Sydney Anglicans

By Stephen Judd and Kenneth Cable

From its origins as a convict chaplaincy to the challenges of expansion today, Sydney Diocese has grown through turbulent years of Church-State controversy and the traumas of economic depression and war. Throughout all those years, as well as in times of peace and prosperity, the Diocese sought to promote the Gospel with vigour and commitment. Sydn

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mountain Street Media
• Release date: Jul 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9780992559502

Stephen Judd

Dr Stephen Judd is the former Chief Executive of HammondCare – an Australian Christian independent charitable trust working within health and aged-care provision and with an annual turnover of over $A400m.

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Foreword

by the Most Reverend Donald Robinson

Archbishop of Sydney

The bicentenary of European settlement in Australia is also the bicentenary of the Church in Sydney. The first Christian service was conducted by the Reverend Richard Johnson under a great tree at Sydney Cove on Sunday 3 February 1788. This was eight days after the officers and marines of the Supply unfurled the British flag at Sydney Cove, and four days before Captain Phillip assembled the whole company of the fleet and proclaimed the foundation of the colony of New South Wales and the setting up of its courts. Johnson was a clergyman of the

Established Church of England and chaplain to the colony. Sydney was the seat of the first Archdeacon of New South Wales in 1824 and of the Bishop of Australia in 1836. The diocese of Sydney was formed in 1847 following the division of the diocese of Australia.

No general history of the diocese has been written, and only three of its nine bishops have been the subject of a biography. Archival material, though considerable, is patchy. The way the Church has developed is little known even to its own members. In 1984 the Standing Committee of the Synod commissioned a history of the diocese 'including its pre-history'. Professor Cable and Dr Judd belong to a growing body of historians who have been exploring religious history in Australia and formulating criteria for understanding it. Those who belong to the diocese and are conscious only of their own experience of it may well be surprised at some of the perspectives here offered. The authors give a coherent account — though not a detailed chronicle — of how the Church in Sydney has been shaped; and being themselves products of the diocese their work is an important essay in self-understanding.

The diocese of Sydney has, rightly or wrongly, acquired a certain reputation in the Anglican world and beyond it. To some it has seemed a model of Evangelical Christianity; to others an oddity of conservative intransigence in a progressive Anglican communion. No doubt the proponents of either View have reasons for it, but the evidence will at best be partial and not the whole truth. Most Sydney Anglicans are probably unaware that they are 'a spectacle to angels and to men' and seek merely an authentic way of being Christians and of pleasing God in their community. That community happens to be metropolitan Sydney and its surrounding regions: some 300 kilometres of the coast of New South Wales, and a hinterland reaching to the Great Dividing Range. In area it is the second smallest of the 24 Australian dioceses, though the largest in population and in the number of Anglicans within it. The heart of church life is in the parish, but inevitably a history of this kind must deal with those features that mark the diocese as a whole, which is now a fellowship of some 270 parishes.

I am myself a son of the Church in Sydney. To its nurture I owe my faith and all that means to me in my understanding of Anglican Christianity. That Anglican tradition — catholic, apostolic, protestant and reformed — was, it so happened, the first to come to Australia. It still holds the hope of proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ to our nation, and the truth by which to live and worship. For this task there can be no complacency. I commend Sydney Anglicans to all for its intrinsic interest, and not least to Sydney Anglicans themselves. By better understanding the path already made we can more soberly seek God's guidance for the way ahead.

Preface

Sydney Anglicans looks at various aspects of the diocese of Sydney from the earliest times to the present day. It does not purport to be the definitive description of Sydney diocese, but does seek to shed some light upon the development of the character of the diocese. In that sense it is thematic rather than chronological or biographical, seeking to explain why various events occurred and what their long term effect was on diocesan life. Because that character eventually has come to be expressed and understood in terms of the churchmanship of the diocese, this has been a major focus of the book.

Some readers may feel that in pursuit of an interpretative goal too little has been said on particular aspects of diocesan life; others will no doubt feel that too much has been said on other matters. We trust that this book will be used by all as a springboard for further enquiry into the many facets of parish and diocesan life.

The first seven chapters of Sydney Anglicans have been written by Associate Professor Kenneth J. Cable; the remaining ten chapters have been written by Dr Stephen E. Judd. The Rev. Dr William J. Lawton contributed material for chapters 9 and 15, while Archbishop D.W.B. Robinson and Professor Cable contributed material for chapters 15, 16 and 17. Kenneth and Leonie Cable, Caroline Bruce and Belinda Rees compiled the appendix. The authors acknowledge the close consultation of the History Liaison Committee appointed by Standing Committee: Archbishop Robinson, Professor Bruce Harris, Miss Charlotte Rivers, Archdeacon Victor Roberts, and Deaconess Margaret Rodgers. A number of people have read various sections and drafts of this book, including Dr Brian Dickey, Sir Marcus Loane, Dr Stuart Piggin and all members of the History Liaison Committee. They do not, of course, necessarily agree with our interpretations or approach, but we are very grateful to them all for their comments and particular insights.

Stephen E. Judd Kenneth J. Cable

June 1987

Abbreviations

Conversions

List of Illustrations

A colonial church interior

William Grant Broughton

The 1850 Conference

The Cathedral site

St Philip's Church, Sydney, old and new

College at University

University of Sydney

Frederic Barker

A church party

Moore College, Liverpool

The suburban church

'The New Chum on the Wasps' Nest'

The Cathedral reredos — before

The Cathedral reredos — after

'The Will of the Lord'

'A Band of Seven'

William Saumarez Smith

Nathaniel Jones

Francis Bertie Boyce

John Charles and Dorothy Wright

'The Holy War'

'Digges'

Honour Boards at St Mary's Balmain

Wright and Talbot — 'Caricatures'

The Church on the Move

Canon R B S Hammond

Canon Hammond

Deaconess Mary Andrews

A group of deaconesses 1950

A CENEF church hut

Archbishop Howard Mowll

Two of Archbishop Mowll's right-hand men

Archdeacon T C Hammond with Archbishop Mowll

Archbishop & Mrs Mowll

Archbishops Howard Mowll and Geoffrey Fisher

The Rev Graham Delbridge

Installation of Archbishop Hugh Gough

Archbishop Gough with the General Secretary for the Home Mission Society

Billy Graham Crusade, 1959

Archbishop M L Loane

Archbishop Loane on the Kokoda trail

Canon Broughton Knox

Archbishop D W B Robinson

Archbishop and Mrs Robinson at Bishopscourt

The interior at St Jude's, Dural

The interior of St Paul's Carlingford

St Mark's, Malabar

Harvest Theatre's production of 'Bread'

Vision for Growth

Chapter one: The Foundation

The diocese of Sydney was one of four dioceses created in 1847 out of the original diocese of Australia. Its bishop, William Grant Broughton, became Metropolitan of Australasia with jurisdiction over his fellow bishops. This was a sign of the importance of Sydney and a tribute to its antiquity. The event of 1847 was only a legal and geographical consequence. Life in the dioceses now bounded by the Murray and Hawkesbury rivers went on as before. Its little, lame bishop ruled his people from his study at 'Tusculum' or his seat in the wooden temporary Cathedral Of St Andrew as he had done for so long. For the Sydney Church already had, by local reckoning, a history which stretched back to the foundation of New South Wales.

The Penal Colony

The colony at Sydney Cove began as a penal settlement. Historians have long discussed, and disagreed about, the reasons for so bizarre a foundation. Was it simply to relieve the pressure on the inadequate British gaols and hulks, overcrowded since the cessation of convict transportation to the former American colonies? Was it to set up a centre for trade and for naval supplies, to strengthen Britain's interests in the Pacific and the Far East? No definite answer can be given — a not uncommon occurrence in Australian history — and it is likely that Britain had several possibilities in mind.[1] Certainly convicts were settled at Sydney, with a marine and later a military guard, and extensions were soon made as far as the mountain barrier. Sealers and whalers, even a few China and India merchants, made their appearance. With commerce came a mercantile class, not wholly distinguishable from the officers who were becoming landowners. Despite the isolation and neglect imposed by Britain's long war against revolutionary France, New South Wales had become a viable colony of the Empire by the early years of the nineteenth century. Tentative moves were being made for the export of wool. The principal import was the convict.

A penal settlement with a military garrison was an official establishment. It required an official chaplain. Among the officers commissioned to the colony intended for Cook's Botany Bay, the Government included a clergyman of the Established Church, the Rev. Richard Johnson.[2] To Johnson fell the responsibility of ministering to the convicts, the soldiery and the free settlers. He performed the 'rites of passage', kept watch on public morality and conducted the statutory services at the compulsory church parades. The chaplain had the oversight of such schoolmasters as might be appointed and, after the practice of England, usually acted as a magistrate. In the person of its clergyman, the Church of England represented official religion in New South Wales.

Richard Johnson

The religious picture had two sides. Johnson was an Evangelical, the protege of wealthy Evangelicals, a Yorkshire farmer's son who had been sent to Cambridge and who relied on his patrons for advancement in the Church. These Evangelicals formed a part of the religious renewal which flourished in Britain in the eighteenth century. Unlike the Methodists, the main element in the great revival, they remained firmly within the Church. They were no less dedicated to the cause of Evangelical religion but they were of the ruling classes, landowners and merchants and professional people. They saw their duty as moral and national rather than revivalist and personal. Prison reform, popular education, public morality, the abolition of the slave trade, were, or came to be, their interests?[3] Led by William Wilberforce, a Yorkshire M.P., the reformers, known collectively as the 'Clapham Sect', exerted every effort to put their program into effect. It was Wilberforce, the close friend of William Pitt, the Prime Minister, who interested himself in the prospects of Botany Bay. His associates suggested Johnson and also acted as patrons for later chaplains.[4] The ministry of the Church in New South Wales was Evangelical as well as formal. Yet both impulses came from the upper ranks of society. It was religion for, rather than to, the motley inhabitants of the penal colony.

The early chaplains found themselves in a dilemma. Johnson, the pioneer, found his situation especially difficult. On the one hand, Governor Phillip expected him to confine his sermons to 'moral subjects'.[5] On the other hand, Johnson's mentors in England pressed him to present his convict charges with the direct and personal message of salvation. Yet in neither respect could Johnson work satisfactorily. Lieutenant-Governor Grose called him a 'methodist', delayed the erection of a church and curtailed his church services.[6] Most convicts, products of a semi-criminal and irreligious background, ignored his efforts. They were already forming a penal counter-culture into which the clergy would be unable to find a point of entry: religion would be the reformed convict's escape from this culture.[7]

Johnson, an earnest man, did his best. He had some measure of reward, finally getting a church built and, more slowly, paid for. In such unfavourable conditions, he could not achieve striking results. But he found consolation on the land. One of the few early settlers with any knowledge of farming, Johnson earned the respect of his colleagues by his success as a fruit grower and agriculturalist.[8] It vindicated his belief in his usefulness and seemed a sign of the Lord's favour. It began a long tradition of clerical landholding.

Samuel Marsden

Moral discipline, Evangelical preaching and the practical utility of the farm were to be the distinguishing marks of the Anglican Chaplaincy. Johnson, distracted by his inability to cope with these competing claims, returned home in 1800. His junior chaplain and successor, Samuel Marsden, did better.

Marsden dominated the Anglican scene in Sydney for thirty years and has engaged the attention of historians ever since.[9] On the basis of his experience during Johnson's time, Marsden gradually devised a role for the colonial chaplain. His critics and admirers have judged him by their own notions of that role. Yet it was one that the circumstances of the time imposed on the chaplains. The difficulty for Marsden was that each facet of the role became exaggerated, at times distorted.

Samuel Marsden was by far the ablest and most energetic of the early clergy. He resembled Johnson in his humble Yorkshire origins, his Cambridge education, his patronage by the Evangelicals (in his case, the Elland Society) and his migration to Botany Bay. Unlike Johnson, Marsden lacked English experience and a completed University degree.[10] But he was distinct from his older colleague in his acceptance of his lot in the colony, his burning desire to succeed in his new situation and, at the same time, his cool appraisal of colonial conditions.

Marsden knew that New South Wales was to be his home. It was where God had placed him; its reformation was his 'calling' in this life. As such he was a missionary. But he was also a clergyman of the Established Church, charged with the Church's national duty of upholding public morality and order. It was a duty that the revolutionary era in Europe and the social unrest in Britain and Ireland were making an imperative. How much the more, then, was it necessary in a penal settlement which, from 1799, was receiving numbers of Irish malcontents? Order became a fixed point for Marsden — it was God's will for the world and an urgent necessity for New South Wales. It was the prime motive in his pulpit denunciations of sin, where anti-social acts were his main target, his severity on the bench as a magistrate and his insistence that missionary activity be accompanied by European work and cultural patterns. The Australian natives did not seem to conform to these standards; those of New Zealand did. For this reason, he came to be the apostle to the Maoris rather than to the Aborigines.[11]

The tensions within Samuel Marsden's role were resolved by his material prosperity. A skilful farmer and a pioneer of the wool industry, the chaplain steadily acquired land, wealth and status. It did nothing to endear him to the secular landowners, such as John Macarthur, who were clawing their way up to fortune and social esteem. The convicts and poor emancipists (the ex-convicts) could scarcely be impressed. But Marsden was convinced that God prospered him, the Yorkshire blacksmith's son; this was the guarantee of his mission's success.

Marsden's real dilemma was not personal; rather it was external. There were insufficient chaplains. Johnson's departure (though he did not at once resign) would have left Marsden quite alone in the colony had it not been for the fortuitous arrival from Ireland of the convict clergyman Henry Fulton.[12] Given a pardon and a local commission, Fulton ministered chiefly at Norfolk Island.

Relief came from outside the Established Church. Nonconformist missionaries, designated for work in the South Seas by the largely Congregational London Missionary Society, arrived in Sydney in 1798 as refugees from native turmoil in the islands. With the support of the chaplains, some of these missionaries began to preach and teach at the little settlements around Sydney and Parramatta and in the newly-opened Hawkesbury region. They attended the convict gangs and included among their hearers convicts assigned to private masters. The main effort of these missionaries was with the emancipists and the small free settlers. The school-chapels at Kissing Point (Ryde) and Ebenezer were their principal centres. They ranged freely and, despite a patchy record, worked effectively.[13]

By the ex-missionaries' efforts, religion became a part of colonial life. Piety could become the mark of being re-admitted to society. Marsden had his reservation on the score of authority but generally played the role of patron. As a Calvinist Evangelical he found these predominantly Congregational missionaries to be congenial company. A 'high and dry churchman would. have indignantly withheld his support. Marsden was glad to give it, on condition that the official services received precedence. Indeed, several missionaries adopted Anglicanism. Rowland Hassall became Marsden's business manager and sent his son, Thomas, to Britain for ordination.[14] Another, John Youl, went back to England, was ordained and returned to minister at Launceston.[15] If the chaplains began an Evangelical tradition in New South Wales, it was the London Missionary Society men who gave it substance.

It was just as well. The Rum Rebellion of 1808 against Governor Bligh found the Chaplaincy in disarray. Marsden had gone to England to promote his missionary plans for the South Pacific and to recruit colleagues for Sydney. Fulton injudiciously sided with the deposed Bligh and was suspended from office by the rebel government. Even after Fulton's reinstatement, the situation was parlous. Only a few missionaries carried on. Yet revival was at hand. The advent of Governor Macquarie restored a semblance of order and a determination to cope with the colony's social problems. Marsden returned — to fall out with the new governor. But two new chaplains had also arrived. William Cowper and Robert Cartwright, firm and undemonstrative Evangelicals, stiffened the Chaplaincy and saved its credibility.[16]

The Macquarie Era

In 1815 the War with France ended at Waterloo. Britain and its empire began a long period of peaceful expansion. For the first time in a generation, the Mother Country was able to attend to its overseas possessions. New South Wales, the 'peculiar colony', participated in characteristic fashion. Large numbers of convicts were shipped from England and Ireland. The flow continued in force for the next quarter of a century.[17] The expansion was in land and commerce as well as in population. Wool was coming to the fore, the territory beyond the ranges was opened up and overseas trade flourished. Convicts were the principal labour force, but as servants assigned to private masters rather than in government labour gangs. Many became emancipated and were joined by numbers of free migrants. The greater the convict force, the larger the society.

Governor Macquarie tried to consolidate the situation. He aimed to establish a stable urban life, re-building Sydney and founding new towns on the Hawkesbury.[18] Several respectable emancipists were brought into free society. Charitable institutions and public education were encouraged. Religion was a significant element in Macquarie's policy. For the building governor, this meant more churches. With the architectural genius of Francis Greenway at his disposal, Macquarie began the erection of fine churches at Windsor and Liverpool.[19] The planned 'metropolitan church' of St Andrew did not materialise but a projected court house became Sydney's second church, St James'. Greenway began a substantial schoolhouse at Sydney for the new director of education, the Rev. Thomas Reddall.[20] Parsonages and schools made their appearance. The Church became an integral part of the social and cultural development of the colony.

Interior of St James, Sydney in 1831

1. The colonial interior of St James' Sydney in 1831, from a watercolour by William Bradridge, master carpenter turned builder. The dominant feature in what was essentially an auditorium for prayer or preaching was the 'three decker' pulpit. The holy table was relatively insignificant. The box pews were rented to well-to-do parishioners and the very large pew on the right was reserved for the Governor.

There was opposition. The Senior Chaplain viewed some developments with misgiving and growing anger. Marsden and Macquarie had fallen out in 1810 over the Governor's appointment of emancipist magistrates. By late in Macquarie's rule, there was total estrangement.[21] The Church was now a civil institution, no longer subject to military jurisdiction. But the Governor remained in control and Marsden resented his sometimes peremptory authority. Nor could the Irish Roman Catholics view with favour the expansion of a Church which had a monopoly of marriages and burials and whose services their convict members were obliged to attend.[22]

It was more important that the British authorities had their doubts. Was Macquarie's benevolent policy too likely to reduce the terrors of the transportation system? Was his building program using scarce supplies of labour and capital, thus hindering the territorial and economic expansion of the colony? Britain's commissioner of enquiry, J.T. Bigge, thought so and, to Macquarie's chagrin, reported as such.[23] But Bigge believed that, despite the Governor's excessive expenditure on church building, the Church must be strengthened.

The Establishment

So did Whitehall. The post-war Empire needed to be stabilised and made reliable. The Colonial Office favoured the development of large-scale landed estates, using local (in Australia, convict) labour and buttressed by a loyal and conservative Church. The traditional squire-parson relationship of rural England was to be given a colonial habitation. The consequence would be the provision of more parsons.

In 1819 the Imperial Parliament passed the Colonial Clergy Act.[24] It provided that men, insufficiently trained for service in the United Church of England and Ireland, might be ordained for colonial service. They could only officiate in the homeland by special permission. The same restriction applied to clergy ordained by colonial bishops. Thus began the long practice of regarding the overseas ministers as second-rate citizens. Perhaps many of the men so ordained were mediocre — though there is little evidence that their English counterparts were better. But a supply of clergy to the colonies was guaranteed. Australia was to receive 81 such men in the next generation. An Ecclesiastical Board for the Colonies was attached to the Colonial Office to control the supply of new clergy.[25] No longer was the Church in New South Wales obliged to rely on the exertions of private recruiters.

The Church needed money as well as men; and it required a better structure than the penal Chaplaincy. Commissioner Bigge recommended more chaplains, cheaper churches and better schools. It was even suggested privately that Marsden be removed from the colony, as a disruptive influence. Fortunately for Marsden's peace of mind, he never heard of this threat.[26] Bigge's recommendation was superseded by a further report commissioned from his secretary, Thomas Hobbes Scott.[27] Scott used the Canadian model to call for extensive land endowments, a regular ecclesiastical establishment under an archdeacon and a school system subject to this archdeacon. In 1825 Scott himself arrived as Archdeacon of New South Wales and King's Visitor of Schools. His work was to be financed by a Church and School Lands Corporation which would be endowed by one-seventh of the colony's surveyed land. The distant Bishop of Calcutta, the only overseas prelate outside the North American region, found his diocese now included Australia. The colonial Church came as close as it ever would to the status of formal Establishnient.[28]

The Australian career of Archdeacon Scott lasted four years. It might have been shorter. Scott had not intended that his report would secure the archdeaconry for himself and his stay was punctuated by threats of resignation. Despite his background as a bankrupt — wine merchant, Scott was well-connected and influential.[29] Indeed, his close association with the Macarthur family did little for his public standing. In a colony where divisions between the exclusives (the wealthy free settlers) and successful emancipists were acute and there was growing discontent with government institutions, Scott was singularly ill-placed.[30] The Church Establishment was vulnerable to criticism from landowners who resented the potentially huge holdings of the Corporation, from Nonconformists and Roman Catholics who disliked its privileges and from liberals who regarded it as a reversion to conservatism. Scott found himself in a troubled position.

The Archdeacon was a competent administrator. He achieved much in expanding schools and consolidating church life.[31] The Corporation began to operate its land holdings, though hampered by lack of capital. The desk work of the Church was properly done, the registration of baptisms, marriages and deaths regularised and new clergymen introduced to the Chaplaincy force.[32] Given a stable situation and good will, Scott may have achieved success.

In the rumbustious colony of Governor Darling, himself an efficient and humourless bureaucrat, the Archdeacon could not succeed. The political and social atmosphere was soured by political and class conflict, by a stridently free press and by bitter criticism of the Governor.[33] Scott was unpopular with the radicals and no favourite with his own clergy. He was an indifferent manager of men. He had a poor opinion of his recent recruits and, though he may have had good reason, treated them with asperity.[34] Meanwhile, both Home and Colonial governments began to lose patience with the Corporation and the land policy that it represented. Economics were to prove a greater danger than Scott's opponents. When, late in 1828, he finally resigned, Scott was facing the prospective dismantling of the Church Establishment.

The last contribution of Archdeacon Scott to the Australian Church was a strange one. Wrecked on the west coast of Australia on his way back to England, Scott found himself the pioneer parson of Perth.

The failure of Scott's regime was due partly to circumstances beyond his control. But Scott was also a personal failure. Ordained only a few years before his arrival in the colony, he had little ecclesiastical experience. Even his friend, the very secular John Macarthur, noted that he lacked clerical professionalism.[35] There are no reasonable doubts about the genuineness of his faith or his moral probity. But Scott had no clear notion of the principal impulses within his Church. He lacked any understanding of the Evangelical purpose of Marsden and Cowper, his senior chaplains, deeming it 'enthusiastic' and ill-disciplined. Equally he had little appreciation of the spirituality of the old High Church tradition or the Concept of the Church that it enshrined. Scott was content to administer an ecclesiastical department of the State. But this was no longer enough. Under his successor, William Grant Broughton, things were to be different.

Broughton was a professional churchman.[36] A protege of the noble Cecil family, he had been an East India Company Clerk before going to Cambridge University. On ordination, he served as curate to Dr Keate, headmaster of Eton, in the Hampshire parish where the Duke of Wellington lived.[37] Here he developed both his scholarship and his aristocratic connections, while his political conservatism was strengthened. After gaining his own parish and the Chaplaincy of the Tower of London, he was appointed by the Duke, then Prime Minister, to the Archdeaconry of New South Wales. Broughton came to Sydney in 1829 with clear ecclesiastical and political convictions and considerable experience as a churchman. He was to develop these in his long life in the Colony. The line of development was quite undeviating: the main thread was Broughton's sense of churchmanship.[38]

Broughton saw society as a living, organic unit. Its body was represented by the State, its soul by the Church; in this sense, the English Church was the English people at prayer. Broughton never thought of the Church, as Scott did, as the ecclesiastical arm of the State. Following the High Churchmen of the seventeenth century, his Church was a spiritual entity, giving the means of grace to the community and acting as its conscience. While it expected State support, it was not the creature of the State. But it remained the State's duty to uphold the Church and maintain its special position against both its enemies and its rivals. If it did not do so, then it was surrendering to what Broughton and his fellow High Churchmen saw as the greatest modern enemy, the spirit of 'liberalism'. Broughton's problem was that, in both Britain and New South Wales, liberalism was gaining ground.[39]

The Church in 1829

Broughton arrived on the eve of a period of change. The territorial extent of his archdeaconry was vast — the entire eastern mainland, Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) and the recently resettled Norfolk Island. In administrative terms, the area of New South Wales was more restricted. Governor Darling had confined the legal possession of land to the Nineteen Counties, whose boundary formed an arc from Port Macquarie to the region beyond Bathurst and on to Bateman's Bay. Outside were scattered coastal settlements and the sheep owners. Within the Nineteen Counties, the surveyors were already marking out civil parishes, townships and counties. One day, Darling hoped, there would be a small church in each parish and a large church in every town.[40] But urban settlement was still sparse and the notion of a compact population was already competing with outward surge of the sheep and cattle men.

Sydney was the centre of the colony, the seat of government and commerce. Its population of 10,000 people was served by two churches. At St Phillip's, the parish church, William Cowper ministered to the military at the barracks, the crowded population of the Rocks and the shopkeepers and artisans along George and Pitt Streets. The eastern side of the town was official Sydney, the home of institutions as diverse as Government House and the convict barracks. Here was the district church of St James. Richard Hill was its chaplain but the Archdeacon's was the real presence. Scott and Broughton preferred to hold their triennial visitations in this large, new building. At Parramatta, Samuel Marsden still ruled his enormous district from St John's, whose twin towers had been added by Macquarie. These three churches were symbols of the colonial Establishment.

Their outward resemblance to an English town church was striking. Certainly the architecture of St Phillip's and St John's was crude 'early colonial', whereas St James' was fine Georgian. But in their arrangements the three did their best to adopt the model of a provincial centre in the Homeland. They had box pews and galleries, rented on a half-yearly basis and arranged in a rigid social order. The poor occupied the free seats. The convicts in government service and the military had special sections allotted to them. Dominating the church was the pulpit from which the minister led the congregation through the full Prayer Book array of Morning (or Evening) Prayer, the Litany and the Ante-Communion. At the foot of the pulpit was the desk for the parish clerk (usually the schoolmaster) who led the responses. A paid choir provided a musical accompaniment. The holy table was relatively insignificant. The sacrament was celebrated only occasionally and to a small group of dedicated communicants. The congregation was large but, in contrast to the Homeland, predominantly male. With a sex ratio in Sydney of three males to one female, so unusual a situation was only to be expected. The colonial experience could not always fit the Homeland mould, however hard it tried.

Beyond Sydney were the little towns, mostly of Macquarie's foundation, where churches had been built. They were minor versions of those in Sydney; arguably St Matthew's at Windsor was the finest in the colony. Here a colonial gentry — Macarthur, Bowman, Cox and others — was establishing itself and regarding the local parson as an educated dependent. The same people were beginning to spread north to the Hunter Valley and west beyond Bathurst. The clergy did some visiting and Scott even sent lay catechists there. But the gentry did little to set up a resident ministry. That was the responsibility of the Archdeacon and the authorities in Sydney.[41]

Several chaplains saw their duty as extending to, even beyond, the rapidly moving frontier. Thomas Hassall, son of a missionary and brought up in the colony, was to earn the soubriquet 'the galloping parson' for his widespread endeavours. Robert Cartwright, a well-born Briton, chafed at his routine duties in the Sydney area, travelled as often as he could and ended his long career in the Riverina. But in the main the Church, and its patrons, were not frontier-conscious. Some clergymen were; most were not: it had become a matter of individual interest. The same applied to concern for aboriginals. Scott had sponsored a survey of aboriginal tribes and Broughton was to evince an initial concern. The chaplains, and especially Cartwright, co-operated in official initiatives, notably at Blacktown. But it took the Church Missionary Society, fresh from its New Zealand triumphs, to lead the Church into work in the Wellington valley in 1832. As a corporation, the Establishment could not act.[42]

The real frontier for churchpeople was neither a matter of geography nor yet of anthropology. The Church in New South Wales, as in Van Diemen's Land, was still the Chaplaincy to the convict population and to those who had been emancipated from its ranks. Together these formed the bulk of the inhabitants and, in 1829, showed every sign of so remaining; transportation remained large in volume. The success of the Church in the 'peculiar colonies' had still to be gauged by its mission to the 'peculiar institution'.

The census of November 1828 showed that there were a large majority of convicts in New South Wales.[43] Some were in places of secondary punishment, chiefly at Port Macquarie (where John Cross was chaplain) and Moreton Bay. Others laboured on government works or were generally in official employment. These people, overwhelmingly male, were ministered to by the chaplains. But most convicts were assigned to private masters, and formed part of their household. It was here that nearly all female convicts were occupied. The chaplains had no regular contact with this population, save that there was some obligation on the part of the masters to send them to divine service when it was available. Beyond the assigned servants were those holding tickets of leave, on parole to work within a prescribed district, either for a wage or on their own account. These individuals were relatively free agents; some were responsive to the message of the Gospel, most were not. Yet the Church was an important means by which the ticket of leavers could regain their position in society and escape from the convict counter-culture. It is true that Methodism was a readier avenue: the directness of its religious appeal, the fervour of its preachers and the lack of social pretension of its chapels made Methodism more attractive. Yet the Church had some success. It did better with those who held conditional pardons — men and women freed by the Governor so long as they remained within his jurisdiction. It would be an exaggeration to assert that the Church of the chaplains fulfilled the expectations of the founders of the colony and the Evangelical patrons of Johnson and Marsden. But it might have done less.

The Church had greater success with the children of convicts and emancipists. The education of the younger generation, the offspring of parents (not always known or acknowledged) of what was held to be the criminal class, was believed to be a moral problem. Children had to be redeemed as much as instructed. This was properly a function of the Church. There was little that the first chaplains could do directly. They supervised the little local schools and co-operated with the Government in conducting the Orphan Schools. Macquarie encouraged the development of education alongside the new churches that he was building. His ambitious plan to systematise the elementary schools achieved only partial success but Archdeacon Scott managed better. While the majority of the children of the lower classes contrived to evade education, Scott was able to get the parish schools in working order. There was some variety. At St James', Richard Hill began Australia's first kindergarten and William Cape managed a school based on new educational principles.[44] St Phillip's began a network of small establishments in the busy western part of the town. Elsewhere, the parishes had varying fortunes and even more varied teachers. Secondary education remained in private hands, with some of the clergy taking middle-class pupils and the gifted eccentric Laurence Halloran, who pretended to be a clergyman, setting up several schools or 'colleges'.[45] The Church had not yet come to terms with the problem of teaching at the higher level. It had emerged by 1829 as a competent educator of those on the ordinary rungs of penal society.

Notes — Chapter One

N.B. Australian history, including its religious component, has been fairly well covered up to 1880. For this reason, and for the convenience of the general reader, references in chapters 1 to 7 are often to reliable and well-documented secondary books and, articles. This does mean that the interpretation of their authors are invariably reproduce in the present volume.

M. Steven, Trade, Tactics and Territory, Melbourne 1983. The balance of scholarly opinion in recent years has tipped towards an acknowledgement of the importance of trading and strategic

considerations.

N.K. Macintosh, Richard Johnson, Sydney 1978, is an ample and judicious study. The original biography, J. Bonwick, Australia's FirstPreacher, London 1898, is seriously flawed. G.A. Wood, 'The Reverend Richard Johnson, Australia's First Clergyman', Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 6 pt 2, 1926, is an example of the general opinion of Johnson's career earlier in the twentieth century. The discussion of Johnson in C.M.H. Clark, A History of Australia, vol. 1, Melbourne 1962, while not wholly accurate, has some striking observations on his Calvinist Evangelical faith in the setting of the penal colony.

G.R. Balleine, A History of the Evangelical Party in the Church of England, new ed., London 1951, remains a reliable account.

The story that no provision was made for a chaplain on the First Fleet until the last moment may have originated with Samuel Marsden. Judge W.W. Burton, The State of Religion and Education in New South Wales, London 1840, relied on the Marsden tradition. As recently as 1948, E.C. Rowland, A Century of the English Church in New South Wales, Sydney, repeated it. There is no truth in the story, although there is no doubt about the involvement of the Evangelicals in Johnson's appointment. Johnson's commission was issued on 24 October 1786, on the same day as those of several other officials and only twelve days after that of Governor Phillip, Historical Records of New South Wales, vol. 1 pt 2, p. 27.

K.J. Cable, 'Richard Johnson', Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 2, pp. 17-9.