Australian National University THESES SIS/LIBRARY TELEPHONE: +61 2 6125 4631 R.G. MENZIES LIBRARY BUILDING NO:2 FACSIMILE: +61 2 6125 4063 THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY EMAIL: [email protected] CANBERRA ACT 0200 AUSTRALIA USE OF THESES This copy is supplied for purposes of private study and research only. Passages from the thesis may not be copied or closely paraphrased without the written consent of the author. WILLIAM GRANT BROUGHTON AND HIS EARLY YEARS IN NEW SOUTH WALES G.P. Shaw. A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Australian National University. 1970. This thesis is the result of original research conducted by the author in the Department of History, School of General Studies, Australian National University, between January 1967 and January 1970. (0U~> George Peter Shaw. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis was written with the aid of a Research Scholarship granted by the Australian National University, and taken out in the Department of History at the School of General Studies. There the patient wisdom of Professor Manning Clark first stimulated and encouraged, and then with equanimity assisted in the evolution of a set of ideas he could scarcely be expected to share. He and Broughton provided a zestful and provocative dialectic, and my debt to each is not to be measured in these few words. Professor C.M. Williams’ sharp wit saved me from some errors, and under his guiding hand the staff and students of the History Department provided several hot contests and much useful criticism at those Wednesday afternoon seminars. To all at the School of General Studies who helped turn the award of a scholarship into a rich three-year sojourn I return by gratitude. My debt to the staff and benefactors of the Mitchell Library, Sydney, is written in the footnotes of almost every page. I owe much to the staff of the Advanced Reading Room and Microfilm Room of the Australian National Library. Both libraries of the Australian National University, in conjunction with the Victorian Public Library and the British Museum, kept up a flow of pamphlets to which sections of this work are obviously indebted. I am grateful for the opportunities provided to investigate papers in the New South Wales State Archives and the Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney, for access to the Therry Papers at Canisius College, Sydney, the British Critic at the Fisher Library, Sydney, the Broughton Library, Moore College, Sydney, and to Dr. N. Gunson for an extended loan of his transcript of the Threlkeld Papers. I wish to thank Mr. P.W. Brett, business manager of the School of General Studies, whose willingness to accommodate excessive calls on research funds made the extensive research at the Mitchell Library possible. Finally, my thanks are due to the Brisbane Typing Service for exceeding its obligations to ensure that this thesis reached its destination on time. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgements iii Abbreviations v The Argument vi Introduction xii The Thesis CH.I. Before New South Wales 1 2. The Approach 42 3. Arrival, Reception, and a Proclamation that the 70 Colony Shall Be Redeemed by Christ's Blood and British Institutions 4. The Darling Years: Prospects Better than Progress 137 5. Bourke and the Year 1832 197 6. 1833: The Assault 246 7. Waiting in Corridors 309 8. Founding the Citadel 381 9. Building the Citadel 446 10. Preparing to Enter His Second Decade 496 Appendix A 531 B 538 C 540 D 542 Bibliography 548 V ABBREVIATIONS A.N.L. Australian National Library. A.N.U. Australian National University. C.M.S. Church Missionary Society. C.O. Colonial Office. C.S.I.L. Colonial Secretary's Office, In Letters (N.S.W.). C.S.O.L. Colonial Secretary's Office, Out Letters (N.S.W.). H. R. A. Historical Record of Australia. L.M.S. London Missionary Society. M.L. Mitchell Library. N.S.W. S.A. New South Wales State Archives P.D. Parliamentary Debates (British). P.R.O. Public Records Office Proc.Ex.C.(N.S.W.) Proceedings of Executive Council, N.S.W. Proc.Ex.C.(V.D.L.) Proceedings of Executive Council, V.D.L. P.P. Parliamentary Papers (House of Commons). S.P.C.K. Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. S.P.G. Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. V. § P. (L.C. Votes and Proceedings of Legislative Council (N.S.W.). N.S.W.) m/f Microfilm Ms.No. Manuscript Number vi. THE ARGUMENT Broughton was horn on the eve of the French Revolution and into a generation preoccupied with mob disorder and legitimate authority. His school days at Canterbury had him strategically placed by a camp for French prisoners and within range of tales that would heighten his sense of the drama which closed the eighteenth and opened the nineteenth centuries on the Continent. From Canterbury Broughton went to London, and into the midst of a parliamentary and pulpit debate on the ill-effect of religious dissent on good order and stable government. Whatever he picked up there was systematically arranged along with lively comment by Dr. Herbert Marsh, Professor of Divinity at Cambridge and champion of the Church Establishment against all loose thinkers who flirted with non-conformity. Broughton emerged from Cambridge in 1818 distinguished in scholarship and a firm highchurchman. He earned high praise for his diligence as a curate and good money for his success as a schoolmaster. Yet he yearned for more. He wanted quiet and seclusion for study and an increased emolument. He asked the Duchess of Wellington to find him the former, and the Duke of Wellington offered him the latter. So in 1829, for £ 2,000 a year, Broughton came to New South Wales as compensation for his failure to win a librarianship in the British Museum. Before he left England Broughton received Scott's official papers and announced, when he arrived in the colony, that he would build on Scott's foundations that Church Establishment which would V I 1 secure the colony, and happily the whole Pacific region, for God as seen through the disciples of the English protestant reformers. On the eve of his departure the announcement of Catholic Emancipation added urgency to his task, while on the morrow of his arrival the news that the Church of England had lost its land endowment injected an element of desperation into his struggle. These two decisions, the work of an English Tory administration, provided the framework for the first of Broughton's two decades of service to the colony. From 1830 to 1834 Broughton fought for the restoration of land endowments, and failed. Darling would happily have seen him succeed. Bourke was determined that he should not. The Tory administration in England which abolished the land grants intended replacing them with aid of equal value from other sources. Instead it was itself replaced by a Whig administration determined to spread the aid to all major denominations at work in the colony with the Church of England as the most favoured son. While this offer was available Broughton campaigned for a return of exclusive aid to the Church of England. By the time he came to accept it in 1834, Bourke had convinced the Colonial Office that aid must be made available to all churches on an equal basis. To reverse this decision and hopefully to regain some land, as well as to raise funds from English churchmen at large, Broughton returned to England in 1834. He departed with the threat to forsake the colony for good unless he could bring back from the Colonial Office a better deal for colonial Anglicanism than he left behind. In England Broughton's attitude underwent a revolutionary change. He arrived late in 1834 and realised that the attack on church privilege and property was empire wide. He realised, too, that many churchmen viii were attempting to extract the sting from the attack by rewriting traditional church doctrine and practice to accommodate the whims of Dissenters. Broughton abhorred the process and shuddered before the prospect. He abandoned all claims for land and decided to return to New South Wales as a bishop, and there to turn the Church of England into a citadel for the preservation of true doctrine and proper church order while a liberal madness swept the rest of the English speaking world. Broughton realised that the Church of England could no longer be an Establishment, and offered to resign his seat on the Legislative Council in the near future as a token of this belief. A day would come, Broughton continued to believe, when the colony disillusioned by its liberal experiment would appeal for a return to the older order and its stability. In that day Broughton's successors would throw open the doors of the citadel in which had been preserved the genius of institutions that had accompanied England's rise to eminence, and produce a body of men fit to serve the nation in church and government. This day may not be, he said, for two hundred years. Broughton's determination to retain his seat on the Legislative Council for at least a year was a symbol of the policy he had decided to adopt for the immediate future. Although the Church Establishment was going, it had not gone, and Broughton intended using his dying powers and declining influence to drive as favourable a bargain as he could with government. Back in the colony in 1836 he raised no public objection to the Church Act because it provided him with money for churches and clergy in his citadel.