He was born in London, the son of Henry Field, and educated at Christ's Hospital and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship in 1824.
[2] Eventually he published an emended and annotated text of Chrysostom's Homiliae in Matthaeum (Cambridge, 1839), and some years later he contributed to Edward Pusey's Bibliotheca Patrum (Oxford, 1838–1870), a similarly treated text of Chrysostom's homilies on Paul's epistles.
[3] In 1839 he had accepted the living of Great Saxham, in Suffolk, and in 1842 he was presented by his college to the rectory of Reepham in Norfolk.
[4] Twelve years later he completed the Origenis Hexaplorum quae supersunt (Oxford, 1867–1875), now well known as Field's Hexapla, a text reconstructed from the extant fragments of Origen's work of that name, together with materials drawn from the Syro-hexaplar version and the Septuagint of Robert Holmes and James Parsons (Oxford, 1798–1827).
Many he saw as incorrect grammatically, stylistically or textually and Field referred to "needless and finical changes" [5] This book was reprinted posthumously in 1899 with additions by the author, under the title Notes on the translation of the New Testament.