John Patteson (bishop) - Early Life

Early Life

He was elder son of Sir John Patteson the judge, by his second wife, Frances Duke Coleridge. He was brought up at Feniton Court, where his family resided, so as to be near the home of his mother's relatives at Ottery St. Mary. After three years at The King's School, Ottery St Mary, Patteson was placed in 1838 at Eton College, under his uncle, the Rev. Edward Coleridge, son-in-law of John Keate, once headmaster there. Patteson remained there till 1845. From 1845 to 1848 he was a commoner of Balliol College, Oxford, under Dr. Richard Jenkyns. He was not interested in academic studies, and obtained a second class degree; but he was brought into contact with Benjamin Jowett, Max Müller, John Campbell Shairp, Edwin Palmer. James Riddell, James John Hornby, and Charles Savile Roundell, who became his lifelong friends. After taking his degree in October 1849 he travelled in Switzerland and Italy, learned German at Dresden, and devoted himself to Hebrew and Arabic. Returning to Oxford in 1852, he became Fellow of Merton College, and spent the year 1852–3 in the college, where there had been recent reform.

Patteson was ordained in September 1853 in the Church of England, and took up the curacy of Alphington, a part of Ottery St. Mary. George Augustus Selwyn, the first Bishop of New Zealand, persuaded Patteson on a visit to become a missionary to the South Seas, in the summer of 1854. Patteson left England with the bishop in March 1855, and landed at Auckland in May.