schooner Undine. In 1850 Bishop Selwyn attended the first Pan-Australasian Synod at Sydney. Out of this assemblage sprang the Australasian Board of Missions, which found funds for a missionary vessel of a superior class, The Border Maid, in which the Bishop, accompanied by his former college friend and fellow-oarsman Bishop Tyrrell, of Newcastle, N.S.W., paid his third visit to the South Seas in 1851. On the last day of the year 1853, Bishop Selwyn sailed from New Zealand on a visit to England, and did not return to Auckland till July 5th, 1855. He was very shortly involved in the Maori war troubles, and had the mortification of seeing the major part of his native flock abjure Christianity for the degrading Hau Hau superstition. In the meantime he had brought back with him from England Mr. John Coleridge Patteson to superintend the Melanesian Mission, of which he constituted New Norfolk the future centre. In 1861 Mr. Patteson became the first Bishop of Melanesia, and was destined to have as his successor Bishop Selwyn's own son. By the year 1867, when Dr. Selwyn again left New Zealand to attend the first Pan-Anglican Synod at Lambeth, he had succeeded in his long-conceived plan of dividing his diocese, Bishop Harper being placed in charge of the Southern Island as Bishop of Christchurch. The two islands were still further subdivided by the consecration of Bishops Abraham and Williams to Wellington and Waiapu in the North, and of Bishops Hobhouse and Jenner to Nelson and Dunedin in the South Island. Thus seven sees took the place of the one over which he had had sole charge. The Church, too, had got its constitution into working order; theological training schools had been established, and a native ministry ordained both for Maori and Melanesian service. Whilst in England in 1867, he was offered by the then Premier, Lord Derby, the bishopric of Lichfield, which, however, he at first refused, on grounds thus stated by himself: "(1) Because the native race requires all the efforts of the few friends that remain to them; (2) because the organisation of the Church in New Zealand is still incomplete; (3) because I have still, so far as I can judge, health and strength for the peculiar duties which habit has made familiar to me; (4) because my bishopric is not endowed; (5) because I have personal friends to whom I am so deeply indebted that I feel bound to work with them so long as I can; (6) because a report was spread in New Zealand that I did not intend to return, to which I answered that nothing but illness or death would prevent me. I could work with all my heart in the Black Country if it were not that my heart is in New Zealand and Melanesia." Ultimately, under pressure from the Primate and from the Queen, Bishop Selwyn recalled his refusal, and at Windsor on Dec. 1st, 1867, personally intimated to her Majesty his acceptance of the Lichfield see, and on Jan. 9th, 1868, was enthroned in Lichfield Cathedral. Having got his new diocese into something like working order, he set sail on July 2nd, 1868, to pay a farewell visit to New Zealand, accompanied by his wife and his son John, the future Bishop of Melanesia. They chose the Panama route, and on the steamer reaching Wellington were transhipped into a Colonial steamer, which ran upon a rock in Cook Straits, and slipping off, went to the bottom, after giving those on board barely time to escape in the boats. On arrival at Auckland Bishop Selwyn presided for the last time at the General Synod of the Church of New Zealand on Oct. 6th. He was presented with numerous farewell addresses from both whites and natives, and finally sailed from Auckland on Oct. 20th, 1868, arriving in England on the last day of the year. The Bishop strongly opposed the disestablishment of the Irish Church in 1869, and was one of the bishops who protested against the consecration of Dr. Temple to the see of Exeter in the same year. Bishop Selwyn died at Lichfield on April 11th, 1878, and was buried in the cathedral. Almost his last intelligible words—"It is light"—were spoken to Sir William Martin in Maori. Amongst the pall-bearers at his funeral were Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Martin; his coadjutors in England and New Zealand, Bishops Abraham and Hobhouse, being also present.
Selwyn, Right Rev. John Richardson, D.D., Bishop of Melanesia, is the son of Right Rev. George Selwyn, sometime Bishop of New Zealand and subsequently Bishop of Lichfield (q.v.). He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where
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