals, ii. ii. 42).
