James Chapman (Bishop of Colombo)

The Rt. Rev. James Chapman D.D. was the first Bishop of Colombo (Anglican), serving from 1845 to 1861.

In November 1799, just three years after the Dutch surrendered the city of Colombo, James Chapman was born at Wandsworth, the second son of Mr. J.Chapman, a London schoolmaster. At the very early age that was then customary, he went to Eton as a Foundationer and took his share in the rough and boisterous life of the school. He seems to have been a thoroughly healthy and precocious boy, keen on games, and full of youthful aspirations after learning. A story is told of James Chapman standing on the crest of a bridge at the head of a party of boys, helping to defend two of his school fellows from a gang of Thames bargees. The two boys had tried a new penknife on a towing rope, or some such foolish prank, and were only with difficulty rescued from the consequences by the personality of Chapman and contributions from their friends’ pocket money.

He was one of the founders of the "Etonian," and in a letter written at school he describes with great zest the trials of an editor making his selection from a mass of youthful essays, poems, love songs and political writings.

At the end of the same Eton letter he talks of his delight in cricket, and he played for the school at least one year before he left.

At Eton, while still a young boy, he had already formed those deep and serious religious convictions which were to be the guide of his whole life.

In 1819 he became a scholar of King’s College, Cambridge, and in 1821, before he had taken his degree, he was appointed a master at Eton. While at Eton he was admitted to Deacon’s Order by the Bishop of Ely, on his Cambridge Fellowship.

Among his pupils were Edward Thring afterwards the celebrated headmaster of Uppingham, and George Selwyn with whom Chapman offered to go out to New Zealand, when Selwyn was appointed Bishop of those islands. In 1844 Chapman was asked to become a candidate for the Headmastership of Harrow, and ten days later, another letter announced the offer of the Bishopric of Colombo. ‘You know my principles on such subjects,’ he wrote to a friend. ‘I need not therefore tell you that God gave me strength yesterday to renew my dedication of myself to Him, all unworthy as I am, kneeling at His own holy table.’

He immediately set to work to find men and funds for his new diocese. ‘My first object,’ he wrote, ‘would be a Cathedral Church and a school connected with it, so planned as to admit of extension and enlargement at any future period, by myself or my successors; the one to be a real Cathedral, and the other to be a College, worthy of a prospering Colony.’

The journey to Ceylon took over three months, and on the 1st of November, 1845, the first Bishop and future founder of St. Thomas’ College landed at Colombo.

At the time of the Bishop’s arrival. Sir Colin Campbell was Governor of Ceylon. The coffee industry was prospering and the road from Kandy to Colombo had been in use for over twenty years. Mail coaches ran to Kandy, Galle and Negombo. The schools already in existance were governed by a Board of Education which administered government grants, and of this Board the Bishop was elected President soon after his arrival. But it was nevertheless a troublous time and there had been some public disorder the year before, and more was to follow.

Under such conditions the Bishop entered his new diocese where he was everywhere met with the readiest hospitality and kindness. One of his earliest acts was to call a public meeting to discuss the possibility of building a Cathedral in Colombo and the idea of founding a school was constantly in his mind. In a letter written soon after his arrival he says:

‘Education must be the great work for me to look to, to lay the foundation if I can, and leave others to build hereafter.’

In the light of after years it is interesting to find him going on to say, ‘For this purpose I have set my heart on Mount Lavinia, about seven miles away, on the point of the only headland on the coast. It [the house built there some time before the Governor, later part of the Mount Lavinia Hotel] , is a massive and noble, but deserted building, and is now in private hands. For £2,500 I might secure it for a College already built, and £500 more would adapt it for all our needs’.

This project unfortunately never came to anything and the whole plan of the school had to be set aside for a time, while the Bishop turned his attention to the great task of visiting and organizing the new diocese. The story of his journeys gives a vivid picture of Ceylon in the first part of the last century. In one of his letters he writes: ‘Soon after I had swum my horse over the river a few miles north of Negombo, I was met by your earnest missionery, Mr. Nicholas, and we passed the night in a solitary resthouse in the jungle. We went on early to Chilaw, where I held a Confirmation and administered Holy Communion. From Chilaw I came to this place [Puttalam] . We started at four o’clock to avoid the sun and by torch light to scare the elephants, whose tracks we saw repeatedly when dawn broke upon us.’ Twice he crossed the Bintenne jungles from Badulla to Batticaloa with the purpose of studying the Veddas and founding a mission to them. He also journeyed to Ratnapura and went from there on foot to Nuwara Eliya. When cholera broke out in Kandy towards the end of 1846, the Bishop with a courage very typical of his character hastened thither to tend the sick and dying.

Of Ceylon he wrote to his sister in 1846 : ‘Since I last wrote to you. I have been a wanderer through an Eden of picturesque beauty and lovelines, far surpassing any power of mine to describe.’ His wanderings across the length and breadth of the Island convinced him more than ever that a school was essential to the success of his work. He had already acquired the property at Mutwal which was to be the site of the Cathedral and the College, and in 1848 he began to take serious steps towards the founding of the latter. He applied to the Governor, Lord Torrington for assistance from Government. But the Colony was going through troublous times :what was the last Kandyan rebellion took place in 1848, and wild speculation had brought the coffee industry to a very low ebb of depression: Government could give no help. Nothing daunted, the Bishop turned to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, who for many years afterwards were good friends to the College, and to the S.P.C.K, and to his own personal friends. With their help he got together the funds he needed and in 1849 the foundations of the school buildings began to be laid upon the hill at Mutwal. A writer (W.H .Solmons) in the first number of the College Magazine, published in 1875, says of the school: ‘It faintly exhibits in the disposition of its buildings, the desire on the founder’s part to model it upon Eton, the famous sanctuary of his boyhood.’

That the Bishop’s heart was wholly given for the venture is shown very clearly in all his letters written to the Secretary of the S.P.G. at this time, and in his personal generosity to the new foundation. He gave the nine acres of land upon which the school was to stand, and two hundred pounds a year from his own income towards its support. In addition he gave two exhibitions of £10 a year each, and his library. The S.P.C.K. gave £2,000 and the S.P.G. made a grant of £200 a year.

By St. Thomas’ Day, 1849, the work was sufficiently advanced for the solemn laying of the foundation stone to take place. In his sermon preached on that day the Bishop says:

‘May it be our care to provide, under the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, that all that is here taught may rest upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone. In building for God, in working in spending for God, we run no venture, we hazard no loss, we cherish no vague or uncertain hopes. Though unseen, when founded on true faith, hope is never unreal. Enduring works are often of humble beginning. The few fishermen of Galilee were the evangelizers of the world, the noblest cathedral was once but unhewn masses of stone. England, whose missions now encircle the globe, was once a nation of idolaters; the greatest university was at first no more that an Alphabetical School; the Son of God Himself had but a manger cradle.’

So the foundation stone was laid in December of 1849 and during the following year the walls of the new buildings slowly rose around the Bishop’s house amidst the gardens and horse paddocks of the former owner of the hill.