[1] The son of Hugh Pearson of Lymington, he matriculated at St John's College, Oxford in 1796, and graduated B.A.
[2] In 1802 Pearson was ordained priest by Brownlow North;[4] Henry Venn the younger recorded that he was nearly rejected, having praised a work of William Wilberforce.
He owed this preferment to Ann Kennicott, whom he had met at Windsor where he had been living for his health, and with whom he was linked until her death in 1830, being one of her executors.
He resided at Iffley, and his location just outside Oxford led to a college office of proctor at St John's.
[2] Christian missions to Asia were one of Pearson's major interests, and he was attending Church Missionary Society meetings by 1804, becoming a committee member in May of that year.