Henry Phibbs FRY

FRY, HENRY PHIBBS (b. Sligo, Ireland, 1807? d. Oxford, England, 11 Jan 1874). Penal reformer, evangelical activist in VDL.

Of Anglo-Irish background, and BA from TCD, Fry arrived in VDL in 1839 as a nominee of the SPCK a deacon and a keen Tractarian. In l 843 he was ordained by Bp Nixon, and published the erudite The Scriptural Evidence of the Apostolic Ministry and Tradition of the Church Catholic. Fry was a relisher of causes, secular and religious. From strongly supporting penal transportation he became an equally strong opponent, expressing his new views in the well-received A System of Penal Discipline (1850). By the early 1850s Fry was an active anti-transportationist, promoter of immigration schemes and temperance advocate.

Partly impelled by growing fears of 'Roman aggression', Fry abandoned Tractarianism becoming, around 1850, a hard-line evangelical erastian and, generally, a laicist in defining ultimate decision-making power in the church. In 1850, during a visit to Britain, Fry received a DD from TCD, which enhanced his VDL status, and perhaps ambition. Fry enthusiastically welcomed the 1850 Gorham judgement on baptismal regeneration. On returning to VDL he soon clashed publicly with Bp Nixon, who outspokenly deplored it. Fry had been minister since 1840 of St George's Church, Battery Point. In 1850 he helped to carry that congregation into the evangelical camp, where it still remains. From 1851 until 1858 (when Fry, in poor health, returned to England) he took an active role—as organiser, ideologue, pamphleteer and journal editor—in partly successful resistance to Nixon's Laudian view of the primacy of episcopal authority. Early in 1851, he was the chief mover in founding the Protestant Association - 'for maintaining ... the Principles of the Protestant Reformation'. Shortly after, Fry played a major part in drafting the Association's 'Solemn Declaration', which affirmed that justification was by faith alone, that the Scriptures were the sole rule of faith, and that Christ's Church transcended denominational boundaries. Taking special aim at Nixon, the Declaration denied 'the right of any Church or Minister to prescribe to individuals in matters of religion in opposition to their judgment'. Around 1852-3, Fry contemplated founding a free episcopalian church in VDL, but chose instead to agitate within the C of E for a kind of comprehensive, pan-protestant scriptural evangelicalism - 'one Catholic Church of all Evangelical Christians'. In 1853 he established and edited The Protestant.

Fry combined involvement in the C of E's religious perturbations with equally strenuous involvement in the secular causes noted earlier. The two found neatly convergent expression in his 1853 statement that 'the moral and social progress of nations is proportional to their exercise of the right of private judgment'. A powerful orator as well as energetic organiser, Fry played a leading part in the 1850s struggle to shape the future character of the C of E in Tasmania, but his tendency to vacillate on tactical and religious priorities impaired his effectiveness.

ADB 1; N Batt & M Roe, 'Conflict Within the Church of England in Tasmania,1850-1858', JRH,4 (1966-7): 3962

RICHARD ELY