Rare survival of a commercial (and ecclesiastical) financial document. The bill of exchange is drafted and signed by the commissary John Palmer, and approved by Philip Gidley King, with good signatures of both, for payment to Samuel Marsden, funding half a year's salary for Reverend Henry Fulton as chaplain at Norfolk Island. It is addressed to William Chinnery as agent to the colony of New South Wales. These are without exception fascinating figures in the earliest days of the colony, including of course Philip Gidley King as governor.

Rare survival of a commercial (and ecclesiastical) financial document. The bill of exchange is drafted and signed by the commissary John Palmer, and approved by Philip Gidley King, with good signatures of both, for payment to Samuel Marsden, funding half a year's salary for Reverend Henry Fulton as chaplain at Norfolk Island. It is addressed to William Chinnery as agent to the colony of New South Wales. These are without exception fascinating figures in the earliest days of the colony, including of course Philip Gidley King as governor.

First-Fleeter 'Little Jack' Palmer came out as purser on the Sirius and became the colony's commissary and a long-serving magistrate. He owned (though had to sell up) the estate of Woolloomooloo, but had extensive other land holdings. He was "one of the most enterprising of the early settlers and acquired much knowledge of all aspects of the colony through his private speculations. Active and adventurous, he had early explored the interior of the colony, most of which he believed capable of cultivation. In 1795 Captain Henry Waterhouse described him as one of the three principal farmers and stockholders in the colony..." (ADB). When he died in 1833, he was 'the last surviving officer of the first fleet that arrived in this part of His Majesty's Dominions'. 

Henry Fulton combined being a clergyman with his history as a transported political prisoner. After receiving a conditional pardon from governor King, he was sent as an assistant chaplain to the Hawkesbury and then in February 1801 to Norfolk Island. He did well there, was granted a full pardon in 1805 and returned to the mainland in 1806. He did duty at Sydney and Parramatta for Samuel Marsden.

Marsden, the "flogging parson", had arrived in 1794, to take up a post as assistant to the chaplain of New South Wales. After a brief visit to Norfolk Island in 1795, he was stationed at Parramatta, where he became senior chaplain. He became a very influential and significant figure in the colony but was a controversial figure. Commissioner Bigge wrote that his character as a magistrate was "stamped with severity".

William Bassett Chinnery, who was appointed Agent for New South Wales on 1 May 1787, was disgraced and dismissed from office by 1812, having managed to embezzle more than £80,000 of Treasury funds.