[2] Patteson was brought up in Devon 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 Reverend Edward Coleridge, son-in-law of John Keate, once headmaster there.

[5] After taking his degree in October 1849, Patteson travelled in Switzerland and Italy, learned German at Dresden, and devoted himself to the study of Hebrew and Arabic.

[7] On a visit in the summer of 1854, George Augustus Selwyn, the first Bishop of New Zealand, recruited Patteson as a missionary to the South Seas.

Following the example of Bishop Selwyn, when Patteson came to an island where he did not know the people and where they might be hostile, he used to swim ashore wearing a top hat.

[10] Patteson's goal was to take boys from local communities, educate them in western Christian culture at his mission school, and return them to their villages to help lead the next generation.

Patteson devoted his private fortune to the mission, including money inherited from his father, and income from his Merton College fellowship.

Numerous merchantmen, known as "blackbirders", sailed to the islands to recruit, often by deception and force, labourers to work on plantations in Australia or Fiji, under extremely harsh conditions.

[11] His task was made harder when traders from Australia began to visit the islands, keen to get men to go and work on their sugar plantations.

[12] The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica says that Patteson was taken for a blackbirder and killed, but the natives realised their mistake and treated his body with respect, as it was found floating at sea, placed in "a canoe, covered with a palm fibre matting, and a palm-branch in his hand".

[13] Two Norwegian historians (Thorgeir Kolshus and Even Hovdhaugen, 2010) have examined the evidence in light of current interpretations related to agency and meanings given by the indigenous people.

[12] Alternatively, Kolshus and Hovdhaugen also suggest that Patteson had upset the local hierarchy by giving gifts without due regard for precedence, and by cultivating support among women in the community.

[12] As Bishop Patteson's death was associated with native resistance to the abuses of the blackbirders, the British government took measures to stamp out the slave trade in its Pacific territories.

The Aborigines' Protection Society took up the cause, resulting in a well-orchestrated campaign in Parliament from William McArthur for the annexation of Fiji to abolish slavery.

[16] On Norfolk Island in 1882, the church of St Barnabas was erected to Patteson's memory, with windows designed by Edward Burne-Jones and executed by William Morris.

Bishop Patteson is commemorated as the central figure in the stained glass window of the Seaman's Chapel of Lincoln Cathedral.