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victed of sedition and republican practices, otherwise
in a very short time the whole colony would be imbued
with the same seditious spirit."
But their protests had no effect whatever, and the number of exiles constantly increased until in a short time it amounted to more than a thousand. Confes- sors of the Faith, as most of them were in their native land, they had to face in bondage even more savage persecution under rules framed to compel them to join in Protestant religious services. Deprived of priest, sacraments, and religious instruction, they saw the Government attempting to rob their children of their Faith. Remonstrance to tlie home authorities was long useless. Among the early Irish political felons transported to Botany Bay were three priests who had lieen sentenced for alleged complicity in the political troubles of 1798 in Ireland. These priests were Father James Harold, pastor of Rathcoole, Dul> lin; Father James Dixon, a native of Castlebridge, County Wexford; and leather Peter O'Neil, pastor of Ballymacoda, County Cork, a grand-uncle of the Fe- nian leader, Peter O'Neil Crowley, who was killed in the rising of 1S67. Father O'Neil was not only sentenced on a trumped-up charge of sedition, but was most bar- barously flogged before he left Ireland. The frequent remonstrances to the home authorities against the in- justice of denying them the ministrations of their Faith had at last led to the issue of instructions to the governor in 1802 to allow one of these transported ecclesiastics to exercise his spiritual functions. Gover- nor King accordingly designated, on 19 April, 1803, Feather Dixon to take charge of the Catholic con- gregation, and under this government supervision the first Mass was said by him in Sydney, on Sun- day, 15 May, 1803. The chalice was made of tin by one of the convicts; the vestments were fashioned out of some old damask curtains. For a time there was no altar-stone, and the sacred oils had to be brought from Rio de Janeiro. The Holy See, in 1804, made Father Dixon Prefect Apostolic of this terri- tory, then called New Holland, the first ecclesiastical appointment for the new church. Feathers O'Neil and Harold also received faculties from Rome. The former was allowed to return to Ireland 15 Janu- ary, 1803, and the latter was sent to Tasmania, but there is no record that he was allowed to officiate there. This period of toleration did not last long, for, on the persistently circulated reports of bigoted fanat- ics that the congregations at the Masses were gather- ings of traitors and mere subterfuges of the Irish con- victs to mature plans for another rebellion, the gover- nor, before the close of 1804, revoked the permission for the celebration of Mass, and under penalty of twenty-five lashes for the first, and fifty for the second absence, all the colonists without distinction were ordered to attend the Church of England service. Worn out by his long labour and hardships. Father Dixon returned, in 1808, to Ireland, where he died 4 January, 1840, in his eighty-second year, pastor of Crossabeg in the Diocese of Ferns.
In the archives of Propaganda at Rome there is a memorandum presented to the congregation, 28 Au- gust, 1816, by Reverend Richard Hayes, O.S.F., which begins: "The undersigned certifies that neither in the Colony of Sydney Cove, where there are several thousand Irish Catholics, nor in any part of New Hol- land, is there at present any priest or Catholic Mis- sionary." Father Hayes' brother, Michael, a native of Wexford, was there as one of those United Irishmen transported after the rebellion of 1798, and had sent word to Rome, where Father Hayes was residing in St. Isidore's convent, of their spiritual destitution. The appeal for help was answered by a Cistercian Father, Jeremiah F. Flynn, who was then in Rome, after la- bouring for three years on the missions in the West In- dies, part of the time under the direction of Archbishop Carroll of Baltimore. He volunteered to go to Austra-
lia, was secularized and appointed Prefect Apostolic
of New Holland with faculties to administer the Sacra^
ment of Confirmation. After some delay in getting
enough funds for his outfit and making a vain applica-
tion to the Government for an official sanction for his
project, he set out without this permission and landed
at Sydney, 14 November, 1817. Governor Macquaire,
on whom he called the next day to ask permission to
exercise his ministrj^, bluntly announced his determina-
tion not to allow any Popish missionary to intrude on
this Protestant colony, and ordered him to depart by
the ship that brought him. On the pretext, therefore,
that he had come to the colony without the sanction
of the British authorities. Father Flynn was arrested
shortly after his arrival and deported back to England.
Previous to this he had remained concealed for several
weeks in the house of an Irishman named William
Davis, who had lieen transporteil for making pikes for
the insurgents of 1798, venturing forth only at night to
minister to the faithful. He said Mass in the house,
reserving the Blessed Sacrament in a cedar press.
When he was arrested he was not allowed by the gov-
ernor to return there, and the pyx with the Blessed
Sacrament remained enshrined in the cedar press,
guarded carefully Ijy the pious Davis family and their
friends for more than two years, until the next priests
arrived in the colony. Davis later gave the house
and the garden about it, as a site on which to build St.
Patrick's church. He was flogged twice and then im-
prisoned for refusing to attend the Protestant services.
At his death, 17 August, 1843, ho was 78 years old.
The great Bishop John England of Charleston, U. S. A., who was then a pastor and a leader in the struggle for Catholic Emancipation in Ire- land, was among those who interested themselves in bringing the persecution of the Australian Catholics to the attention of the authorities in England, and so great was the indignation aroused that the Govern- ment was forced to make provision for two Catholic chaplains to be sent to New South Wales. Fathers Philip Connolly, a native of Kildare, and John Joseph Therry, a native of Cork, at once volunteered and landed at Sydney, 4 May, 1820. leather Therry re- mained at Sydney and P^ather Connolly soon after pro- ceeded to Hobart, Tasmania, where he arrived in March, 1821, and dedicated his first humble chapel to the Irish Saint Virgilius. At Sydney Father Therry remained in charge until 1838 when he was transferred by Bishop Polding to be his representative and vicar- general in Tasmania. In 1832 there were from 16,000 to 18,000 Catholics in the colony of New South Wales, nearly all of them of Irish birth or descent. Dr. Ulla- thorne in a pamphlet, "The Catholic Mission in Aus- tralia", published in London, in 1837, set down the number of transported prisoners then in the colonies at 53,000. He was largely instrumental in bringing about a reform of the abuses of transportation and the prison system in the colonies, and during a visit to Ireland in 1839 secured several priests for the Austra- lian mission.
In the work he did for the reform of abuses in the penal colonies he says his great helper was an Irish priest. Father John McEncroe, one of the most notable men of the pioneer times, and for thirty-six years a leading figure in New South Wales. Born in Ardsalla, County Tipperary, 26 December, 1795, he was or- dained at Maynooth in 1820 and held for a short time a professorship in the Meath Diocesan Seminary. Then at the invitation of Bishop England of Charles- ton, U. S. A., he went to America and laboured on the South Carolina missions with great zeal for seven years. Ill health forced him to return to Ireland in 1829. But the woes of the Catholics of Australia ap- pealed so forcefully to him that he accepted the appoint- ment of chaplain to the penal colony and arrived at Sydney in 1832. Until his death, 22 August, 1868, he was without question one of the most influential pro-
