All went as well with the new St. Agnes’ as the Bishop had hoped.  Columns of red brick were covered in marble and alabaster by the votive offerings of individuals or the subscriptions of different Silchester Houses; the baldacchino was given by one rich old lady, the pavement of the church by another; the Duke of Birmingham contributed a thurible; Oxford Old Siltonians decorated the Lady Chapel; Cambridge Old Siltonians found the gold mosaic for the dome of the apse.  Father Rowley begged money for the fabric far and wide, and the architect, the contractors, and the workmen, all Chatsea men, gave of their best and asked as little as possible in return.  The new church was to be opened on Easter morning.  But early in Lent the Bishop of Silchester died in the bed from which he had never risen since the day Father Rowley and Mark received his blessing.  The diocese mourned him, for he was a gentle scholar, wise in his knowledge of men, simple and pious in his own life.

Dr. Harvard Cheesman, the new Bishop, was translated from the see of Ipswich to which he had been preferred from the Chapel Royal in the Savoy.  Bishop Cheesman possessed all the episcopal qualities.  He had the hands of a physician and the brow of a scholar.  He was filled with a sense of the importance of his position, and in that perhaps was included n sense of the importance of himself.  He was eloquent in public, grandiloquent in private.  To him Father Rowley wrote shortly after his enthronement.

     St. Agnes’ House,

     Keppel Street,

     Chatsea.

     March 24.

     My Lord Bishop,

I am unwilling to trouble you at a moment when you must be unusually busy; but I shall be glad to hear from you about the opening of the new church of the Silchester College Mission, which was fixed for Easter Sunday.  Your predecessor, Bishop Crawshay, did not think that any new licence would be necessary, because the new St. Agnes’ is joined by the sacristy to the old mission church.  There is no idea at present of asking you to constitute St. Agnes’ a parish and therefore the question of consecration does not arise.  I regret to say that Bishop Crawshay thoroughly disapproved of our services and ritual, and I think he may have felt unwilling to commit himself to endorsing them by the formal grant of a new licence.  May I hear from you at your convenience, and may I respectfully add that your lordship has the prayers of all my people?

     I am your lordship’s obedient servant,

     John Rowley.

To which the Lord Bishop of Silchester replied as follows: 

     High Thorpe Castle.

     March 26.

     Dear Mr. Rowley,