Anglican Commemoration
Bishop & Missionary to Australia
June 6 · d. 1853
also known as William Broughton, W. G. Broughton, First Bishop of Australia
William Grant Broughton was the first and only Bishop of Australia, an English high churchman sent to a young penal colony who spent a quarter-century building a church there from almost nothing. Born in 1788, he arrived in New South Wales in 1829 and was consecrated bishop in 1836. He founded schools, began a cathedral, and divided his vast see before his death in 1853.
William Grant Broughton was an Englishman, born in Westminster in 1788, and for most of his life he expected to live and die in England. He had been a clerk in a counting house before he ever went to Cambridge. He was nearly forty when he was ordained, and a quiet country curate when the call came that changed everything.
The Crown wanted a senior clergyman for New South Wales, the penal colony at the far edge of the world, today in southeastern Australia. Broughton did not want to go. He went anyway.
He sailed in 1829 on a convict transport named the John. The voyage was long and the parting was hard. As the ship neared land he wrote in his diary that the end of the voyage gave him no sensation of joy, because where he was going there was no one he loved. Then the lighthouse at Sydney came into view, and he called it the first friend to welcome us to land.
What he found was a colony with convicts and soldiers and free settlers, and very little church. So he set about making one. He drew up a plan for schools, and out of it came The King's School at Parramatta, which opened in 1832 with three boys and is the oldest such school in the country to this day.
In 1836 he went home to England and was made a bishop in the chapel at Lambeth Palace. He came back as the Bishop of Australia, the only one there would ever be, because the land was too big for one bishop and he knew it. He laid the foundation of a cathedral in Sydney. He rode and sailed across enormous distances to reach scattered parishes. And when the work had grown beyond him, he asked that his single great see be cut into many, so that Melbourne and Newcastle and Adelaide and the rest could each have a bishop of their own.
He died in London in 1853, far from the colony he had served, and was buried in Canterbury Cathedral. He had gone out reluctantly and stayed faithfully. The struggling handful of chaplains he had found became, in time, a church spread across a continent, far more than one man or one see could ever hold, which was the thing he had hoped and labored for.
Broughton is documented from his own published episcopal charges, sermons, and addresses, several of which survive in print, together with a voyage diary preserved at Sydney. The earliest full biography is F. T. Whitington's William Grant Broughton, Bishop of Australia (Angus and Robertson, 1936), now in the public domain. The standard modern scholarly life is G. P. Shaw's Patriarch and Patriot (Melbourne University Press, 1978). The authoritative short account is the Australian Dictionary of Biography entry by G. P. Shaw. Broughton has not attracted a large literature, and the source base, while firm on the public facts of his episcopate, is modest.
What can be said is well attested. Broughton was born at Westminster on 22 May 1788, educated at The King's School, Canterbury, and at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, and ordained relatively late after early years in commerce. He reached Sydney on 13 September 1829 as Archdeacon of New South Wales. The diary of his outward voyage on the John records his reluctance plainly; in Whitington's transcription he writes that the prospect of landfall "occasions no sensation of joy."
He was consecrated Bishop of Australia at Lambeth Palace on 14 February 1836 and enthroned at St James's Church, Sydney, on 5 June that year; his commemoration falls on the following day. A convinced high churchman, he welcomed the new legal standing the Church Act of 1836 gave the Church of England in the colony but deplored the Act's even-handed funding of other denominations, holding that the established church should not be set on a level with them. He laid the foundation stone of St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney, which was completed only after his death. As the colonial church grew, Broughton pressed for the subdivision of his enormous diocese; new sees at Melbourne, Newcastle, and Adelaide were created in 1847, and he became Bishop of Sydney and Metropolitan. He died in London on 20 February 1853 and was buried in Canterbury Cathedral.
Broughton is commemorated on 6 June in the calendar of the Anglican Church of Australia and in the Anglican Church in North America, the date marking his enthronement at St James's Church, Sydney, on 5 June 1836. He is remembered chiefly as a founder and organizer: the man who gave the Australian church its first bishop, its first enduring church school, and the beginnings of its cathedral.
The institutions he founded outlived him. The King's School at Parramatta, opened in 1832, remains the oldest continuously operating independent school in Australia. St Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney, whose foundation he laid, became the mother church of the diocese he led. His insistence that one bishop could not serve a continent helped shape the Anglican map of Australia, with the sees he urged into being at Melbourne, Newcastle, Adelaide, and beyond. He is buried in Canterbury Cathedral, in the country he left and to which he returned at the end.
Charges, a Letter on the Reformation, Visitation Journals, and Sermons(English, 1829-1857)
Broughton's own published voice: his 1829 archidiaconal Charge, his 1832 Letter in vindication of the Reformation, his 1846 visitation journals, and the posthumous 1857 collected Sermons (ed. Benjamin Harrison). Project Canterbury hosts the charges, the Letter, and the journals.
Public domain: A Charge to the Clergy of New South Wales (1829, Internet Archive), A Letter in Vindication of the Principles of the Reformation (1832, Internet Archive), Project Canterbury (Broughton works index)
William Grant Broughton, Bishop of Australia, with Some Account of the Earliest Australian Clergy(English, 1936)
F. T. Whitington's 1936 life, the first full-length biography, valuable for its long verbatim transcriptions from Broughton's diaries and letters; public domain and free to read.
Public domain: Internet Archive (full text)
Bishop Broughton of Australia(English, 1891)
Henry Bailey's short Victorian life, warmer and more devotional than Whitington's, free in full at Project Canterbury.
Public domain: Project Canterbury (full text)
Patriarch and Patriot: William Grant Broughton 1788-1853, Colonial Statesman and Ecclesiastic(English, 1978)
G. P. Shaw's 1978 study is the one standard scholarly biography, sympathetic and politically careful, but long out of print; seek it through a library rather than a used reseller.
Public domain: National Library of Australia catalogue
His own writings. Broughton was a working preacher and controversialist, and a fair amount of him survives in print. His Charge Delivered to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of New South Wales (1829) is the first programme of his colonial ministry; his Letter in Vindication of the Principles of the Reformation (1832) is his high-church apologetic; and The Church in Australia: Two Journals of Visitation (1846) records his travels across the colony. A posthumous collection, Sermons by the Right Rev. W. G. Broughton, edited with a prefatory memoir by Benjamin Harrison (1857), gathers his preaching. Project Canterbury hosts the charges, the Letter, and the journals in one place; it is where to hear Broughton thinking aloud about the church he was trying to build.
Principal biography. F. T. Whitington's William Grant Broughton, Bishop of Australia, with Some Account of the Earliest Australian Clergy (Angus and Robertson, 1936) is the first full-length life and remains valuable for its long transcriptions from Broughton's diaries and letters; it is freely readable at the Internet Archive. Henry Bailey's earlier devotional life, Bishop Broughton of Australia (1891), is shorter and warmer and free at Project Canterbury.
Recommended modern biography. G. P. Shaw's Patriarch and Patriot: William Grant Broughton 1788-1853, Colonial Statesman and Ecclesiastic (Melbourne University Press, 1978) is the one standard scholarly biography, sympathetic to its subject and careful with the politics of the colonial church. It is long out of print and hard to obtain; the National Library of Australia catalogue record is the surest pointer for readers seeking a library copy.
Further reading. The Australian Dictionary of Biography entry by G. P. Shaw is the best concise life and is freely available online at .
Online resources. Project Canterbury is the single best gateway to Broughton's primary texts and the older biographical literature, with charges, sermons, addresses, and lives gathered in one place.
British (Received Pronunciation): Broughton /ˈbrɔːtən/
Almighty and everlasting God, you called your servant William Grant Broughton to preach the Gospel to the people of Australia: Raise up in this and every land evangelists and heralds of your kingdom, that your Church may proclaim the unsearchable riches of our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Readings for a Missionary
Isaiah 49:1–7Psalm 98Romans 10:11–18Luke 5:1–11