trouble itself to provide a very elaborate clerical establishment. The only provision of this kind was the appointment, at the last moment before the fleet sailed, of the Rev. Richard Johnson, who according to one authority was 'one of the people called Methodists.'
Phillip, King and Hunter all speak well of the disinterestedness of the man, and the good done by him in the face of the greatest difficulties, and Johnson testifies to the help and encouragement always given him by Phillip, who made him a magistrate of the colony. Grose, Phillip's immediate successor, quarrelled with the parson, and there was afterwards much friction between the two. He was not paid handsomely—£182 was allowed him by the Government—and for five years after landing he was without a church. Early in 1791 Phillip began the erection of a place of worship, but before it was finished the exigencies of the colony, as we shall hear, required its conversion into a jail, and subsequently into a granary, so that the services were generally performed in the open air, or in 'an old boathouse close by the waterside, not fit for a stable.'
Poor Johnson thus wrote to Phillip, in March 1792, detailing his grievances:—
'As to my habitation I am very well satisfied; it is pretty commodious and convenient—few better provided for in this respect in the colony than myself. My principal family complaint is, that I cannot better
