The faltering beginnings of Christianity in the colony of NSW 1788 - 1793

Memorial to the first Christian Service held in New South Wales
at the corner of Hunter and Bligh Streets, Sydney.

In a small reserve adjacent to the intersection of Hunter and Bligh Streets in central Sydney is a spired monument in the Gothic style which bears the following inscription :

To the glory of God 

and in commemoration of 

the first Christian Service held in Australia 

February 3rd 1788

Rev. Richard Johnson BA 

the Chaplain 

being the preacher.

The text of the sermon : 

What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards me?

Psalm CXVI 12.

The Service - most probably what was known in The Book of Common Prayer as Mattins or Morning Prayer - took place a week after the landing of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove (1) and beneath the shade of a great tree.  The monument is located on the site of the first church (see below), but not marking the exact spot where the Chaplain conducted the first Divine Service in the new colony.  (2) The full text of Mr Johnson's sermon has not been preserved, but it is most fortunate that the scriptural text he chose as the basis for his sermon has.  It was Psalm 116.  It is most indicative of his own piety and sense of the occasion :

What shall I return unto the Lord for all his bounty unto me?  I will raise the cup of Salvation, and call upon the name of the Lord ... I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem.

It is perhaps noteworthy and even indicative that a whole week elapsed before the first Christian Service was celebrated in that area which Captain Arthur Philip had claimed for the British Crown. (3)

An artist's impression of the First Fleet in Sydney Cove, January 1788.

Image : First Fleet Fellowship of Victoria

Let us trace how Richard Johnson came to be appointed as Chaplain to the First Fleet and new Colony.  Most readers will be familiar with the protestant hymn Amazing Grace, written in 1772 by an English parson, the Reverend John Newton.  Mr Newton was a leading figure in the Evangelical revival within the Church of England in the eighteenth century.  His story is, in its own right, most interesting (but beyond our scope here).  In 1786, Newton wrote :

A minister who should go to Botany Bay without a call from the Lord and without receiving from Him an apostolical spirit, the spirit of a missionary, enabling him to forsake all, to give up all, to put himself into the Lord’s hands, to sink or swim, had better run his head against a stone wall.

Mr Newton persuaded the government of the day to send such a Chaplain with the First Fleet and recommended the Reverend Richard Johnson as that man.  At that time, Mr Johnson was in his early thirties and serving as a curate in a London Parish.  A native of Yorkshire, he had been educated at Cambridge.  In the same month that Captain Arthur Philip was appointed to the charge of the First Fleet (October 1786), Mr Johnson was appointed by the British Government to be its Chaplain. (4) He sought a wife to accompany him to New South Wales and they married quickly. 

The First Fleet of eleven ships and approximately 1400 persons - convicts, sailors, marines, officials with wives and servants - left Portsmouth Harbour under the command of Captain Philip in May 1787.  Mr and Mrs Johnson were on board the vessel The Golden Grove.  On The Golden Grove he was able to conduct a service each Sunday, and to read prayers every evening. When the Fleet reached Rio de Janeiro, he visited the other ships to minister to those on board, marines and convicts alike.  It seems obvious that Richard Johnson did not see himself as part of the Authority of the new Colony of NSW, but rather as a preacher of the Gospel, with a zeal for the salvation of souls. (5) A man who wished for comfort or prestige would never have accepted such an appointment.  But a man who fervently lived the Gospels might; and such a man was Richard Johnson.

A portrait of Captain Arthur Philip RN painted in 1786;
Commander of the First Fleet and First Governor of NSW.
The Collection of the State Library of NSW.

Captain Arthur Philip, however, possessed no such fervour, nor saw merit in such a ministry in the Colony of NSW.  He was a navy man and he had his Orders.  After Captain Philip was appointed to command the First Fleet and to establish the Settlement at Botany Bay as its Governor, he had the responsibility of assembling those whom he thought would benefit the establishment of the Colony.  He managed this most effectively.  Arthur Philip foresaw that what began as a settlement for the cast-offs of England would develop into place of great value to the British Crown.  He wrote : "Nor do I doubt but that this country will prove the most valuable acquisition Great Britain ever made."  Few in the British Government, however, shared this view. Arthur Philip wished to reform the convicts, not simply gaol and punish them.  He also wished to befriend Australia's Indigenous peoples. But Philip's was also a very pragmatic vision; he was no dreamer.

The mental picture formed by those statesmen and bureaucrats in England who planned the Penal Settlement, namely, that Botany Bay (6) was a fertile land where crops would readily grow to support the needs of the residents, were not realised in the land immediately surrounding the settlement at Sydney Cove.  We need only ponder the difficulty of establishing a self-sustaining settlement in an unknown land, completely unlike England, with a harsh climate and its own peoples who had lived on the continent for tens of thousands of years.  At various points in the first two years after settlement, the starvation of both convicts and the troops guarding them seemed a real possibility; there was insufficient to feed those who arrived in January 1788 and subsequently in 1789 and 1790. The planting of crops around Sydney Cove had failed and convicts, sailors, even Mr Johnson himself, went out into Port Jackson in boats to catch fish to feed the Settlement.

A map of the Settlement at Sydney Cove in July 1788 - just six months after the landing - shews clearly a tract of land in approximately the area bounded by the present Harrington, Essex, Grosvenor and George Streets which had been set aside for the building of a church.  From this, we can surmise that the construction of a church had been discussed between Governor Philip and Mr Johnson. (7)

An engraving of the Settlement at Sydney Cove based on a detailed map drawn up
in July 1788.  The ornament and the no. 7 indicate the spot which
had been selected for the construction of a church. 
It was eventually built elsewhere in 1793.

One of the telling aspects of the attitude of the Government of the new Colony, however, was that it took fully five years before a building specifically for the purpose of Divine Service came to be constructed.  And even then - 1793 - it was paid for out of the pocket of the Chaplain, Mr Johnson.  It was also not on the land indicated on the 1788 map.  By the time that church had been completed, Arthur Philip had relinquished government of the colony and returned to England.  A request from Mr Johnson of Philip in 1792 for convict labour and some financial support to build churches both in Sydney and Parramatta was declined by the Governor.

A sketch by the architect and historian Morton Herman of
the first Christian Church in Australia, erected in 1793 on the corner of Hunter
and Bligh Streets Sydney.
The T-shaped building was able to seat a few hundred souls
and was dedicated to Saint Philip.

In five years as the first Governor, Arthur Philip had accomplished much in establishing the settlements of New South Wales from their natural states to a self-supporting colony.  He was a fair man, persevering, determined, just and possessed of courage. He was not capricious, or cruel or readily prone to discouragement. In less steady hands, it is most likely that the Settlement in 1788 would have collapsed, leaving an awkward situation for all concerned.  For all his virtues, however, Arthur Philip seemed not to have been a man of any religious conviction.  He did not approve of the Chaplain's desire to evangelise the convicts of the new Colony, or those in charge of them.  He asked Mr Johnson to focus his attention on instilling a sound morality instead, which was of more obvious social benefit.

In other cultures, in other ages and even other contemporary nations (such as Spain and France), building a temple, a shrine or a House of God would seem a sensible way of seeking God's help for a struggling society.  Men of the Enlightenment, however, such as Governor Philip and his officers, lacked such a sensibility.  Mr Johnson conducted Divine Service initially in a tent and sometimes in rooms which were made available on a Sunday.  In those earliest days, no one was compelled to attend and evidence is lacking as to how many of the Settlement's inhabitants actually did.

In the next posts in this series, we shall further discuss the Christian ministry of the Reverend Richard Johnson in the infant Colony; the landing of Count La Perouse at Botany Bay, the Catholic convict James Ruse and the stirrings of Catholicism in those early years.

AMDG

NOTES

1. Sydney Cove includes the spot we now refer to as Circular Quay. 

2. It would seem doubtful that the site of the Memorial marks the spot of the first Christian Service, which was more likely closer to the Sydney Cove. A map of the Settlement made in March 1788, indicates that the corner of the present Hunter and Bligh Streets was an area outside the Settlement. There does not seem to be documentary evidence to be definite about this point. The Memorial, however, certainly indicates the place where Rev'd Mr Johnson built the first church in 1793.

3. The new colony of New South Wales initially comprised all of the Eastern half of the continent, as far as what is now South Australia.

4. Some early historians, repeated by others over the years, have asserted that the inclusion of a Chaplain to the First Fleet was an after-thought, decided upon not long before the Fleet sailed from England.  This is completely inaccurate, since both the Chaplain and the Commander of the First Fleet were both appointed in October 1786, when the matter was still in the planning stages.

5. In the language of the Church of England, Mr Johnson would be described as an Evangelical, but one of the Officers of the new Colony, Lieutenant Tench went so far as to describe him as a "Methodist".

6. In August 1788, Captain Philip wrote to the Authorities in England, describing in detail the map of July 1788.  All the buildings he planned and his intentions for the laying out of streets &c. are mentioned in this letter.  But there is no mention of the construction of a church in the letter.

7. Based upon Captain Cook's discovery in 1770, and the observations of the botanist on that voyage, Sir Joseph Banks, the British Government had settled upon Botany Bay as the place for the Penal Settlement.  Often New South Wales was referred to colloquially as Botany Bay.  But when the First Fleet reached New South Wales and Captain Philip assessed Botany Bay, he found it not in the least suited to the needs of a large new settlement.  A short expedition Northward in a long boat lead to the discovery of Port Jackson (which we now refer to as Sydney Harbour) and, in particular Sydney Cove.  Captain Philip sailed the Fleet into Port Jackson and landed at Sydney Cove, claiming it for the British Crown on 26th January 1788.


REFERENCES

The following online articles give useful accounts of the lives of Arthur Philip and Richard Johnson.

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/phillip-arthur-2549

http://acl.asn.au/resources/richard-johnson-first-chaplain-to-australia/

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks15/1500721h/0-dict-biogI-K.html#johnson1

The following monographs were used in preparing this article :

Cedric Flower The Illustrated History of NSW, Rigby Publishers Limited, Sydney, 1981.

GB Barton The History of New South Wales from the Records, volume 1 Governor Philip 1783-1789, by Authority, Sydney,  1889.

A Last Letter

Archbishop John Bede Polding
a photograph of the early 1870s.

On 7th March 1877, ailing on his death bed at the old Sacred Heart Presbytery, Darlinghurst, Archbishop Polding dictated a letter to Pope Pius IX.  He was well enough to be able to sign the letter, the text of which follows.

Most Holy Father,

After 42 years' episcopal ministry in the Australian missions, I have come to the end of my life able to say to Your Holiness : "I have finished my course : I have kept the faith."

Most Holy Father, exhausted as I am by years and labours, it but remains for me to go down into the grave and to expect from the mercy of the Lord forgiveness of my faults and life eternal, through the merits of our Lord Jesus Christ.  To obtain this with greater ease and security, I humbly devote myself to our Holy Religion which, at my departure hence, will accompany me with those spiritual consolations that God can grant to His chosen ones.  In the meantime, I request Your Holiness to give me that Special Blessing.

I remain for the rest of my life,

Your most humble and devoted servant

JOHN BEDE POLDING O.S.B.

Archbishop of Sydney.

On 16th March, the old Archbishop passed from this life to his Eternal Reward.  It is wonderful and moving to read this letter, indicating so clearly the piety and spiritual priorities of our pioneering Australian bishop.

AMDG

Pope Pius IX
A rare photograph of an informal gathering in Rome around 1870.

NOTES

This letter was quoted in an article written by the late Sister Mary Xavier Compton, S.G.S., which appeared in the Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society vol. 8, part 1 (1985). 

A Priest's Plea : re-posted

Thomas Townshend, Viscount Sydney
Engraving of a contemporary portrait.
Image : National Library of Australia.

In 1786, the Government of British Prime Minister William Pitt ("The Younger") gave into the hands of the Home Secretary, Thomas Townshend, the Baron Sydney of Chislehurst, responsibility for arranging the establishment of a Penal Colony in Botany Bay (also referred to as New South Wales).  This has been described in the previous post.  It was Lord Sydney who chose Captain Arthur Phillip of the Royal Navy to be the first Governor of the colony. When Governor Phillip made his settlement, he named the place Sydney Cove, in honour of Lord Sydney. 

In 1787, whilst the Fleet was being assembled at Portsmouth to commence its voyage to New South Wales, a Catholic priest wrote a heartfelt letter to Lord Sydney.  We are pleased to reproduce this important document in full.  Further details of the priest, Father Thomas Walsh, have been rather hard to find, but we must assume that he had access to the prisoners intended to be transported and indeed had some form of ministry to them.  Father Walsh had no illusions about the type of persons these convicts were, but his moving letter displays a zeal for their reformation.  He wished to help them to become devout Catholics and, consequently, better citizens.

No precise date or address seems to have been noted on the letter, which is found in Cardinal Moran's History of the Catholic Church in Australasia (1895). 

My Lord,

You have been apprised of the desire which two clergymen of the Catholic perfuasion have to instruct the convicts, who are of their faith and who are destined for Botany Bay. I beg leave to inform your Lordship of my sentiments concerning this requeft.  There are not lefs, probably, than 300 [convicts]; ignorant you may imagine, of every principle of duty to God and man.  The number is great, and consequently constitutes an object of consequence to every man who has the happinefs of his neighbours at heart.  That the Catholics of this country are not only inoffensive of principles, but that they are zealously attached to the constitution of it, I may presume, is well known to your Lordship.  For my part, who am one of those clergymen who wish to take care of the convicts of my perfuasion, I beg to acquaint your Lordship that if I be so happy [sic "fortunate"] as to be permitted to go, I truft [that] my endeavours to bring these unhappy people to a proper sense of their duty as subjects and citizens, may be attended with some salutary consequence. They earnestly desire some Catholic clergyman may go with them, and I truft to the known humanity of the Government that a requeft which seems to promise some hopes of their reformation will be not be denied. It is well known that these people will not pay the attention to other ministers which they will to their own. Perhaps, also, the presence of their priefts may be of great use to make them readily obey every order of their Governors, and I have no doubt our conduct will meet the approbation of them.

I sincerely pity those poor people, not so much for the disagreeable situation into which they have brought themselves, as for the mifdemeanours which have made them deserving of it. They may, I truft, if their ignorance be removed, and their obligations as men and Christians be forcibly inculcated [in]to them, that this may be a means under Providence of their becoming useful to themselves, and perhaps afterwards to their country.

At least, this I sincerely wish. Nor do I think I can ever be as happy elsewhere as in the place of their destination, employed in using my endeavours to bring them out of the wretched state of depravity into which they have fallen. I entreat, therefore, most humbly, that this our request may be granted. These poor people will blefs and thank you. I shall take care they they be not forgetful of their obligations to the Governor and Lord Sydney.

I have the honour of subscribing myself,
Your Lordship’s most humble servant,

THOMAS WALSHE, prieft.

PS My Lord. - We are not so presumptuous as to wish support from the Government; we offer our voluntary services. We hope, however, not to offend in entreating for our pafsage.

NOTES:

This post, re-published from November 2018, is the second part in our serial on the foundational years of Catholicism in Australia.

AMDG. 

Catholics and the First Fleet : Re-posted

The famous painting of 1937 by the artist Algernon Talmage
depicting the raising of the Union Jack at Sydney Cove on
26th January 1788.
Image : The State Library of NSW

Every Australian knows about the First Fleet, but how it came about is a tale both interesting and awful.  White settlement in Australia was not primarily about colonising new lands for immigrants, nor to extend English geo-political influence in the Asia-Pacific region, but rather because of the need for the British government to find a solution to the over-crowding of its gaols.  English historians Alan Brooke and David Brandon help us look beyond that fact :

In order to safeguard wealth and property, [English] governments from the 16th to the 19th centuries produced a penal code which, at first glance, was of fearsome severity.  The classes that dominated Parliament used the criminal law and the creation of more and more capital offences to support a redefining of property and the purposes of government.

Brooke and Brandon Bound for Botany Bay, 2005, p.15

Throughout England but especially in London, crime rates increased when ordinary citizens had to turn to petty theft to alleviate extreme poverty. From the beginning of the 18th century, such theft was dealt with the greatest severity in a succession of new laws.  London was a violent melting-pot, awash with vagabonds, villains and organisers of crime, who readily took advantage of the poor to expand their criminal activity.  New laws pertaining to larceny, increasingly comprehensive, sought to bring expanding waves of crime under control.  Although intended to deter crime by the severity of punishment, Justice was also flexible and even merciful in 18th century England.

Contemporary illustration below deck on an 18th century prison hulk.
The convicts transported in the First Fleet would have been confined
in conditions similar to this, except that the height of these below deck cells
would have been significantly lower.
Image : National Library of Australia.

The prisons of England were unable to contain all the felons sent to them and alternative arrangements had to be found.  The settlement of North America provided the British Government with great opportunities to send its unwelcome convicts, and transportation to the Americans colonies continued, on and off, for a century. This came to an abrupt end in 1776, however, when these Colonies collectively declared their independence from Britain, and with the ensuing American Revolutionary War.  These are the years immediately prior to the First Fleet.


In 1770, Captain James Cook of the Royal Navy, in a voyage of exploration on behalf of the British Government, chartered the East coast of Australia and most of New Zealand. Of especial interest was the discovery of a coastal inlet which became known as Botany Bay, because of the wide variety of native flora found there. The name "Botany Bay" became synonymous with Australia, even though the greater continent had been known as New Holland since Dutch voyages of discovery more than a century before Captain Cook. It was also regularly referred to as New South Wales.


With some reluctance and having rejected alternatives, the Government of Prime Minister William Pitt determined in 1786 that it was expedient to establish a Penal Colony for England's felons on the far-side of the world - in Botany Bay - and ordered the preparation of a transportation Fleet by the British Home Office, the Treasury and the Royal Navy. Eleven ships comprised this First Fleet, transporting 750 convicts (more than 75% being male) to Botany Bay. They ranged from hardened and violent criminals to foolish but otherwise respectable first-offenders; but they all had fallen foul of the law. Life aboard these ships was harsh for convicts, but not significantly worse than they had experienced in English gaols and the prison hulks, the floating penitentiaries, formerly battleships of the Royal Navy. The First Fleet sailed from Portsmouth on 13th May 1787.


The practice of Religion played little part in the lives of those Transportees, except for the formalities of Divine Service required to be carried out by the Government. Aboard were adherents of the Church of England, as well various Protestant Non-Conformists, Jews and - especially of interest to readers of this blog, a significant number of Catholics : perhaps as many as 25% of the Fleet's total. An application in 1787 by Father Thomas Walsh, to provide for the spiritual needs of those Catholics by sailing with the Fleet to Australia was ignored. A young clergyman of the Church of England, the Reverend Richard Johnson, had been appointed in October 1786 to join the expedition as Chaplain. We shall discuss Mr Johnson more in a forthcoming post.

Illustration from Captain Watkin Tench's
Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay (1789)
Image : National Library of Australia.

Historians debate whether there were particular criteria in the selection of those to be transported to Botany Bay.  It seems clear, however, that the British Government took this opportunity to create a system for ridding itself of those deemed undesirable : hardened criminals, the unskilled (as we would understand the term today), the rebellious, anti-Establishment protestants and papists (a Protestant term derogatory of Catholics) etc.

The archivist and historian James Hugh Donohoe has written :

The Catholic Church in Australia began on the River Thames in London in 1787 when some members of the First Fleet were first embarked ...  95 Irish-named convicts came in the First Fleet.  Another five came as family members, 19 as ships’ crew and 29 as marines.  …  Only 170 of the 800 Catholic convicts on the First and Second Fleets had Irish surnames : a total of 20%. … Of those likely Catholics identified by their Irish or generally Catholic surnames, most were convicted in courts located in coastal western or southern England.

JH Donohoe The Catholics of New South Wales 1788 - 1820, 1988, pp.1 - 4

A contemporary illustration of Sydney Cove in the months following the
arrival of the First Fleet.
Image : National Library of Australia.

It is a myth that the first Catholics in Australia were all Irish and convict and transported to Australia as political prisoners. Mr Donohoe's research reveals that the earliest Catholics in Australia - before 1791 - were largely English, or Irish resident in England. Most of these were convicts, but some were not.  No provision was made by the British Government for these Catholics.  We can only surmise, in the absence of evidence, that for those earliest Catholics, the practice of their religion was a private matter and some comfort amidst the harsh life of the new penal colony. 

A following post will discuss the practice of Religion in the early years of the NSW colony.

AMDG

NOTES :

This article was previously published on this blog in 2019.  It is re-published as the first chapter in our serial on the foundation of the Catholicism on this continent.