13. New Zealand’s Founder and His Scandalous Marriage
Edward Gibbon Wakefield (1796 – 1862) was a British politician who played a key role in the colonization of Australasia and is considered to be a founder of New Zealand. He also played a role in drafting the 1839 Report on the Affairs of British North America, commonly known as the Durham Report, which had a significant impact on Canada’s history. Before that, however, Wakefield had earned a footnote in history as the criminal defendant in a scandalous case that involved the abduction of a fifteen-year-old girl.
He did not do so because of some sick infatuation or delusion of love, but because the kid was a wealthy heiress and he wanted access to her money. Wakefield had been a diplomatic courier at the tail end of the Napoleonic Wars before he seduced a seventeen-year-old rich heiress in 1816, convinced her that he was madly in love with her, and got her to elope with him. That netted him a marriage settlement from her father worth about U$ 8 million in 2021 dollars and established a template.
