The poetical missionary: The Reverend Thomas Whytehead, 1815-1843

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 11, Issue 2, 1 October 1978, Page 91

The poetical missionary: The Reverend Thomas Whytehead, 1815-1843

WARREN LIMBRICK

The association between St John’s College, Cambridge, and nineteenth century New Zealand is recognised by most researchers and bibliophiles familiar with the names of Sir William Martin, Bishop George Selwyn and Sir John Gorst. Few, however, even know the name of Thomas Whytehead, another Fellow of St John’s, who was regarded by his confreres as one of the most notable Johnians to give his life to New Zealand. His obscurity is hardly remarkable, for his service was more symbolic than real owing to his premature death less than five months after landing at Paihia and removal to Waimate, already an invalid, on a litter carried by the Maoris he had come to serve.

With his strong sense of tradition, Whytehead would have been pleased with his memorial in the new St John’s chapel completed in 1869. The vaulted oak ceiling contained nineteen bays each having full-length polychrome representations of illustriores of the centuries, sweeping back through the choir from the impressive Christus rex above the altar. From Ignatius of Antioch, Origen and Augustine, the procession continued through Roger Bacon, Archbishop Langton, Lady Margaret Beaufort the foundress, up to their own century, represented not unexpectedly by Henry Martyn, William Wilberforce, William Wordsworth and the Master and benefactor, James Wood. But most unexpectedly, there in their midst is Thomas Whytehead, a salutary reminder that our fathers could rate intention and devotion as highly as achievement and influence. 1 That Bishop Selwyn had high hopes for Whytehead’s contribution to the Anglican Church in this country is clear from his frequent references to him in the Turnbull Library’s collection of Selwyniana, and it is arguable that his death deprived the bishop of his most able lieutenant, and contributed to the shortcomings of his ambitious scheme for the establishment of the new antipodean St John’s College, of which Whytehead was to be the first principal.

Thomas Whytehead was bom 30 November 1815 at Thormanby Parsonage, Yorkshire, the fourth son of Henry Robert Whytehead, Curate of Thormanby and Rector ofGoxhill, and his wife Hannah (daughter of the Rev. Thomas Bowman, Prebendary of Lincoln). 2 Following the father’s early death in 1818 the family moved to York

where they lived in the shadow of the Minster. By his ninth birthday young Thomas was a pupil at the Beverley Grammar School where his literary gifts were encouraged by the headmaster. He later regarded his not having attended a public school as ‘a providentially-ordered escape from the utter corruption of religious principle and evil company.’ 3 His first published poem was written when he was only fifteen years of age, and displays his latent talent, concluding as it does: The moon is up —she glances still On Kedron’s brook and Zion’s hill: The sparkling ripple on the wave Returned the silent glance she gave; On Salem’s heights her splendours shine, The moonbeams kiss the sacred shrine, But all is love and silent here, No voice, no whisper meets the ear; Stern desolation’s withering hand Broods like a demon o’er the land.

After leaving Beverley, Whytehead pursued a course of private reading in Cambridge under his brother Robert before going up to St John’s College as a ‘pensioner’ in October 1833. 4 In the course of his undergraduate career at St John’s Whytehead enjoyed some considerable successes which testify equally to his diligence and his natural gifts. In 1834 he was awarded the first Bell Scholarship from more than one hundred candidates, and in two successive years gained the Chancellor’s Medal for his poems ‘The Death of H.R.H. the Duke of Gloucester’, and ‘The Empire of the Sea.’ In rather lighter vein, he won Sir William Browne’s Medal for Latin and Greek epigrams, and in the same year, 1836, took the Hulsean Essay Prize in theology for his typological interpretation of the similarity between Moses and Christ —an unusual honour for a second-year classics student. 5 To crown his undergraduate career he was, in February 1837, placed second in the first class of the Classical Tripos, and even more important, became the Chancellor’s Medallist in Classics. He took his BA in 1837, and MA in 1840. Immediately after being admitted to the bachelor’s degree he was elected a Fellow of St John’s College and remained in residence there while lecturing in classics at Clare Hall. Whytehead’s early sense of vocation to the ministry of the Church of England never faltered, in spite of the attractions which an academic career must have held for the recipient of such distinctions. Ordained to the diaconate for the curacy of Freshwater, Isle of Wight, in December 1839, the new responsibility of ministry in a village community brought ‘its own peculiar sorrows and heavinesses, as well as the dusty high road of life.’ Writing to a friend at this time he states that there could not be a

parish more to his liking, and clearly shows the value of this down to earth human experience after the more cloistered life of Cambridge. 6 It was while at Freshwater that Whytehead received the invitation to accompany Selwyn to New Zealand as Bishop’s Chaplain. For some time he had seriously pondered the possibility of offering for missionary work, and several letters allude to his consideration of this question. He had already declined a colonial chaplaincy and headmastcrship at the Cape of Good Hope, as well as a post in the new and controversial Bishopric of Jerusalem. Furthermore, a letter of 12 July 1841 to the Rev. Ernest Hawkins, Secretary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, reveals his strong interest in a vacant professorship in Bishop’s College, Calcutta —although he expressed misgivings regarding his health as ‘by no means the best’, especially his eyesight. 7 In expressing his admiration for the S.P.G. missions, ‘especially for the spirit of order and discipline in which they are conducted’, he might indeed have opened the way for his recruitment for the New Zealand field, since at that time Bishop Selwyn would have been in regular contact with Hawkins who was secretary not only of the S.P.G., but also of the Colonial Bishoprics Fund. It is also conceivable that the friendship and patronage of Lord Powis had brought Selwyn and Whytehead together as indicated in the following letter written late in the same year:

My dear : ... In two, or at the most three weeks, I expect to sail from England as chaplain to the Bishop of New Zealand. The call was such as I could not hesitate to obey, that of a Christian Bishop going forth on a most noble mission, and asking me to go with him and help him. Lord P [Powis] had written to [Clive] (as the Bishop told me) to empower him to offer me the living which Selwyn by his appointment had vacated: and it seems remarkable how God has knit us for these many years together, taking as we did almost exactly the same degree, fellows of the same college, tutors to the same pupil [Clive], presented with the same living, and now going forth on the same mission. . . . We shall seem in New Zealand as in some far chantry of a vast cathedral, while you in England are worshipping in the choir, but all the while the same mighty roof of the Church Catholic is over our heads as over yours. . . , 8

So it was that Whytehead took leave of his family and friends, expressing in most letters the premonition that they would not meet again ‘in this world’. He had suffered from asthma and other respiratory difficulties since a child, and it is likely that the damp conditions on shipboard exacerbated his condition. The Tomatin left Plymouth with the Bishop’s party on Boxing Day, 1841. Shortly after its arrival in Sydney an acute coughing spasm in which he ruptured a blood vessel, forced Whytehead to remain there to recuperate after the rest of the party had proceeded to the Bay of Islands. Consumptive symptoms had already been diagnosed, and

Sarah Selwyn saw that his tenure of life was now ‘most uncertain’. 9 Whytehead eventually arrived at Paihia on 27 October after a rough and cold Tasman crossing on the Bristolian. William Cotton met him and observed that the Maoris would have little difficulty carrying him from Kerikeri to Waimate: . . . for he is a mere shadow. His ultimate and complete recovery is I fear quite hopeless—though he talks of the work which he should like to do. . . . But still it is a great blessing to have him amongst us once more though it be but for a time. 10

Thomas Whytehead’s ‘time’ was only to run for a further few months. In that time he was able to tutor the Church Missionary Society veteran Richard Davis in his preparation for ordination, and collaborate with the latter’s son James in the translation into Maori of Thomas Ken’s ‘Evening Hymn’. He presided at the high table —suitably capped and gowned —over some of the ‘College’ meals, but never moved more than half a mile outside the confines of the mission compound. 11 Increasingly the tuberculosis overpowered him, with Sarah Selwyn tending him almost constantly by day, and Cotton nursing him through the night. On the morning of 19 March, after joining the Bishop in prayers, Thomas Whytehead died peacefully. Selwyn ‘sank on his knees by the bedside, and gave vent to his tears.’ 12 Dean Howson described Whytehead as slender, with black hair and an olive tinge to his complexion. Always scrupulously neat, he had fine hands, and looked every inch the poet, although, he added, he was not eccentric or moody, but cheerful and sociable. 13 One

hopes so, for Whytehead certainly possessed that deeply serious attitude to life which without humour would have been unbearable. Even in writing to his sister and family he warns against bowing down to ‘the World’s Trinity, riches, honours, pleasures’ and affirms his own preference for death in a workhouse rather than preoccupation with worldly ambition. It is heartening to find, after the gravity of many family letters, that his friends can speak of his ‘tendency to high spirits’ and levity. It was possibly this more human attribute which brought him the affection of an anonymous lady who feared that his efforts to gain the Bell Scholarship were too single-minded, and in a comic valentine complained

I state dear Whytehead (’tis your due) The preference I feel for you. Like other maidens ’tis my lot That all my charms should be forgot, While all my numerous friends hold dear Is fame and fifty pounds a year. Although Whytehead never married, Sarah Selwyn discloses that it had been his intention to marry the sister of his close friend William Bolland, had she lived, and it seems plausible that his tender poem ‘ln Memoriam’ was for her: Oh! still my spirit clings to thee, And feels thee at my side; Like a green ivy, when the tree Its shoots had clasped so lovingly Within its arms hath died. And ever round that lifeless thing Where first their clusters grew, Close as while yet it lived they cling, And shrine it in a second spring Of lustre dark and new. 15

Quite clearly, Whytehead relished university life and its intellectual pursuits, although he found a tension and difficulty in ‘being diligent without secularity and ambition’ while still ‘doing all to the glory of God’. He was enthusiastic over the competitive element in academic life since he saw that it produced real discipline. To undertake ‘general reading’, or, more speciously, ‘theology’, was a soft option if one had the ability to read for honours, and he asserted that an honours course provided a safeguard for a student’s intellectual and religious character: ‘The stern necessity which lies on a “reading man” of husbanding time, keeping regular hours, eschewing gossip, and, in fact, disciplining himself, is one of the greatest blessings which can befall him’. 16 Whytehead did not mind being thought ‘a bigot’ for his loyalty to St John’s, believing that its superiority consisted in its high standard

of lectures (thus diminishing the need for expensive tutors), its healthy religious ethos, and its economy compared to Trinity. 17 The smaller colleges should be avoided, he advised a friend, since ‘for the same charge you get worse lectures, narrower society, and that generally of a lower tone’. In an endeavour to help undergraduates to a similar enjoyment of university residence, Whytehead composed a small volume, published posthumously, entitled College Life. 18 He had begun work on the book at Freshwater, early in 1841 but had procrastinated on its publication, eventually leaving it to his friend Thomas Francis Knox to edit.

But College Life is more than a book of advice for the new student. It is a justification for the ancient collegiate system. Like Selwyn’s pamphlet on cathedral reform, it derives from the Anglo-Catholic concern to renew the ecclesiastical and social institutions of the Establishment from their own resources in tradition, rather than opening them to radical reform from external agencies. In Whytehead’s judgement much proposed university reform was unnecessary innovation, whereas what was required was a recovery of the original principles consecrated by time, and as valid as in antiquity. For Whytehead, the collegiate system still had the potential to kindle the imagination, as well as train the rational faculties of the student. As with its monastic precursors, a college could foster reverence with inquiry, and stand outside the cross-currents of the age, giving education for men to direct society rather than be swept along with it —like Schiller’s artist, ‘the son of his age’ but not ‘its pupil’ —controlling, rather than controlled by, the Zeitgeist. 19 Stripped of the more obtrusive didactic and sentimentality, College Life is a wise and attractive little volume, highlighting the enduring virtues of humility, contemplation, reverence for the continuum of human wisdom, and self-discipline. All are considered by Whytehead in the context of Christian belief, and expressed in a conventional Victorian phrase and concept, yet underneath a deeper and more romantic strain flows strongly, as when he applauds Carlyle’s comment in Sartor Resartus that mind does not grow like a vegetable, ‘by having its roots littered with etymological compost’, but by human inter-action, ‘Thought kindling itself at the fire of living Thought.’ 20 So also in his final appealing chapter on ‘College Friends’, where he identifies true friendship as springing from a shared ‘impulse’ or basic orientation to life, rather than mere similarity of interests. ‘Throw out your affections and sympathies generally and freely at this season of youth’ he advises, and ‘accept kindly proffers of love and companionship’, for true friendship might be discovered there like a ‘hid treasure.’ On the other hand a judgemental attitude to the failings of others will bring only ‘self-isolation and self-pride’. 21 It

should not surprise us therefore to find that his own circle of friends was so wide. William Wordsworth was Whytehead’s exemplar in poetry and was judged by him to be his pre-eminent influence, and ‘the greatest master of the English language’. Whytehead no doubt met Wordsworth when, in the summer of 1837, he took a Cambridge reading party to Ambleside, only a short walk from Wordsworth’s cottage at Grasmere. That summer he also shared the friendship of Frederick Faber from Oxford, another poet and great admirer of Wordsworth, and also a growing name in Tractarian theology. Wordsworth himself was increasingly sympathetic to the Oxford Movement by this time, and would have shared many of their sentiments. But Whytehead’s strong evangelical upbringing did not allow him to dally with the pantheistic tendencies of the early Wordsworth. As he later wrote in the poem ‘Freshwater’, if he had once thought to ‘ramble the tall cliffs’ and commune with nature, he now hastened to the cottages of his parishioners for insight: For I have learnt in human hearts A deeper mystery lies, Than e’en this wondrous earth imparts, Or dwells in sea or skies. 22

His strong sense of supernatural revelation remained dominant, and if he harboured any naturalistic tendencies, they extended only to the human spirit, and not to ‘mute and soulless things’. From any point of view, his ‘lnstallation Ode’ for the induction of the Duke of Northumberland as Chancellor of Cambridge University—it was performed in the Senate House to the accompaniment of music composed by Thomas Attwood Walmisley—represents the peak of his attainment, and was, artistically, ‘the finest of his poetical writings’. 23 But for sheer pathos it is difficult not to be moved by his lines in manuscript, simply headed ‘To F.W.F. [Faber] Ship Tomatin. Apl- 1842’:

Dreary and dark the sea around me lay, The gleams of early sunshine all were gone, And I bethought me of the visions gay That from my heart had vanished, one by one: And life, I said, henceforth will seem to me All cold and cheerless, like the wintry sea.

Yet here the petrel and the albatross, And the gray ice-bird, find their place of rest, And sleep upon the billows as they toss, Safe as the swallow in its warm-built nest Beneath some English cotter’s household eaves, Deep hidden in the rustling ivy leaves.

So thou, my soul, familiar seek to grow With thy drear lot, and make thereof thy home, Lean on the ice-cold bosom of thy woe, Till its chill touch familiar shall become, And thou shalt learn to love it, for His sake Who did with grief for thee His dwelling make. 24 His premonition of terminal sickness has imparted a tragic sense of life, his religiosity has been eroded yet without loss of a deeper sense of assurance, and he has found a new unity with nature —its threat and its promise. Thomas Whytehead’s religious attitude reveals him as a man of his time, with loyalty to the older evangelical tradition with its scriptural emphasis, yet responsive to the theology and aesthetic sensitivity of the Oxford Movement. On hearing Charles Simeon preach in Cambridge in his frail old age, Whytehead was ‘very much delighted’. 25 Like Simeon, he combined reverence for both Bible and Church, and contrived to maintain a non-partisan orientation in an age of increasing theological conflict. As a reviewer in The Spectator observed:

. . . his mind naturally turned to the religion of past ages, and to the “foundations” among which he had been reared. His position saved him from the errors of Romanism, and his good sense apparently from the Tractarian weaknesses of attaching weight to such matters of form as wearing a surplice or turning his back upon the audience, as well as the more censurable pharisaical spirit of spiritual pride and priestly domination. But the writer continued to point out that ‘with the less silly and less repulsive traits of Tractarians he was deeply imbued’, their love of beauty in religion and art, their discerning veneration of Rome for its historic embodiment of the visible church and for its permanence and unity. 26 For Whytehead this sense of the sacramental unity of the church, through both time and space, was a major element in his faith.

In common with so many contemporary churchmen, Whytehead was critical of the Church of England’s position in British society. As he wrote to a colleague from his parish in 1840: . I read the Bible, and now and then the Times, and the Church seems to me like an old sick moulting Phoenix, sitting in the midst of its nest, the world, waiting till it have [sic] caught fire, and from out of the midst of the conflagration the new-born young Phoenix Church shall rise glorious’, and added, ‘if you call me enthusiastic, be it so’. 27 He believed that both church and state were rediscovering their constituent principles, and though they might be heading for ‘a deadly fight, it is better than lying in a ditch bottom together’. Though not himself likely to join the belligerent ranks of the Oxford men, Whytehead could adopt the rhetoric of their movement, having learned it from two of the more ardent

devotees, F. W. Faber and T. F. Knox who were amongst his closest friends, and who followed Newman and Henry Manning into communion with the Roman Catholic Church in late 1845. Whytehead also had family links with the older High Church party through the Churton family. 28 But irrespective of the strength of such Anglo-Catholic influences Thomas Whytehead enjoyed the continuing confidence of more moderate churchmen like ‘Soapy Sam’ Wilberforce his clerical neighbour on the Isle of Wight, and later Bishop of Oxford, and the future Dean of Chester and biblical commentator J. S. Howson who was of more broadly evangelical persuasion. Thomas’s elder brother Robert Whytehead, a staunch evangelical in doctrine, noted in his private journal that, on his brother’s farewell visit in November 1841, Thomas ‘disavowed some High Church doctrines about sin after baptism, &c.’, and brought him much delight ‘with his zeal and piety’. 29 As Howson was later to comment, it was elegance rather than force which typified Whytehead’s theological approach, a characteristic which seems to have given him the capacity to hold friendships across doctrinal lines of division. But could this eirenical attitude prevail with the Church Missionary Society in New Zealand? Whytehead’s Tractarian connexions had given grounds for fears on the part of the C.M.S. in the Bay of Islands that he was ‘a genuine emanation from Dr Pusey himself!’ 30 But Whytehead’s theological breadth, personal spirituality, and respect for the scriptures soon dispelled their partisan scepticism. The ageing catechist Richard Davis who was prepared for ordination by Whytehead thought that if all examining chaplains were ‘so scriptural as Mr Whytehead’ the church’s ministry would be in much better shape. Mrs Selwyn commented:

[Davis] was old enough to have been Mr. Whytehead’s father I used to think it a beautiful sight to see the grey headed man hanging on the words of his far younger teacher, & looking up to him with such reverence, the old man full of health and vigour, the young man sinking into the grave. 31 The last work to be taken up by Whytehead was the translation of Bishop Ken’s ‘Evening Hymn’ into the Maori language, a task which he began in mid-January. That it gave him some difficulty is indicated by the disparity between an early draft amongst his manuscript papers, and the final printed version in the Turnbull Library. 32 The Maori particles gave him particular trouble and he readily confessed the imperfect grasp he had of the Maori tongue. With the assistance of James Davis he was, however, able to complete the hymn, He Himene mo te Ahiahi, and heard it sung outside his sick-room window by the mission Maoris before he died. It was, he wrote, a ‘legacy when I could do no more for them’ 33

Part of the tragedy of Thomas Whytehead’s early death is that amongst Selwyn’s pioneer clergy he alone seems to have possessed that amalgam of mental ability and creativity combined with deep spirituality. The Bishop’s principal gifts lay in other directions, and he needed an able critic and counsellor to evaluate his mission, and help relate it to the needs of both Maori and colonial society. Whytchead was to be Selwyn’s ‘stationary man’ commanding the home base as archdeacon, guiding the ‘collegiate institution’ as principal, and imparting theological direction to the whole enterprise. 34 Small wonder that when his tenuous hold on life was revealed upon his arrival at Waimate, Sarah Selwyn should write: ‘there is nothing I do believe which George would more feel than the removal of his counsel, & the loss of his society.’ 35 Whether Thomas Whytehead could have fulfilled these expectations must remain doubtful, for he too was short on practical experience. But that he was better qualified for such a role than any other of the Bishop’s clerical colleagues in the first crucial decade, few would dispute. As his wife Sarah so aptly commented, Selwyn had indeed lost ‘his right hand’.

REFERENCES 1 The Eagle [magazine of St John’s College], VI (1869), 333 ff. See also ‘Recollections of a Nonogenarian’ by R. Y. Whytehead, typescript amongst Thomas Whytehead Papers in St John’s College Library, Cambridge. 2 Biographical information is principally drawn from Poetical Remains and Letters of the Late Rev. Thomas Whytehead, M.A. . . . [edited by his nephew Thomas Bowman Whytehead] (London, 1877). This work was a new edition of Whytehead’s Poems (London, 1842) with a memoir contributed anonymously by T. B. Whytehead, and a preface by Dean Howson ofChester. There is also a biographical article in the Eagle, X (1878), 291-303, and an introduction by T. F. Knox to Whytehead’s College Life: Letters to an Under-Graduate (Cambridge, 1845).

3 Whytehead to his mother, Jan. 1834 (Whytehead Papers). 4 ‘Biographical Notes: Members of the College’, in SJC Library, Camb. 5 His Hulsean Essay was entitled ‘The Resemblance Between Moses and Christ’; printed in Remains, p. 142 ff. 6 Remains, p. 81-2. He was ordained priest by the Bishop of Winchester 13 Dec. 1840. 7 Enclosed in ‘Prayerbook inscribed to Mrs Selwyn’, ATL (MS Why 1841-43). 8 Clipping from the English Churchman, [n.d.], in Whytehead Papers. Under Whytehead’s tutelage Clive excelled, gaining a Ist class Tripos in only two years. 9 Sarah Selwyn to Miss Cotton, 15Jun. 1841; qMS Selwyn Papers 1839-65, v.2 (ATL). The Tomatin sailed from Sydney injune, the impatient Bishop having already gone ahead with W. C. Cotton, his second chaplain. 10 W. C. Cotton, 28 Oct. 1842, qMS Selwyn Papers 1839-65, v.2. (ATL). 11 Whytehead to F. W.H. [Harper?], 3 Mar. 1843; Remains, p. 126. See also p. 115. 12 W. C. Cotton, ‘Journal’, in Remains, p. 135 ff. Whytehead was buried in the Waimate churchyard where his grave is easily identified. 13 Remains, p. xi. No portrait of Whytehead exists, the likeness in the St John’s chapel having been painted from a school friend of his nephew who resembled

him. 14 The Eagle, X, 294. 15 Remains, p. 202. The poem is dated August 1837 at Ambleside. See also Sarah Selwyn on 24 Oct. 1843, Micro MS 431 (ATL). After the death of his sister, William Bolland emigrated to join his friend and take up farming. The first news he heard on arrival was of Whytehead’s death. He then took orders, was posted to New Plymouth in late 1843, but died on 30 May 1847. 16 The Eagle, X, 299. 17 Nevertheless it would have cost ‘6 or 7£’ to entertain his sister and her husband Robert Boulton in hall. Whytehead to sister Anne, 5 May 1833 (Whytehead Papers). Remains, p. 64. 18 T. Whytehead, College Life: Letters to an Under-Graduate (Cambridge, 1845). He wrote editorial instructions to T. F. Knox only five days before his death. A second edition was published at London, 1856. 19 College Life, 1845 ed., chapter 1, ‘The Origin and End of the Collegiate System’. 20 College Life, p. 92. 21 College Life, p. 130 ff. 22 Remains, p. 219-20. Dated April 1840. 23 Thus J. S. Howson in Remains, p. 93. 24 Whytehead Papers. See also Remains, p. 251.

25 Whytehead to sister Anne, 8 Mar. 1831 (Whytehead Papers). 26 Clipping from the Spectator, [n.d.] reviewing his College Life, in Whytehead Papers. For his interest in Gothic revival architecture and association with the Cambridge Camden Society, see Remains, p. 74, and Margaret H. Alington, Frederick Thatcher and St Paul’s, an Ecclesiological Study (Historic Places Trust Publication no. 5), (Wellington, 1965) p. 21-2. 27 Remains, p. 87-8. 28 Edward Churton was the biographer of the notable high churchman, Joshua Watson of the ‘Hackney Phalanx’ whose interest in New Zealand is testified to by the plaque in St Stephen’s Chapel, Judge’s Bay. F. W. Faber’s work Tracts on the Church and her Offices (London, 1840) was dedicated to Thomas Whytehead ‘from his very affectionate friend’. 29 Remains, p. 95-6. 30 Sarah Selwyn to Mrs E. Coleridge, Oct.-Nov. 1842, Micro MS 431 (ATL). See also Frances Porter, The TurangaJournals, 1840-1850 (Wellington, 1974) p. 236. E. B. Pusey was one of the archpriests of the Tractarians. 31 Sarah Selwyn to Mrs E. Churton, [n.d.] copied extract in Whytehead Papers. See also Florence Keene, By This We Conquer (Whangarei, 1974) p. 72. 32 A copy of Whytehead’s first manuscript draft is amongst the Whytehead Papers. H. W. Williams, A Bibliography of Printed Maori to 1900, and Supplement (Wellington, 1975) n. 96, 98, probably represents the two separate printings of 250 and 1,000 copies, (see next note). Since the hymn is not in the standard collections it is worth giving in full as printed in the Turnbull Library’s copy.

Hei kororia kite Atua Akuanei mo nga pai katoa; Tiakina, e te Kingi, ahau I raro ra i ou pakau Mo ta tou Tama, e te Atua, Nga hara o te ra, murua; Kia marie ahau, i taku moe, Ki t’ao, ki a hau, ki a koe. Akona ano hau, kia pera Te poka mete moenga; Akona ahau, kia ara ra Ki t’ora, a te wakawa. Kia wakapai ki a Ihowa, Wakapai, e nga mea katoa I raro, i runga, te Matua, Te Tama ano, mete Wairua. In verse 3, line 1, the ‘h’ in ‘hau’ is deleted in MS. Mr Muru Walters of Dunedin considers that ‘hau’ correctly stands here as representing the normal North Auckland dialect rendering of the pronoun ‘ahau’ (‘me’). The original Thomas Ken hymn is in Hymns Ancient & Modern Revised, 23. See J. Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (London, 1892) p. 984, 1279, for Whytehead’s other printed hymns, especially ‘Sabbath of the Saints of Old’, ( Hymns Ancient & Modern Revised, 127). An item in the Hocken Library appears to suggest that Whytehead composed and printed a further poem in New Zealand entitled ‘Trinity Sunday, 1843’. (This two page leaflet also contains, preceding the poem, ‘Prayer, for One Who Desires the Office of a Deacon’.) T. M. Hocken’s

MS note on the leaflet claims it to have been printed on the ‘Bishop’s press at the Waimate’. However the poem is identical to that written on the occasion of Whytehead’s own ordination to the diaconate entitled ‘St Stephen’s Day, 1839’; (see his Remains, pp. 69, 217), and was probably printed for Richard Davis’s ordination after Whytehead’s death. 33 Whytehead to T. F. Knox, 14 Mar. 1843, in College Life, p. xii-xiii. 34 H. W. Tucker, Memoir of the Life and Episcopate of George Augustus Selwyn . . . (London, 1879) I, p. 124. 35 Sarah Selwyn to Mrs E. Coleridge, Oct.-Nov. 1842, Micro MS 431 (ATL).