Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Paul, Robert Bateman
PAUL, ROBERT BATEMAN (1798–1877), miscellaneous writer, eldest son of the Rev. Richard Paull, rector of Mawgan in Pydar, Cornwall (d. 7 Dec. 1805), by Frances, daughter of the Rev. Robert Bateman, rector of Mawgan and St. Columb-Major, Cornwall, was born at St. Columb-Major on 21 March 1798. He was educated at Truro grammar school and at Exeter College, Oxford, where he matriculated on 10 Oct. 1815. In 1817 he obtained an Eliot exhibition from his school, and on 30 June 1817 he was elected a fellow of his college. He took a second class in classics in 1819, and graduated B.A. 1 July 1820, M.A. 16 Feb. 1822. After having been ordained in the English church, and holding to January 1824 the curacy of Probus in his native county, he returned to Oxford. In 1825 he was appointed bursar and tutor of his college, and during 1826–7 he served as public examiner in classics, but he vacated his fellowship on 11 Jan. 1827 by his marriage to Rosa Mira, daughter of the Rev. Richard Twopenny, rector of Little Casterton, near Stamford. From 30 June 1825 to 1 Aug. 1829 he held the college living of Long Wittenham, Berkshire, and from 1829 to 1835 he was vicar of Llantwit-Major with Llyswarney in Glamorganshire. Paul remained without preferment for some time, but in 1845 he was licensed to the incumbency of St. John, Kentish Town, London. This benefice he retained until 1848, and from that year to 1851 he held the vicarage of St. Augustine, Bristol. Early in 1851 he emigrated to New Zealand, where he settled near Lyttelton, acting for a time as commissary of the bishop, and from 1855 to 1860 as archdeacon of Waimea or Nelson. Shortly after 1860 he returned to England, and in February 1864 was appointed to the rectory of St. Mary, Stamford, which he resigned on account of old age in 1872. In 1867 he became a prebendary of Lincoln, and in the next year he obtained the confratership of Browne's Hospital at Stamford, which he held until his death. He died at Barnhill, Stamford, on 6 June 1877, and was buried on 9 June in Little Casterton churchyard. His widow died at 35 Norland Square, London, on 4 Oct. 1882. They had issue four daughters.
Paul wrote many works. He published ‘An Analysis of Aristotle's Ethics’ in 1829, and of the ‘Rhetoric’ in 1830. A second edition of the ‘Ethics’ came out in 1837, and it was reissued, ‘revised and corrected, with general questions added,’ by J. B. Worcester, in 1879. He compiled a ‘History of Germany,’ ‘on the plan of Mrs. Markham's histories for the use of young persons,’ in 1847, and from 1847 to 1851 he published numerous editions of the plays of Sophocles, with notes from German editors, and many translations of German handbooks on ancient and mediæval geography, Greek and Roman antiquities, and kindred subjects. His books on New Zealand—entitled (1) ‘Some Account of the Canterbury Settlement,’ 1854; (2) ‘Letters from Canterbury,’ 1857; (3) ‘New Zealand as it was, and as it is,’ 1861—contain accurate and valuable information on the history and progress of the colony. In early life Paul published ‘A Journal of a Tour to Moscow in the Summer of 1836,’ and when an old man he wrote, under the pseudonym of ‘the late James Hamley Tregenna,’ a novel in two volumes called ‘The Autobiography of a Cornish Rector,’ 1872, which embodied many incidents in local history and many curious details of folklore, the recollections of youthful days passed in North Cornwall.
[Foster's Alumni Oxon.; Boase's Exeter Coll. ed. 1894, p. 168; Jewers's St. Columb-Major Registers, pp. 127, 173; Boase and Courtney's Bibl. Cornub. i. 431–3, iii. 1303; Boase's Collectanea Cornub. pp. 662, 1394–5; Lincoln, Rutland, and Stamford Mercury, 8 June 1877; Stamford and Rutland Guardian, 8 and 15 June 1877.]