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The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Auckland Provincial District]

The Right Rev. John Coleridge Patteson

The Right Rev. John Coleridge Patteson, first Bishop of Melanesia, was the son of an English judge, and his mother
Bishop Patteson.

Bishop Patteson.

was a niece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the famous poet. He was born in London on the 1st of April, 1827, and was educated at Eton and Oxford, where he took a first-class in Literæ Humaniores, and was elected a Fellow of Merton. He then spent five years in travelling on the Continent, where he studied Italian art, Hebrew, Arabic, and German. Entering holy orders, he was ordained to the curacy of Alfington, Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire. That was in 1853. Shortly afterwards Bishop Selwyn, then on a visit to England in quest of volunteers for church work in New Zealand and missionary work in the South Pacific Islands, came in contact with the young curate, who had long looked forward to a missionary's life, and he willingly placed himself in Bishop Selwyn's hands. On the 5th of July, 1855, he arrived in Auckland, by the ‘Ducke of Portland,” and page 221 after being for a time the guest of Sir William Martin, the Chief Justice, Mr. Patteson went coasting in the “Southern Cross” mission schooner, and also, subsequently, travelled about in the bush amongst the native villages. He became closely identified with the work going on at St. John's College, Kohimarama, then the headquarters of the Melanesian Mission. With all the branches of this hard and hazardous work he so successfully identified himself, that he was consecrated first Bishop of Melanesia in 1861. In this office he laboured with true apostolic zeal and remarkable success for about eleven years, until he was murdered on the small coral island of Nukapu on the 20th of September, 1872. The atrocious labour traffic of those days had led to much bitterness amongst the natives whose kindred had been kidnapped or enticed away by the traffickers, and it was as an expression of that bitterness that Bishop Patterson, their truest and best friend, was killed by the men of Nukapu. The tragedy, appalling in itself, was felt all the more by all British people, on account of the Bishop's great gifts and exceptionally gracious character, which, as Max Muller, who had known the Bishop in the Old World, said, “was revealed by his death, as by a flash of lighting, in all its grandeur and human majesty.” Indeed, the character, the career, and the death of Bishop Patteson constitute one of the noblest, yet also one of the saddest, histories connected with the evengelisation of Melanesia.