GEORGE

See also:

• AUGUSTUS (a name 1 derived from Lat. augeo, increase, i.e. venerable, majestic, Gr. Ee0avr6s)

AUGUSTUS

See also:

• SELWYN, ALFRED RICHARD CECIL (1824-1902)
• SELWYN, GEORGE AUGUSTUS (1719-1791)
• GEORGE AUGUSTUS SELWYN (1809-1878)

SELWYN (1809-1878)  , English bishop, second son of William Selwyn (1795-1855), a distinguished legal writer, was born at Hampstead, London, on the 5th of April 1809 . He was educated at Eton and at St John's College, Cambridge, where in 1829 he rowed in the first university boat-race . He took his degree (second in the classical tripos) in 1831 . He returned to Eton as private tutor, was ordained deacon in 1833, and devoted himself with characteristic energy to work in the parish of Windsor . In 1841 it was proposed that he should go out as first bishop to New Zealand, then just beginning to be colonized . Despite the advice of his friends he accepted the offer . He studied navigation and the Maori language on the voyage, and gave himself up to a life of continual strain and hardship . He spent days and sometimes nights in the saddle, swam broad rivers and provided himself with a sailing vessel . Unfortunately, just when he had gained the confidence of the natives, his ascendancy was rudely shaken by the first Maori war . Selwyn endeavoured to mediate, but incurred the hostility of both parties . He went to the battlefield to minister to the sick and wounded in both camps; but the Maoris were persuaded that he had gone out to fight against them, and years afterwards one of them pointed out a scar on his leg to an Anglican bishop which he declared had been inflicted by Selwyn's own hands . It was long before he regained the confidence he had forfeited by his strict adherence to duty .

In 1854 he returned to

England for a short furlough; but he spent much of it in pleading the needs of his diocese . He returned to New Zealand with a band of able associates, including J . C . Patteson, and began to divide his large diocese into sees of more manageable proportions . The colonists came to respect his uprightness, and the Maoris learned to regard him as their father . In 1868, while he was in England to attend the first pan-Anglican synod, the bishopric of Lichfield became vacant, and after some hesitation he accepted it . In his new sphere of work he displayed the same unselfish activity as before, and in the " Black Country " portion of his diocese he won the hearts of the working classes . He called his clergy and laity together for consultation in the diocesan conference, an innovation the value of which he had proved by his colonial experience . On his death, on the 11th of April 1878, his great work for the church was celebrated by a remarkable memorial, Selwyn College, Cambridge, being erected by public subscription and incorporated in 1882 . See Lives by H . W . Tucker (2 vols., 1879) and G .

H . Curteis (1889) . His son, JOHN

RICHARDSON SELWYN (1844-1898), bishop of Melanesia, was born in New Zealand on the loth of May 1844 . He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was ordained deacon in 1869 . At first he laboured with energy and tact as vicar of Wolverhampton in his father's diocese of Lichfield; but the martyrdom of John Coleridge Patteson, bishop of Melanesia, led him to volunteer for service in the Australasian Archipelago . After three years' service, during which the bishopric remained vacant, he was nominated as Patteson's successor (1877) . For twelve years he threw himself with intense energy into his arduous work, but his health broke down and he returned to England in 189o . There he found an appropriate sphere in the mastership of Selwyn College, where he remained until his death on the 12th of February 1898 .