King Chulalongkorn founded an English medium school on the palace grounds and hired the Englishman Francis George Patterson for providing Western education. When the school first opened in 1872, Vajirañana began to study there. Patterson instructed the brothers of the king in the morning and the boys from the Royal Pages' Bodyguard Regiment in the afternoon. Patterson could not speak Siamese, and he used European textbooks, teaching English and French (reading, writing and speaking), mathematics and also some European history and geography. Vajirañana and Prince Damrong Rajanubhab were the most diligent of Patterson's students. Vajirañana continued his education with Patterson until 1875.