Francis Bertie BOYCE

BOYCE, FRANCIS BERTIE (b. Tiverton, Devon, England, 1844; d. Blackheath, NSW, May 1931). Anglican clergyman, social reformer, imperial patriot, and church politician.

Surviving shipwreck at Barwon Heads, Vic, his emigrating family set up an accountancy and winegrowing business in Balmain, NSW. After its collapse and his father's accidental death in 1858, Boyce began work in banking. Those who perceived his Christian gifts directed him to Moore College, Liverpool, for theological training. After two years under both W Hodgson (q.v.) and R L King (q.v.) he was deaconed by Bp Barker 1868, priested 1869 and sent to George's Plains, SW of Bathurst.

There, and as rector of Molong (1873-75), and of Holy Trinity, Orange (1875-81), his enterprise led to the building of l 5 churches and a parsonage. On pastoral tours of western NSW to establish church ministry he travelled widely, once from Molong down the Bogan and then to Bourke, Wilcannia, Brewarrina and Cobar. While at Orange his skills in public debate were recognised in his unsuccessful press campaign in defence of Christian education through continuance of government aid to denominational schools. Refusing an honorary canonry at Bathurst he left the diocese, and after a brief visit to England, became in 1882 rector of Pyrmont, Sydney and then rector 1884-1931 of St Paul's, Redfern, Sydney. He was elected canon of St Andrew's Cathedral and later appointed archdeacon of Sydney. Originally a wealthy middle class area, Redfern became in Boyle’s time an inner city parish of slums, unemployment and poverty. St Paul's was a busy evangelical parish, with Sunday schools (superintended for forty years by James McGowen (q.v.)), midweek and Lenten services, a Young Men's Union, a coal club, ladies bazaars, Bible classes, a branch of Boyce's NSW Temperance Society, and evangelistic missions. Holy Communion was celebrated three times a month at St Paul's in 1885 and 'one third of the sittings [were] free'. The volume of work was to break his own and his wife's health.

He read broadly but conservatively in apologetics, millennial controversies, British history and social reform. With an eye for statistical detail, his scrapbooks record enthusiastically a growing colonial progress and prosperity, an image which conflicted with the deteriorating social conditions of his parish. For him the righteousness that exalted a nation had to he seen in practical and local action to remedy social injustice and inequity as he believed the Bible showed Jesus taught.

Boyce responded to perceived needs pragmatically. He worked with tenacity and resource to stir church leaders, a wider public, and their politicians and city officials, to promote, eg slum clearance, pensions for the aged and invalid, the 'purity of women', Sunday observance, and temperance. His campaigns encompassed public meetings, deputations to government officials, letters and articles in the press, books and pamphlets, giving evidence before parliamentary select committees, moving synod motions and chairing synod subcommittees, forming and leading of lobby groups, engagement in the preselection and election of sympathetic parliamentary candidates, and in cultivating personal links with leading politicians such as Sir Henry Parkes. In all this Boyce showed a shrewd grasp of the political skills needed to attract and influence public opinion and to work amidst faction and party politics.

Using such methods F B Boyce claimed responsibility for successful legislation at State (1899) and Commonwealth (1908) levels for aged pensions and invalid pensions, for changed labour laws on Sunday work, for programs of slum clearance (1908), and especially for the control of the liquor trade through exercise of 'local option', and through strict regulation of the hours of opening, to reclaim lives from alcoholism and rebuild family life (1905). His large, tendentious book, The Drink Problem in Australia (1893) was acclaimed and printed overseas as well as in Sydney.

Boyce's imperial patriotism was manifested in his publications (eg, What the C of E has done for NSW), in his promotion of the annual commemoration of the first Christian service in NSW, and his loyalty to Britishness and Imperial unity (amidst post-Federation uncertainty) in his leadership of efforts to secure the observance in Australian schools and community of Empire Day.

In church politics Boyce was respected for his social commitment and commonsense. Ever practical, but with a keen eye to what other Australian bishops would find acceptable, Boyce successfully contrived the appointment of J C Wright (q.v.) and (not W H Griffith Thomas) as successor to the disappointingly inactive W S Smith (q.v.) as abp of Sydney (and potentially, therefore, as Australian Primate). As an Anglican, Boyce was strongly evangelical, not unaware of church politics, but no partisan, he took no lead in contemporary anti-ritualist crusades and purges. He suspected the Roman Catholic church and cooperated readily in social reform with other Protestants. His energies and anger were channelled into pressing his denomination to address the depressing agenda for social reform that surrounded them. In his stance he was revered and respected, but not widely followed. His mantle fell, not least in temperance matters, on R B S Hammond (q.v.).

He married (on 5 July 1871) Caroline Stewart, second daughter of William Stewart of Blayney. She died in 1918. They had three sons, Frank, Marcus and Eric.

His many publications included Four Score Years and Seven: the Memoirs of Archdeacon Boyce, for over sixty years a Clergyman in the Church of England in NSW (1934); on temperance matters (published by the NSW Alliance for the Suppression of Intemperance which Boyce helped form in 1882 and on whose committee he thereafter served as member or chairman) were How the Money is Spent (1888) and The Open Sore of NSW. His larger work, The Drink Problem in Australia, or the Plagues of Alcohol and the Remedies, was published by the League in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, and by the British League, in 1893. There then followed The Drink Bills of NSW (1898), The New Testament and Intoxicants (1900 and reprinted to 1910), Shall I vote for NO Licence? (1906) and The Case for NO Licence (1913). On other themes were What The Church of England has done for NSW (1905, & 1926), Augustine and the Evangelisation of England (1897), Thomas Moore: An Early Australian Worthy (1913), The War and Future Problems (1915), The Coronation of the King (1911), The Lambeth Conference, or, A Synod for the Anglican Communion (1908) and Should There Be a Federal Synod for the Anglican Church? The Lambeth Conference (1920).

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ROBERT S M WITHYCOMBE