John Patteson (bishop)

John Coleridge Patteson
John Coleridge Patteson
Bishop and Martyr
Born	1 April 1827 England
Died	20 September 1871 Nukapu, Solomon Islands
Venerated in	Anglican Communion
Feast	20 September

John Coleridge Patteson (1 April 1827 – 20 September 1871) was an English Anglican bishop and martyr. He studied at Oxford University and did more study of languages in Germany, becoming ordained as a priest in England in 1854.

A missionary to the South Seas from 1855, Patteson became an accomplished linguist, learning 23 of the islands' more than 1,000 languages. In 1861, he was selected as the first Bishop of Melanesia. Patteson was killed by natives on Nukapu, in the Solomon Islands. He is commemorated in the Church of England on 20 September.

He was the elder son of Sir John Patteson the judge, by his second wife, Frances Duke Coleridge. She was a niece of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Patteson 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 studied 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. However, at Oxford he began lifelong friendships with prominent figures such as Benjamin Jowett, Max Müller, John Campbell Shairp, Edwin Palmer. James Riddell, James John Hornby, and Charles Savile Roundell.