This pamphlet, donated to our Australiana Rare collection, contains the sermon that Robert Lethbridge King preached at the funeral of Thomas Hassall in 1868, together with a brief biography which first appeared in the Australian Churchman.
Thomas Hassall was born in England in 1794, but when he was only two years old his parents, Rowland and Elizabeth, sailed to Tahiti on the missionary ship Duff, along with William Pascoe Crook and others. The family moved to Sydney and in 1813 Thomas opened the first Sunday School in Australia. He sailed to England in 1817 to study at Cambridge under Charles Simeon, and was the first Australian candidate for ordination.
After returning to Sydney, he married Samuel Marsden’s daughter Anne and was appointed chaplain to the penal settlement at Port Macquarie. He didn’t remain there very long, and after spending some years in Bathurst he moved to the Cowpasture district, which he referred to as “Australia beyond Liverpool.” As the population grew and more churches were constructed, Hassall visited a wide range of parishes on horseback to conduct services, including Mulgoa, Narellan, Sutton Forest and as far south as Goulburn. This wide-ranging ministry earned him the nickname “the galloping parson,” although his parishioners simply called him Thomas. Heber Chapel, named after Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta and author of the hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy”, was consecrated by Samuel Marsden in 1828, before the larger church of St Paul’s Cobbitty was completed in 1842. Hassall died at his property Denbigh in 1868. This heritage-listed property in Cobbitty continues to operate as a working farm.
Robert Lethbridge King was the grandson of the colony’s third governor, Philip Gidley King, and also studied at Cambridge. He was ordained in 1848 and three years later married the patriotically named Honoria Australia Raymond. After serving as Rector of St John’s, Parramatta, he was appointed Principal of Moore College in 1868 and held this position for ten years. Ill health forced him to resign, and he spent the rest of his life in parish ministry before his death in 1897.
King donated several books to the Bishop Broughton Memorial Library, including a 1520 Cologne Missal with the original hand-carved wooden covers.
Niel Gunson, ‘Hassall, Thomas (1794 -1868)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hassall-thomas-2167/text2779, published first in hardcopy 1966, accessed online 13 May 2016. K. J. Cable, ‘King, Robert Lethbridge (1823 -1897)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/king-robert-lethbridge-3958/text6241, published first in hardcopy 1974, accessed online 13 May 2016.
