William BEDFORD

BEDFORD, WILLIAM (b. England, 1781?; d. Hobart, Tas, 2 Dec 1852). Anglican clergyman, Senior Chaplain VDL.

Bedford's family background is uncertain. Ordained in 1821, in 1822 he was appointed to assist the Rev Robert Knopwood, Senior Chaplain of VDL. Bedford had suitable qualifications: he had been employed as ordinary at Newgate, and could be presumed expert in the 'neck-verses' and the liturgy of last moments. He is said originally to have been a staymaker, and to have entered prison work through the influence of Mrs Fry. On Knopwood's retirement in 1823 Bedford became senior chaplain. A firm evangelical, he soon gained repute as a specialist in 'managing' convicts and winning public statements of repentance from prisoners about to be executed. He also won, for his pains, a nickname—'Holy Willie'. Bedford at first was warmly praised by Lt-Gov Arthur (q.v.). However by the mid1830s well-publicised fondness for pleasures of table and bottle, and casual ways with loans and donations, lost Bedford much of Arthur's respect. This fall from secular grace was accompanied by a second blow—to his clerical pride. When fellow evangelical William Palmer arrived in 1833 as rural dean, Bedford was displaced as leading churchman, although remaining incumbent at Hobart's main church, St David's. A bitter struggle for de facto ascendancy ensued, with clear class overtones, between the gentlemanly Palmer and convict specialist Bedford. From this arose a complex jurisdictional dispute. At Palmer's instigation, Bedford in 1836 was called before the VDL Executive Council to answer an allegation that he falsified school returns. Bedford countered by refusing to appear, citing Bp Broughton's claim that jurisdiction lay with him, as bishop, rather than the temporal body. This was not crypto-Tractarianism by Bedford, but shrewd playing of one 'established' jurisdiction against another. Palmer resolved the crisis by withdrawing the charge, and the issue, but not the ill-feeling between the two clerics, fizzled out.

In 1843 Bedford's erastianism and evangelicalism combined to throw him against the ultra-Laudian aspirations of Bp Nixon. Bedford sought to defend, against Nixon, the religious standing and independence he derived as chief religious officer in the penal establishment. This intra-establishment jurisdictional dispute (as Bedford and, at the time, Nixon saw it) resembled the earlier one, but this time Bedford played off the temporal authority against the ecclesiastical. Thrice he refused to present his commission to Nixon; and also for some time refused to permit the bishop use of St David's for lectures. In the same year the abp of Canterbury, who admired Bedford, awarded Bedford an honorary DD, and doubtless Bedford's hand was strengthened. Eventually, an uneasy truce evolved between Bedford and his bishop. Bedford's last fling against the growing high church trend represented by Nixon was warmly to welcome the Gorham decision, and to reprint one of the pro-Gorham pamphlets.

Arthur once implied that Bedford, as a minister to the 'lower classes in this community' lacked the 'energy of character' to ensure 'deference'. Possibly so. Certainly he attracted, and sometimes earned, mockery from others; and his equivocal reputation travelled far: he is unkindly portrayed (as 'Dr Blackfoot') in A Dumas' Journal of Madame Giovanni (Reprinted NY, 1944). But Bedford, who had friends as well as allies, did not lack the will to survive, nor the will to hold the fort in VDL, in firm though unsubtle fashion for low churchmanship and evangelical Christianity.

He is commemorated by an elegant memorial, erected in 1853 by public subscription, in St David's Park, Hobart.

ADB l; M Levy, Governor George Arthur (Melb, 1953)

RICHARD ELY