«00 GOV. DARLING'S LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL. section enacted that offences should be tried "before Courts of General and Quarter Sessions respectively in such and the same manner" as that "prescribed with respect to trials before the Supreme Court." When the new Constitution was proclaimed, a Eoyal Warrant enlarged the Legislative Council. The number was to be not less than ten, nor more than fifteen. Chief Justice Forbes, Archdeacon Scott, Colonial Secretary Macleay, Attorney-General Baxter, Collector of Customs Cotton, Auditor-General Lithgow, Lt.-Col. Lindesay, were the official members. John Macarthur, Eobert Campbell, Alexander Berry, Eichard Jones, John Blaxland, Captain Phillip P. King, E.N. (son of the former Governor), and Edward C. Close, one of the worthiest men in the land,^^ were the unofficial gentlemen of the colony. The Governor himself presided over the Council, of which the full number was fifteen. The Eoyal Warrant provided that in case of death of a non-official member the vacancy should be filled from the following leading colonists :— J. T. Campbell, Hannibal Macarthur (nephew of John Macarthur), G. Wyndham, A. B. Spark, T. M'Vitie, G. T. Palmer, Archibald Bell, William Ogilvie, or William Macarthur (a son of John Macarthur). In Sept. 1829, Archdeacon Scott having retired, his successor, the Eev. W. G. Broughton (who owed his promotion to the great Duke of Wellington), took his seat in the Council, of which for
- - Edward Charles Close was born 12tli March 1790, at Rangamatty,
near Calcutta. His father was a merchant in India. He was a post- humous child, and was taken to England when eight years old, and lived with his maternal uncle, Charles Streyncham Colinson, sheriff of the county of Suffolk, at The Chantry, Ipswich. He was gazetted ensicn in the 48th Regt., 8th Feb. 1808, with which regiment he commencea and «nded his military career. He was present at the battles of Toulouse, Orthes, Nivelle, Vittoria, Albuera, Busaco, and Talavera, and was unhurt. He went to New South Wales with the 48th Regt., 1817, and settled in Morpeth, 1821. He was the first chairman of the Maitland Bench of Magistrates, and the first warden of the Maitland district. He received three public testimonials and addresses while living, and the people of the Maitland district erected a memorial window in St. James' Church, Morpeth, to him after his death. He died 7th May 1866. On one of the Peninsular battle-fields, as he heard the groans of the dying, he resolved that he would, if ever possessed of means, build a church for the spiritual •consolation of his fellow-creatures. He lived to fulfil his resolve at Morpeth, Hunter River.
