a high material civilization." Thus they looked to Protestant ministers as the "natural moral policemen of society", of obvious social use in a convict colony for preaching against "drunkenness, whoring and gambling". Chaplain Johnson was an evangelical priest of the Church of England, the first of a series of clergymen, according to Clark, through whom "evangelical Christianity dominated the religious life of Protestant Christianity in Australia throughout the whole of the nineteenth century". Chaplain Johnson led what is regarded as his first service under a tree in Sydney Cove on the first Sunday after arrival, 3 February 1788. On 7 February 1788, Arthur Phillip was sworn in over the Bible as the first Governor of the colony, and delivered a speech to the convicts counselling the Christian virtues of marriage and an end to promiscuity. Johnson celebrated the colony's first Lord's Supper in an officer's tent on Sunday 17 February 1788. Johnson's successor, the Reverend Samuel Marsden (1765–1838), had magisterial duties and so was equated with the authorities by the convicts. He became known as the "flogging parson" for the severity of his punishments. Early history of the Catholic Church in Australia Some of the Irish convicts had been transported to Australia for political crimes or social rebellion in Ireland, so the authorities were suspicious of Catholicism for the first three decades of settlement and Catholic convicts were compelled to attend Church of England services. One-tenth of all the convicts who came to Australia on the First Fleet were Catholic and at least half of them were born in Ireland. A small proportion of British marines were also Catholic. Other groups were also represented, for example, among the Tolpuddle martyrs were a number of Methodists. It was the crew of the French explorer La Pérouse who conducted the first Catholic ceremony on Australian soil in 1788 – the burial of Father Louis Receveur, a Franciscan friar, who died while the ships were at anchor at Botany Bay, while on a mission to explore the Pacific. The first Catholic priest colonists arrived in Australia as convicts in 1800 – James Harold, James Dixon and Peter O'Neill, who had been convicted for "complicity" in the Irish 1798 Rebellion. Dixon was conditionally emancipated and permitted to celebrate Mass. On 15 May 1803, in vestments made from curtains and with a chalice made of tin he conducted the first Catholic Mass in New South