John Godley

John Robert Godley (1814–1861) was an Anglo-Irish statesman and bureaucrat best known as the founder of the Canterbury settlement in New Zealand, where he served as resident chief agent from 1850 to 1852 despite living there only briefly.[1][2] Born in Dublin to a prosperous Irish landowner, he studied at Harrow and Oxford, traveled extensively in Ireland and North America, and later advocated for colonial reforms and worked as a journalist in London.[2][3] He married Charlotte Griffith Wynne in 1846 and died of tuberculosis in London at age 47.[3]