Van Diemen’s Land had, in its first fifty years, three government chaplains: Robert Knopwood in Hobart (1803–1823), William Bedford (from 1823 into the 1850s), and John Youl in the north (from 1818). Collectively, they spanned almost the entire convict era and territory. None was simply a clergyman: all held substantial land grants, two were magistrates, and all served in government roles unrelated to religion. Convict reform was only one duty among many, and rarely the one that governed their time. Their chief work was civil and often lucrative, with the magistrate’s bench sometimes sitting at odds with pastoral care—an arrangement shaped by the colonial government, not individual failings.
A fourth clergyman, Philip Conolly—the Catholic chaplain from 1821—held no such office and was barred from it. This key difference sharpens the argument: the Anglicans’ civil careers explain why convicts mostly received religious formalities, while the condemned sometimes received deeper attention. Knopwood’s case shows this pattern in detail.
Knopwood: glebe, bench, and garden
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Knopwood arrived on HMS Resolution in 1803 and took the first service held in Van Diemen’s Land, at Hobart, in February 1804. Within weeks he was also a magistrate, a position he held continuously until 1828. Twenty-four years on the bench, five years longer than he held the chaplaincy itself. He was, by his own government’s account, a man worth endowing: a 400-acre glebe[1] at Clarence Plains (Rokeby), another 100 acres at the same location, 30 acres at Hobart that became his celebrated “Cottage Green,” a further 500-acre grant from Macquarie in 1815, and land on the South Esk River. That is well over a thousand acres of granted land sitting under one clergyman, on top of a stipend that rose from £182 to £260 in 1817.
None of this made him rich. He was chronically in debt and eventually lost Cottage Green in a questionable transaction at the hands of Governor Arthur. Knopwood retired on a reduced pension. The debt is the point: maintaining land, hosting guests, and running a prominent garden took time away from convict ministry. He was a landed gentleman with competing obligations, including the magistrate’s bench. He was remembered for both kindness and severity, reflecting the demands of his dual roles—an ambivalence visible in his diary.
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His diary reflects these priorities: detailed entries about farming (such as sowing wheat or landing the colony’s first crayfish) and magistracy (sentencing convicts to harsh punishments), but only a single brief mention of a muster service for convicts. The flogging, not the sermon, received more attention.
Bedford: schools, council, and a reputation in tatters
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Bedford, Knopwood’s successor from 1823, followed a similar pattern, holding roles as superintendent of schools, committee member, Legislative Council chaplain, and justice of the peace. He also conducted weekly services at church, gaol, and barracks—often single-handedly. For long periods, the colony’s chaplaincy for convicts was the additional duty of just one man, fitted around other obligations.
Bedford’s standing collapsed: accused of falsifying school returns in 1836 and suffering financial embarrassment, he was not positioned to make convict reform his central concern. Chaplaincy was one duty among many, discharged as time and character allowed—leaving limited space for pastoral care.
Yet Governor Arthur praised Bedford’s sincerity and devotion to condemned men—a distinction only meaningful if such attention was rare. His notable pastoral care was selective, not routine, illustrating how the office shaped where time could be spent.
Youl: glebe, stock, and sons
Youl’s case is the plainest: his chaplaincy was defined by land, livestock, and family advancement, not civil office. He received a 400-acre glebe with convict servants, a further 700-acre personal grant, and government stock. He used these resources to establish his sons as pastoralists, focusing on family advancement over missionary work.
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Youl never sat on the magistrate’s bench; his chaplaincy obligations were secondary to building his family’s status among the colonial gentry. Assigned convict labour worked his land for family gain, not for convict reformation. This makes the transition from ministry to family advancement clear.
The Chaplaincy: an establishment, not a vocation
None of this implies hypocrisy or villainy on the part of Knopwood, Bedford, or Youl. Rather, it reveals how the established Church of England made its clergy Crown appointees, granting them land, salaries, and administrative positions. Chaplains who were also magistrates had no institutional reason to challenge the convict system—they were its officers. Convict moral improvement, though real in official rhetoric and muster rolls, was a sideline compared with their offices and property.
Where the attention actually went
Where attention of the chaplains did concentrate was the condemned cell, and for reasons that had little to do with either Anglican’s ordinary pastoral instincts. Knopwood’s own record supplies the clearest case. When Alexander Pearce, an ordinary convict at large after his first escape from Macquarie Harbour, confessed to Knopwood — acting in his capacity as magistrate — that he had killed and eaten his fellow escapees, Knopwood did not believe him, and sent him back to Macquarie Harbour. It was only after Pearce’s second escape, once he was under sentence of death, that a clergyman took his account seriously enough to act on it: Father Philip Conolly, the colony’s Catholic chaplain since 1821, heard his full confession the night before his execution in 1824 and gave him the last rites. The man whose office was closest to Pearce for most of his convict life treated his confession as incredible; the priest who attended him at the very end treated it as the truth, and it was.
Conolly stands apart from Knopwood and Bedford, as he held no magistracy, glebe, or council seat—Macquarie’s government restricted Catholic clergy’s activity and excluded them from the land-and-office system. Covering the whole colony alone, his routine convict ministry was sparse, but preparing condemned men for death was central to his role, not an exception forced by other duties. What pastoral attention he gave was shaped by institutional limits, not by rivalry or personal virtue.
In 1911, his remains were placed under the floor of the transept of St Mary’s Cathedral
Nearly twenty years later, Bedford’s chaplaincy revealed the same divide: in 1842, two condemned convicts switched to Catholicism, prompting official debate. Bedford objected, suspecting a desire for confessional privacy. This episode shows the Anglican chaplain acting as an office-holder defending territory, not just as a pastor.
Executions were public events the state needed to stage as ‘good deaths’ with visible pastoral care—hence the spike in clerical attention, regardless of denomination. For Bedford, such engagement was remarkable amid civil duties; for Conolly, it was central, since civil office was never an option. The key variable was office, not theology.
Sources
- Australian Dictionary of Biography, ‘Knopwood, Robert (Bobby) (1763–1838)’ — grants, magistracy, salary, pension, reputation.
- Australian Dictionary of Biography, ‘Bedford, William (1781–1852)’ — civil appointments, the 1836 schools affair, Boyes’s assessment, Arthur’s praise for his attention to condemned men.
- Australian Dictionary of Biography, ‘Youl, John (1773–1827)’ — his arrival at Port Dalrymple, his salary, his glebe and assigned servants, his South Esk grant, and the Macarthur rams.
- Australian Dictionary of Biography, ‘Conolly, Philip (1786–1839)’ — his arrival in 1821, and Macquarie’s restrictions on Catholic clergy.
- Companion to Tasmanian History, ‘Conolly, Philip’ — his lack of civil office, his quarterly circuit, and his preparation of condemned men as “perhaps his hardest role.”
- In Bobby’s Footsteps (Battery Point History Walk), ‘Cottage Green’ — the loss of Knopwood’s Hobart property.
- Robert Knopwood, diary, 1805–1808 (transcript), University of Tasmania ePrints, PDF — the farming and sentencing entries, and the 12 April 1805 muster service.
- ‘Alexander Pearce’, Wikipedia — the sequence of Pearce’s confessions and his execution.
- Hobart History, ‘A Convenient Conversion: Two Condemned Men and the Question of Faith at the Gallows, 1842’ — the Langham and Shaw case.
[1] A glebe is land granted to support a parish clergyman, with the produce or rent from it (rather than a separate salary alone) meant to provide part of his living — traditionally attached to the office itself rather than owned by the man personally. Hence, it passed to whoever held the parish next, not to his heirs. In Knopwood’s case, the 400-acre grant at Clarence Plains was described specifically as glebe land at Rokeby, distinct from the further grants he received in his own right (the 100 acres at the same location, the Hobart allotment that became Cottage Green, the 500 acres from Macquarie in 1815, and the South Esk land). Part of his thousand-odd acres came with the chaplaincy as an endowment of the office, and the rest was his personally, as a settler in his own name.
