The Prince and the Assassin. Steve Harris
ambitious Bishop Goold, who inherited just two buildings and four priests, saw the need for an enhanced physical and fiscal Catholic presence. He created a new seminary attached to St Francis, which became the de facto cathedral church before determinedly beginning what became an 80-year project, the grand and gothic St Patrick’s Cathedral on Eastern Hill in East Melbourne.
In addition to the cathedral project and securing 64 church buildings in his first 13 years, Goold also sought more clergy to meet the rapidly growing population. He particularly wanted some home-grown priests, especially as he found some of the colony’s imported priests were ‘bad and faithless’, their example and scandal nearly destroying the ‘faith of the people, as they had ruined their morals.’34
For William O’Farrell this was all a heaven-sent opportunity: his eldest son Peter had become a solicitor and was handling the growing legal issues and property profits of Dr Goold and senior clergy, and institutions such as the Bank of Victoria. Henry had been confirmed into the church by Archbishop Polding and was now a candidate to make his mark in matters of prophet, having been educated and mentored within leading Catholic ranks. He had made an impression on Archbishop Goold who now admitted Henry into his new seminary for theological education.
A father’s prayers looked like being answered, but while his sons were making progress, William O’Farrell was too easily branded a ‘mick shin-boner’ or ‘bog-Irish butcher’. This wasn’t going to optimise life for himself or aid his sons’ potential, so he successfully applied in 1848 to become a council rate collector in the Gipps ward, the area around west Melbourne where he had worked as a butcher, and then took on the role of Town Auctioneer of seized property.
The following year, 1849 William O’Farrell and ‘O’Farrell Junior’ addressed 400 Irishmen at the new St Patricks Hall on the sensitive issue of emigration from Ireland, questioning why Irish numbers were disproportionately less than Englishmen and Scots, and whether eligible Irishmen were being refused bounty passages because English emigrants were preferred.
The Argus said ‘Mr O’Farrell, junior’ strongly pressed the St Patrick’s Society role to cherish Irish patriotism, noting the Irish were known to demonstrate ‘justifiable ardour’ and be ‘most tenacious of their rights when those rights have once been clearly established’.
As England ‘cannot find food for her starving subjects, but more particularly those of Ireland’, there should be no hesitation in advising people to ‘leave that country which is no longer their own, which has ceased to be that happy land’.
‘Tyranny had grown strong’, he said, and it was, ‘notorious that offences are committed by individuals impelled to do so by want, and (now) being sent out as prisoners here, have that wish afforded them as felons which was denied them as freemen! Irishmen endure much from poverty, before they are betrayed into a dishonourable action…the Irish behold their more favoured countrymen in opulence, they are called upon to starve in the sight of plenty…perpetually in view whom they consider were the originators of all their misfortunes’.35
Instead of spending millions of pounds to transport convicts to Australia, it would be cheaper and more beneficial for both England and Australia if some of those funds assisted more settler migration.
O’Farrell also said: ‘With regard to Ireland we may exclaim: Bleed, bleed, poor country! Great tyranny, lay thou thy basis sure, For goodness dare not check thee!’ and while other nations would gladly populate ‘for such a prize as Australia. I shall not pursue the current of…free thoughts, they are too high and daring to be uttered by Irish lips in these times.’36
Around the time Henry O’Farrell was talking of tyranny and daring, the St Patrick’s community was absorbing the news that a young unemployed Irishman, William Hamilton, had aimed an improperly loaded pistol at Queen Victoria during a carriage ride, the fourth attempt on her life. Hamilton was not represented at trial, and only had to wait a few minutes before the Chief Justice sentenced him: seven years exile for his bid for ‘notoriety’, to be transported to Melbourne.
While the assassination attempt was the talk of the town, the O’ Farrells were all being embraced by the Catholic Church. William O’Farrell had become a property agent and dealer, while Peter advised and managed land deals for the Catholic hierarchy. After being tutored in the new seminary the Bishop conferred ‘minor orders’ on Henry in a three-hour ceremony at St Francis Church, one of the first ordinations in the colony.
In the ceremony, just before Christmas 1850, the crowded church was reminded of the custom of taking those ‘who were fitting and had an inclination for spiritual calling in order to advance them to that holy state’, and putting them on the path to priesthood.
A few months later, the Bishop, mitred and in pontifical robes, ordained Henry as sub-deacon,37 and presented him with his own robe and empty chalice—‘see what kind of ministry is given to you’—and blessed him. Then in 1852, having met the pre-requisites of church knowledge and age, Henry was ordained as deacon.38
A deacon’s role included preparing and presenting bread and wine and sacred vessels for the Holy Sacrifice and Eucharist, solemnly chanting the Epistles, and helping minister Mass to prisoners in Melbourne’s new Pentridge Stockade.
Henry was now also bound to celibacy, the renunciation of marriage ‘for the more prefect observance of charity’. Bishop Goold would have given the traditional warning at the ceremony about the gravity of the obligation: You ought anxiously to consider again and again what sort of a burden this is which you are taking upon you of your own accord. Up to this you are free. You may still, if you choose, turn to the aims and desires of the world. But if you receive this order it will no longer be lawful to turn back from your purpose. You will be required to continue in the service of God, and with His assistance to observe chastity and to be bound for ever in the ministrations of the Altar, to serve who is to reign.
Following ordination, Henry’s next step on his pathway to priesthood was to travel to the Continent to further his education with visits to centuries-old Irish colleges and seminaries in France, Italy and Belgium as well as visits to England and Ireland.
Just as Queen Victoria and her government hoped Prince Alfred’s travels would ‘complete’ his development as a more bona fide royal, so William O’Farrell and his Catholic Church hoped Henry O’Farrell’s travels would ‘complete’ his development as a bona fide priest.
Selected References
The Australasian, (15 February 1842); Ballarat Star, (27 March 1868); Melbourne Daily News, (13 September 1849); Port Phillip Patriot, (30 December 1841)
endnotes
1 Complete Report Attempted Assassination of HRH Prince Alfred, Together with a Biography and Portrait of the Assassin O‘Farrell, (Sydney: Gibbs, Shallard and Co., 1868), p. 8.
2 Frank Neal, Sectarian Violence in the Liverpool Experience, 1819–1914, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), p. 58.
3 George Buckle, The Letters of Queen Victoria Second Series, (London: John Murray, 1926), p. 877.
4 Neal, Sectarian Violence in the Liverpool Experience, p. 58.
5 The Australasian, (15 February 1842).
6 Geelong Advertiser, (24 January 1842).
7 Paul de Serville, Port Phillip Gentlemen and Good Society in Melbourne Before the Gold Rushes, (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 35.
8 Margaret Kiddle, Caroline Chisholm, (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1990), p. 195.
9 de Serville, Port Phillip Gentlemen, p. 37.
10 Robyn Annear, Bearbrass: Imagining Early Melbourne, (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2005), p. 232.
11 de Serville, Port Phillip Gentlemen, p. 42.
12 Edmund Finn, (Garryowen) The Cyclorama of Early Melbourne, an Historical Sketch,(Melbourne: Robert Brain, Government Printer, 1892), p. 15.
13 Melbourne Times, (25 June 1842).
14 Port Phillip