Thomas Hobbes Scott
1783-1860
Thomas Hobbes Scott (17 April 1783 – 1 January 1860) was an English-born
clergyman, active in Australia.
Scott was born in Kelmscott, Oxford, England, one of the youngest of eight
children of James Scott, sometime vicar of Itchen Stoke, Hampshire, and chaplain
ordinary to George III, and his wife Jane Elizabeth, née Harmood.
Scott went to France after his father's death and was a vice-consul at Bordeaux
and later went bankrupt as a wine merchant.
Scott was a clerk to a British consulate in Italy . Scott matriculated at
Oxford University at the late age of 30, on 11 October 1813, and graduated M.A.
on 12 November 1818. He was at St Alban Hall, subsequently merged in Merton
College. Early in 1819 he was appointed secretary of the commission of John Bigge and Governor Lachlan Macquarie was instructed that in the event of the
death or illness of Bigge, Scott would take his place. After his return to
England Scott took holy orders and became rector of Whitfield, Northumberland,
in 1822.
Early in 1824, at the request of Earl Bathurst, Scott drew up a an elaborate
plan for providing for churches and schools in Australia. The main idea was that
one-tenth of the lands in the colony should be vested in trustees for the
support of churches and schools. Primary schools were to be followed by schools
for agriculture and trades, and also schools to fit students for a university
which was ultimately visualized. He also suggested that pending the
establishment of the university a few of the ablest students should be awarded
exhibitions to take them to Oxford or Cambridge. His plans were adopted in a
modified form.
Scott was appointed archdeacon of New South Wales on 2 October 1824, and he
arrived at Sydney on 7 May 1825. He was also made a member of council and a
trustee of the clergy and school lands; this corporation, however, had neither
land nor funds. Governor Brisbane opposed his suggestion that "government
reserves" should be considered church and school lands, and with regard to land
generally, comparatively little of it had even been surveyed. Scott too was
working on the assumption that the control of education would be in the hands of
the Church of England, which brought vigorous opposition from the Presbyterians,
Wesleyans and Roman Catholics. Scott's connexion with Bigge and a friendship he
had formed with John Macarthur tended to make him unpopular, and though Governor
Darling spoke of him as amiable and well-disposed, he quarrelled with several
men of the period. On 1 January 1828 he sent his resignation to England and was
succeeded in 1829 by Archdeacon, afterwards Bishop, William Grant Broughton.
Scott's final report on the church and school establishment of New South Wales
was dated 1 September 1829. He then returned to England, took charge of his
parish at Whitfield, and was later made an honorary canon of Durham. He died at
Whitfield on 1 January 1860.
Scott was a capable man who was arbitrary and autocratic. He could not get on
with his own clergy, and when he visited Tasmania in 1826 a report he made on
the state of religion and education raised similar antagonism to that he had
experienced in Sydney. He was a hard worker, he had a fine conception of the
place education should take in the colony, and during his five years in New
South Wales the number of schools and the number of pupils attending regularly
were both more than doubled. His proposed scheme of education in Australia could
not be accepted at the time, largely because it assumed the ascendancy of the
Church of England, but considered broadly it was a statesmanlike piece of work
which must have had much influence on the plans that were later developed.