Samuel LEIGH

LEIGH, SAMUEL (b. Milton, Staffordshire, 1 Sept 1785; d. Reading, England, 2 May 1852). Wesleyan missionary and minister.

The son of Anglican parents, Samuel Leigh was converted by Methodists at a cottage meeting and later joined the Independent congregation at Hanley where he rented a whole pew so he could seat unconverted persons whom he had persuaded to attend worship. He became a lay helper and later studied theology under the Independent Dr David Bogue at Gosport, but left because he could not accept his teacher's Calvinist doctrine. He joined the Methodists and was appointed assistant at Portsmouth Circuit whence, after meeting Thomas Coke, he volunteered for missions. He was accepted in 1814 and sent to NSW in answer to an appeal from laymen who had established a class meeting there. He arrived in Sydney on 10 August 1815.

Governor Macquarie, who wanted only the established church in the colony, sought to dissuade him from his work, but Leigh promised to co-operate with the Anglican chaplains and by his submissive attitude won the support of the governor. The chaplains also co-operated readily with him as he conducted his own services outside church hours and refrained from administering the Lord's Supper which would have emphasised the separateness of Methodism.

Leigh travelled extensively in the country, notably through Parramatta, Windsor, Castlereagh and Liverpool and established a circuit of about 240 kms and with 14 preaching places which took him 10 days to traverse.

Soon after his arrival, Leigh helped re-found a non-denominational Benevolent Society and an Auxiliary Bible Society. He remained an active member of the SPCK and later formed an Auxiliary Wesleyan Missionary Society and a tract society. In 1818-19 he visited New Zealand for nine months to recover his health and in 1820 returned to England for the same purpose. He m. Catherine Clewes the same year. He also reported falsely to the Wesleyan Missionary Committee on his brethren in Sydney and did much to foster the unfortunate quarrel between the Wesleyan missionaries and the Committee which so damaged Methodist work in NSW in the 1820s.

On his return to Australia he established a mission at Hobart then went to New Zealand in Feb 1822, at Samuel Marsden's suggestion, and founded the Wesleyan mission at Whangaroa. He returned to NSW in Sept 1823 and worked briefly at Parramatta before going on to England where he remained in circuit work until 1845. Leigh retired to Reading.

Leigh is an enigma. An intense and lonely man, he displayed the utmost earnestness and was an indefatigable worker. Indeed, it is certain that he ruined his health by his unremitting labour in a climate he was unable to bear. To ride twenty miles and preach four times on a summer Sunday in the heavy clerical garb of the day was physically debilitating. That he had a missionary spirit and considerable evangelistic gifts cannot be doubted. But he was neither a leader nor an organiser and he lacked the intellectual equipment to govern well the young church in NSW or to challenge the follies of the Missionary Committee. In his personal relationships with his often difficult colleagues, he lacked tact and he failed to show loyalty to them. He was prepared to lie without scruple to his superiors. Worst of all, he had no real vision and entirely failed to realise the need for Methodism to break free from the incubus of its client relationship with the Anglican Church and go its separate and uninhibited way. Leigh brought Methodism to NSW and in that sense only is the Church's founder in Australia. When he left, the mission was a shambles and it would be hard to argue that there had been much gain from its presence either to the colony or to Methodism.

ADB 2; Australian Encyclopaedia (Sydney, 1959); J Colwell, Illustrated History of Methodism (Sydney, 1904); D I Wright & E G Clancy, The Methodists A History of Methodism in NSW (Sydney, 1993)

DON WRIGHT