The post-cart bishop
by Mike Oettle
ROBERT GRAY, whom we remember on 1 September, was something of a Johnny-come-lately when he arrived in Cape Town on Sunday 20 February 1848 as first Anglican bishop of that city –
incidentally, just in time for evening service at St George’s Church, now
become a cathedral. The Nederduitsche Gereformeerde Kerk had been at the
Cape for close on 200 years, the Lutheran and Moravian churches had both been
functioning in the colony since the days of the Dutch East India Company, the
Methodist Church had established a mission in Namaqualand in 1816 and even the
Roman Catholic Church had had a bishop in Cape Town for the past 10 years.
The Church of England had, it is true, been represented at the Cape since 1799 when the British had first arrived, and permanently since 1806, but its work had been unco-ordinated and without formal direction. It fell under the authority of the Bishop of Calcutta, who called at Cape Town on rare occasions while on a journey to or from England, to conduct the odd confirmation. He can have had little time to think of its concerns, since his responsibility stretched, in theory, from St Helena to Tasmania. Indeed, when Bishop Wilson of Calcutta called in 1832 and ordained two men – the first Anglican ordination in the country – “he was struck by the lack of discipline in the Church, where, as he said, ‘everyone does what is right in his own eyes’ ”.[1] It must have been a great relief for the See of Calcutta when, on St Peter’s Day, 1847, bishops were consecrated in Westminster Abbey for the new sees of Adelaide, Melbourne, Newcastle and Cape Town (our friend Gray).
But even Robert Gray’s area of responsibility was immense, as he soon discovered. It included two islands in the Atlantic, one hardly ever visited by ships, and he also saw a missionary responsibility for heathen tribes that extended way up into East Africa. He wrote, more than once, that “the Church should have sent out an abler man” to accomplish the task laid upon him.[2] Yet he did not shirk from it, and instead of going home to a more congenial living after a few years, as well he might have, he stuck to his post until his death in 1872.
How did the Cape respond to the presence of an English bishop, in his 18th-century episcopal rig-out of black frock coat, top hat and gaiters? Well, for a start, the NG Kerk – still the established Church of the colony – protested over the letters patent which styled him “Lord Bishop of Cape Town”, and in 1852 the NG Synod formally rejected any claim on jurisdiction or precedence by any other religious body. But Bishop Gray managed to maintain excellent relations with his Reformed counterparts and in fact opened a correspondence with them on the subject of Church unity.
And in a colony not known for pious Anglican churchmanship, there were many who did not agree with this interloper and resented his authority. In fact controversy dogged him throughout his time at the Cape and led to two celebrated court cases, both of which he eventually lost. Yet he saw glimmers of hope in the devastating findings of the courts and used their precedents to build a sound structure for the ecclesiastical body he left us: the Church of the Province of South Africa (today the Province of Southern Africa). But these controversies are worth an article on their own, and that will appear in due course.
Two other problems vexed Robert Gray throughout his episcopate: a lack of money and a lack of manpower. He devoted so much time to the financial worries of the Church in South Africa that one might think money his chief concern – he spent almost six months in England after his consecration, raising funds, and on his several visits to England afterwards he did much the same – yet his opinion was always that it was of more importance to have men of the right calibre in place to do the Lord’s work. And not only men – Gray was keen to see sisterhoods revived in the Anglican Communion, and on at least two occasions brought back from England parties of women who had devoted their lives to Christian service.
Even before his departure for the Cape, Gray was aware of the vastness of his new territory, and arranged for his friend Nathaniel Merriman to be Archdeacon of the Eastern Cape – incidentally this is claimed to have been the first appointment of an archdeacon in Africa since the time of the Early Church. But on his first visitation of the Cape Colony and British Kaffraria, undertaken exactly six months after his arrival, he discovered exactly how broad the land was and how hard to travel, and conceived the need to create at least two more dioceses. He also discovered an unexpected zest in travel – he had been a sickly youth in a family decimated by tuberculosis and had never thrived on journeys in England, yet he returned from his first journey, which had taken him as far as King William’s Town in a land without made roads, healthier than he had ever been and brown as a berry.
He did so well out of it that his wife, Sophy, declared after
the second journey that she would accompany him, and from then on she went with
him on many journeys in the Cape and Natal. I hope to write more of this
extraordinary woman in another article. Gray saw such journeyings on horseback,
or by wagon or cart, as a major part of his ministry, even if in England they
would be regarded as beneath a bishop’s dignity. He took pride in the derisive
title of “post-cart bishop”.
Gray’s dream of new dioceses was realised in 1853, when John Armstrong and John William Colenso were consecrated bishops respectively of Grahamstown and Natal. Gray formally resigned his see and was granted new letters patent as Bishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan of South Africa. Within only five years he had established a new province of three dioceses – described as a stupendous achievement.[2] Yet in Colenso he had chosen badly and trouble was to come from him. In due course, however, further bishops were consecrated for Gray’s new province, and before his death he was to see the dioceses of St Helena and the Orange Free State set up, as well as missionary bishops sent to Zululand and Central Africa. But that story I will tell in my next article on him.
There is more to tell of this man. I have said nothing of his blue spectacles, nor of the gold sovereigns he would leave to pay for lodging at wayside farms, but that will keep, as will the stories of the
schools he founded.
