CODRINGTON, R. H. (1830–1922), Christian missionary to Melanesia and scholar of Melanesian languages and cultures. The second son of an Anglican rector, Robert Henry Codrington was educated at Charterhouse and at Wadham College, Oxford, where, as his later high church views suggest, he may have been touched by the Oxford Movement. In 1857, two years after he was ordained, he gave up excellent prospects in England to go to New Zealand with his vicar, Edmund Hobhouse, who had been elevated to the bishopric of Christchurch. In 1863 he accompanied Bishop John Coleridge Patteson on the island voyage of the mission ship Southern Cross, and in 1867 he joined the peripatetic Melanesian Mission, which advocated a policy of racial equality and minimal interference in traditional native culture. When Patteson was killed in 1871 by Melanesians previously victimized by Australian "blackbirders" (kidnappers), Codrington declined the bishopric, but he served for some...