The Scots Presbyterian Church was founded in Sydney in the 1820šs and the congregation has had to be relocated on several occasions to different sites in the Sydney CBD prior to moving back into its current site at 44 Margaret St, known as the Assembly Building in February 2006.

The building has been creatively redeveloped to include residential useage and at the same time the interior of the Church was redeveloped.

The new building retains its historical features and significance while providing the congregation with a modern house of worship.

Until the 4th July, 2001, Scots Church on the corner of York and Margaret Streets in Sydney was owned by the Presbyterian Church of New South Wales. At that time, following previous negotiations with Westpoint Corporation Pty Ltd ("Westpoint") concerning the redevelopment of the site, the Church sold its interest to Scots Church Development Ltd, a subsidiary of Westpoint. In addition to receiving payment for the land, the Church was to retain strata title to "the Church Lot", an area on which a refurbished Scots Church would be situated. Despite this agreement, the entire property was mortgaged to Capital Finance Australia Ltd, with a second mortgage being granted to York Street Mezzanine Pty Ltd, another subsidiary of Westpoint.

Subsequently, Scots Church Development Ltd was placed in receivership. The Church, Scots Church Development Ltd and the first mortgagee, Capital Finance Australia Ltd, entered into a tripartite agreement on the 18th August, 2004, formally recognizing their remaining obligations to the Church. A further "Supplemental Deed" was drawn up on the 2nd November, 2005, setting out amongst other matters, the retransfer of the Church Lot. When a formal request for the unencumbered transfer of the Church Lot and the payment of the balance owing was made on the 12 December, 2005, Scots Church Development Ltd failed to comply. Soon after, on the 20th December, 2005, the second mortgagee went into liquidation. Alarmingly for the Church, the second mortgagee asserted the supremacy of its mortgage through its refusal to acknowledge the Church's prior interest in the Church Lot. As a result, the Church sought Court assistance to effect the transfer of the disputed land as well as to resolve the matter of the outstanding debt.

Chief Justice Young addressed the various concerns raised. He found since there was no evidence of actual fraud, the second mortgagee was entitled to rely on the principle of indefeasibility as laid down in section 42 of the Real Property Act 1900 (NSW). In addition, he failed to find that there was a personal equity involving the Church Lot which the second mortgagee as the registered proprietor was subject to. The only arguable cause of action was a conventional estoppel. However, His Honour believed that the second mortgagee's awareness of the Church's entitlement to the Lot was purely speculative in nature. Even if this element of estoppel could be proved, there was no evidence of the Church's reliance on this assumption to its eventual detriment. The fact that no caveat was lodged by the Church to protect its interest was not regarded as evidence of the existence of a shared assumption with the second mortgagee that the Church Lot was sacrosanct.

After some discussion of the magnitude of the debt owed to the Church, His Honour then reflected on the law underlying the decision in Ex Parte James (1874) 9 Ch App 609. In this case, money previously paid to a creditor was mistakenly repaid to the debtor's trustee in bankruptcy. On appeal in the English Court of Chancery, it was decided that the error should be rectified as this was the only honest course of action. Applying this logic to the fate of the Church Lot, Chief Justice Young expressed the view that, if they were honest, the liquidators of the second mortgagee, although personally blameless, would question the fairness of retaining a mortgage over the Church Lot. Therefore, His Honour determined that the liquidators should be instructed to discharge that part of the registered mortgage relating to the Church Lot as the second mortgagee had been unfairly enriched at the Church's expense.

John Dunmore Lang (25 August 1799 - 8 August 1878), Australian clergyman, writer, politician and activist, was the first prominent advocate of an independent Australian nation and of Australian republicanism.

Lang was born near Greenock, Renfrewshire, Scotland, where his father was a small landowner and a strict Presbyterian, and grew up at nearby Largs. He was destined for the Church of Scotland ministry from an early age, and was educated at the University of Glasgow, where he excelled, winning many prizes, and graduating as a Master of Arts in 1820. In 1823 he was sent to be the first Presbyterian minister in the colony of New South Wales.

Arriving in Sydney, Lang found the Presbyterian Scots to be a small minority, dominated by an Anglican administration and outnumbered by the Irish Catholics, whom Lang, a fierce sectarian, hated and feared. He there was no Presbyterian church in the colony and Lang successfully demanded that the Governor, Sir Thomas Brisbane, provide public funds for one. When Brisbane refused, Lang returned to Britain, where he successfully lobbied the Secretary for the Colonies, Lord Bathurst, to reverse Brisbane's decision. The government was to supply one-third of the cost of the building and pay Lang 300 pounds a year. During this visit he was made a Doctor of Divinity by Glasgow University.

In 1826 he became the first Minister of the Scots Church - the name indicating that Lang saw himself as the leader of the Scottish community of Sydney as well as of the Presbyterian Church. He also founded the Caledonian Academy, which educated many future prominent figures in Australian history. He demanded also that the Presbyterian Church be recognised alongside the Church of England as an established church in the colony, since New South Wales was, he said, a Scottish colony as well as an English one.

Lang remained as Minister of Scots Church for 52 years, although he was deposed by his own Church Synod in 1842 and for 20 years presided at Scots Church as an independent Presbyterian. He preached a fiery fundamentalist Calvinism, fuelled by his hatred of all other denominations, but most of all the Catholics. In 1841 he published The Question of Questions!, in which he denounced Irish Catholic immigration to Australia as a threat to the Protestant religion, and in 1847 he followed with an even more vitriolic tract, Popery in Australia and the Southern Hemisphere. He strongly opposed Caroline Chisholm's campaign to sponsor the immigration of single Irish Catholic women to Australia, and made nine trips to Britain and one to the United States to lobby for increased Protestant migration. During one of voyages he married Wilhelmina Mackie at Cape Town.

In 1834 Lang moved into political journalism, founding a newspaper, The Colonist, to promote his views. He agitated for the end of transportation, for the separation of the Moreton Bay Colony (later Queensland and the Port Phillip District (later Victoria) from New South Wales, and for the establishment of representative government and the reduction in the powers of the British-appointed Governors.

Lang gave up his government stipend in 1840, arguing that church and state ought to be completely separate and that no denomination should be favoured by the government. Henceforth he was paid a wage by his congregation and lived from his journalism. Lang was, however, a terrible businessman, and his political activities were always hampered by crises over money and unpaid bills. The Colonist failed in 1840, as did The Colonial Observer in 1844 and The Press in 1851. He quarrelled frequently and violently with his colleagues and his creditors.

In 1843 Lang was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Council as the representative of the Port Phillip District. In 1850 he was elected as one of the members for Sydney, and in 1854 he sat for the County of Stanley (Moreton Bay). But Lang was not suited to parliamentary life, since he was temperamentally opposed to parliamentary procedure. He frequently used parliamentary privilege to pursue personal vendettas against his many enemies in the Presbyterian Church and the press.

In 1851, in any case, he was unable to take his seat in Parliament, since he was heavily in debt from his various failed migration schemes and was being pressed by creditors. He was sued for debt, and when he attacked his creditors in the press he was prosecuted for libel, and sentenced to a 100 pound fine and four months imprisonment in Parramatta Gaol. He was imprisoned again in 1855, when his son George, manager of the Ballarat branch of the Bank of New South Wales, was convicted of embezzlement. Lang attacked the judge in print and was sentenced to six months imprisonment for criminal libel. Ten thousand people signed a petition for his release, but he served the full sentence.

By 1850 Lang, inspired by the Chartist movement in Britain and by the 1848 revolution in France, had become a radical democrat and a republican. With Henry Parkes and James Wilshire he founded the Australian League, considered by historians to be Australia's first political party, although he soon quarrelled with his fellow-founders. He put forward ideas which were both visionary and radical - the federation of the Australian colonies, the establishment of a fully democratic government (at a time when both in Britain and Australia the franchise was restricted to owners of property) and an Australian republic. These ideas reflected both the Presbyterian ideal of congregational self-government (despite the fact that in church affairs he was an autocrat) and his Scottish nationalist dislike of English and Anglican supremacy.

In 1850 Lang published The Coming Event! Or, the United Provinces of Australia in which he predicted an independent Australian federal republic. He followed this in 1852 with Freedom and Independence for the Golden Lands of Australia, his best-known work. The title of this work has become an established slogan of political radicalism and republicanism in Australia. Despite his bitter anti-Catholicism, his political ideas won him wide support among the Irish Catholic population, who shared his dislike of English and Anglican dominance. In return, he supported Home Rule for Ireland - partly because he thought this would reduce the Irish Catholic influence in British government.

Lang was also an enthusiastic promoter of the development of the Australian colonies. In 1834 he published in Britain the first edition of An Historical and Statistical Account of New South Wales, both as a Penal Colony and as a British Colony, which ran through a series of edition until his death, to promote immigration and investment in Australia. The Westminster Review commented that the book should have been called A History of Dr Lang to which is added a History of New South Wales'. He also published Port-Phillip, or the colony of Victoria in 1853, and Queensland, Australia in 1861 to promote the northern colony. Lang Park in Brisbane is named after him in recognition of his work promoting the colony.

Despite their eccentricity, Lang's works were influential in promoting Australia, but his practical schemes for immigration were usually fiascos owing to his lack of business sense. After 1851, in any case, immigration to Australia boomed due to the Gold Rush and had no need of promotion.

The growth of Scottish Presbyterianism in Australia led to the establishment of the Presbyterian Synod of Australia in 1841. Lang was unable to accept direction of his ministy and seceded from the Synod in 1842, taking with him Scots Church, which he claimed to own personally by virtue of the original land grant. In 1850 he founded the Synod of New South Wales. This led to protracted legal battles with the Synod of Australia, and with the Church of Scotland, to which the Australian Synod was subordinate. It was not until 1863 that the courts finally ruled in favour of the Australian Synod's right to control Scots Church. Lang then agreed to return to the fold. Somewhat mellowed in old age, he was elected Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in 1872. He was a leading promoter of a Presbyterian College at Sydney University: St Andrewšs College was founded in 1867.

Lang achieved little politically in his lifetime, partly because of his own difficult personality and religious sectarianism, and partly because the wave of radicalism in Britain and Australia of the mid 19th century soon passed and was succeeded by an era of enthusiasm for the British Empire. But he has become an iconic figure in Australian history, as the first public figure to advocate Australian nationalism, federation, full political democracy and republicanism.

Further reading
* John Dunmore Lang, Reminiscences of My Life and Times, Both in Church and State in Australia, for Upwards of Fifty Years, an autobiographical manuscript, unpublished in Lang's lifetime. Edited by Donald Baker, Heineman, Melbourne, 1972
* Donald Baker, Preacher, Politician, Patriot: a Life of John Dunmore Lang, Melbourne University Press, 1998
External link
* John Dunmore Lang Bicentenary website (http://www.emmanuel.uq.edu.au/Lang/welcome.html)
* Photograph of John Dunmore Lang in the National Library of Australia catalogue (http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an23378854)

Categories: 1799 births | 1878 deaths
Results from FactBites:
John Dunmore Lang - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (3017 words)
Lang was born near Greenock, Inverclyde, Scotland, the eldest son of William Lang and Mary Dunmore.
Lang resisted the claim to exclusive State recognition and support by the Church of England involved in the establishment of the Clergy and School Lands Corporation in 1826, and it was suspended in 1829 and abolished in 1833.
Lang is the namesake of Dunmore Lang College, at Macquarie University in Sydney.
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