ld not allow himself to be put forward as king: he proposed
for that honour the aged Waikato chief, Te Wherowhero or Potatau; but
he, as king-maker, was the life and soul of the movement. The kingship
thus set up was a sorry enough thing in outward appearance, but its flag
bore upon it the Cross of the Redeemer; its inauguration at Ngaruawahia
(in 1858) was accompanied with prayers and hymns; its object was to bar
out intoxicating liquors from the inland tribes, and to keep them from
unwholesome contact with the white man and his ways. As Marsden had
tried to found a Christian community at Rangihoua, Selwyn at St. John's,
and Godley in Canterbury, so Tamihana attempted to set up a Christian
State in the interior of the North Island.

It is sad to think that he did not meet with more sympathy from the
heads of Church and State. "The members of the Government in Auckland,"
wrote Sir John Gorst, "did not like Te Waharoa [Tamihana]. Few Europeans
knew him personally, and it was the fashion to believe him insincere."
At a preliminary meeting at Taupo, the Rev. T. Grace did indeed join in
the proceedings, but the colonial government soon moved the governor to
petition the C.M.S. for the missionary's removal. Bishop Selwyn left the
Taurarua Conference to oppose the king movement at Ihumatao. The one man
who saw it in a favourable light was Sir William Martin. To him it was
"not an enemy to be crushed, but a god-send to be welcomed." The
governor, Colonel Gore-Browne, was weak; but he felt that if he could
have Sir William Martin and Bishop Selwyn on his council for native
affairs, he might be able to walk uprightly. His proposal, however, was
declared "inadmissible," and the well-meaning governor was soon hurried
into a policy from which he at first had shrunk.

The beginning of the year 1860 found the king movement still friendly to
the British rule. Its influence did not extend much beyond the Waikato
country, and it was discountenanced by the tribes who lived under the
influence of Henry Williams in the north, William Williams in the east,
and of Hadfield and Taylor in the south-west. Hadfield's staunch ally,
Wiremu Kingi te Rangitaake, had, in 1848, carried his tribe back to
Taranaki, where his ancestral possessions lay, and he too kept aloof
from the movement. This chief, upon whom was to turn the future course
of events, still stood forth as a champion of the white man; and to him
New Plymouth was indebted in 1851, as We