William COWPER

COWPER, WILLIAM (b. Whittington, Lancs, England, 28 Dec 1778; d. Sydney, NSW, 6 July 1858). Archdeacon in the Church of England.

Son of a farmer, William Cowper became a government clerk in Hull, where he was converted. Samuel Marsden, recruiting for NSW, arranged for his ordination. Cowper was ordained deacon by the bp of Winchester for the abp of Canterbury in March 1790 and priest in April. He reached Sydney on the Indispensible in August 1809. He had married Hannah Horner on 11 April 1799; after her death on 7 June 1808, leaving three children, he had married Ann Barrell on 10 January 1809. Ann accompanied William to the colony.

Cowper was appointed to St Phillip's, Sydney. He remained there until his death in 1858. What had been the only parish in the settlement of Sydney, with a ramshackle church, had become one of many in a busy city with a fine Gothic building. The simple convict society had evolved into a complex colonial structure living on pastoralism and gold. Yet William Cowper remained relatively unchanged: he avoided appointment to the magistracy eschewed political involvements and remained neutral in the exclusive-emancipist contests.

Cowper was an unflinching North of England evangelical, faithful to the precepts he had learned as a young man. He strove hard to impart the gospel in an unprepossessing situation. While prolix and often tedious as a preacher, he was a competent and keen organiser of Bible, missionary and charitable groups. This work kept him in touch with evangelical societies in Britain and with developments in their thought and practice. He only returned home once, for a pioneer operation for cataract but he was clearly influenced by new theological emphases. The strong Calvinism of his early years became substantially modified. Nevertheless, Cowper's basic evangelical position remained firm. After Marsden's death in 1838, he was the principal upholder of Sydney's original theological tradition. By then, it was under threat. The first bishop (Australia in 1836, Sydney from 1848), W G Broughton, was a High Churchman influenced (as were other colonial prelates) by the new Tractarian movement. Cowper was loyal to his episcopal leader, being at one with him on most points of ecclesiastical polity - he was a 'church evangelical', Broughton rewarded him by making him archdeacon in 1848. But Cowper was obliged to protest against Tractarian teaching at the local divinity college. He remained a somewhat unwilling focal point for opposition to the new ecclesiology.

On Broughton's death in 1853, amid the upheavals of the gold rush and moves for self-government in church and state, Cowper became acting-head of Sydney diocese. By now beginning to fail, in mind and hotly, he battled to keep a semblance of unity and effectiveness until the arrival, in 1855, of the new bishop. To Cowper's relief, Frederic Barker (q.v.) was a strong evangelical. Much honoured by his bishop, William died on 6 July 1858, satisfied the colony's religious inheritance was secure. He received a state funeral. The archbishop of Canterbury had given him the DD degree.

Cowper had married a third time, in 1836 Harriette Swain bore him two children. He thus had a large family, which gave service to the new country. One son, Charles Cowper became premier of the colony several times. Another, William Macquarie Cowper (q.v.) was Australia's first native-born Anglican clergyman and the first dean of Sydney. In him, William Cowper's evangelical inheritance was perpetuated.

ADB 1; S Judd and K Cable, Sydney Anglicans: A History of the Diocese (Sydney, 1987); G P Shaw, Patriarch and Patriot: William Grant Broughton (Melbourne, 1978); A T Yarwood, Samuel Marsden: The Great Survivor (Melbourne, 1977)

K J CABLE