Tonga’s Only Anglican Bishop

Centenary of Right Rev. Alfred Willis

DURING the century just closed the centenary passed unnoticed of the birth of the Right Reverend Alfred Willis, one time Bishop of Honolulu. Dur ing the War years he was in charge of St. Paul’s Church, at Nukualofa, Tonga.

The tall, gaunt figure, with flowing white beard, is still remembered in the Tongan capital, where he attempted to sail an Anglican craft among mighty Methodist waters.

The very presence of the Bishop in the Pacific was anomalous. Flom time im memorial it has been decreed that the Bishop of London should have under his charge all members of the Church of England in any part of the world who were not included in any particular dio cese. Thus were the American Colonies considered at one time to be under his spiritual jurisdiction. It was the same in the Pacific.

The Diocese of Honolulu was the first, apart from the see of Jerusalem, that the Church of England established beyond the British Empire.

Bishop Willis was in charge at Hono lulu from 1872 until 1902. In 1898 he was advised from London that he was also to exercise spiritual control in Fiji and Samoa. Indeed, all islands not con nected with the Melanesian Mission were to be in his charge. Acting under that authority, he visited Samoa and Fiji the

following year, and he also called at Tonga.

On the overthrow of the Hawaiian Queen, however, the position of the Anglican Church in those islands under went considerable change. The Ameri cans, naturally enough, considered that the Bishop of Honolulu should be an American. English clerics had never been exactly popular in certain quarters in Hawaii. Bishop Staley, (the prede cessor of Willis), was accused of being “a political missionary,” and was said to have worked in the interests of the British Government. Willis’s own wife, a woman of considerable force of char acter. was suspected of having Royalist sympathies.

When the Americans came to Hawaii, Dr. Willis felt that his period of useful ness there was over, and he prepared to hand his staff to an American successor.

Samoa, Fiji, and Tonga were still under his jurisdiction; so he determined to settle in Tonga, as on his former visit King George 11. had received him in a friendly manner. A contemporary has described the Bishop as “a scholar, a gentleman, agreeable socially, and of a forgiving disposition . . . fearless and stubborn for what he believed to be right, and made of the stuff of which martyrs are made, unbending in any cause which he believed to be just.”

“To Tonga he went with high courage,” it was stated, “there to toil and under take a small and almost hopeless work, to lay the foundation of something greater for the future.” But though the ranks of Methodism were divided, that faith was too solidly entrenched for An glicanism to make much impressions on the Tongans.

It is said, too, that a young Chinese followed Bishop Willis to Tonga. The Celestial became so proficient in the Ton gan tongue that he acted as interpreter for the Bishop. Later he was sent to divinity school in California.

The Bishop struggled on. In 1907 he was assisted by Samuel Broadfoot, the holder of a lay reader’s license, who for merly resided at Wagga Wagga, N.S.W.

Mrs. Willis proved a patient helpmate.

In 1904 Bishop Willis visited Fiji for the consecration of the Church of the Holy Redeemer at Levuka. This church had a special interest for him as he had set the foundation stone when previously in Fiji. The War years found him work ing in Tonga. Naturally enough, he was strongly pro-British, and his sermons did not altogether please some of the German residents in the kingdom.

Alfred Willis was born in 1836, edu cated at Uppingham and at St. John’s College, Oxford, and in many respects typical of his sphere and period.

Disappointed after his years of service in Honolulu, he thought he could still be useful in Tonga. The last years of his life were spent in his native England.

F.R.

M. Le Boucher, Government Secretary of New Caledonia, sailed from Noumea in April for France by the Ville de Verdun.