he Feast of St. Philip and St. James the
prelate died in his Castle of High Thorpe. He was succeeded by the
Bishop of Warwick, much to Mark's pleasure and surprise, for the new
Bishop was an old friend of Father Rowley and a High Churchman, one who
might lend a kindly ear to Mark's ambition. Father Rowley had been in
the United States for nearly two years, where he had been treated with
much sympathy and where he had collected enough money to pay off the
debt upon the new St. Agnes'. He had arrived home about a week before
Mark left Malford, and in answer to Mark he wrote immediately to Dr.
Oliphant, the new Bishop of Silchester, to enlist his interest. Early in
June Mark received a cordial letter inviting him to visit the Bishop at
High Thorpe.

The promotion of Dr. Aylmer Oliphant to the see of Silchester was
considered at the time to be an indication that the political party then
in power was going mad in preparation for its destruction by the gods.
The Press in commenting upon the appointment did not attempt to cast a
slur upon the sanctity and spiritual fervour of the new Bishop, but it
felt bound to observe that the presence of such a man on the episcopal
bench was an indication that the party in power was oblivious of the
existence of an enraged electorate already eager to hurl them out of
office. At a time when thinking men and women were beginning to turn to
the leaders of the National Church for a social policy, a government
worn out by eight years of office that included a costly war was so
little alive to the signs of the times as to select for promotion a
prelate conspicuously identified with the obscurantist tactics of that
small but noisy group in the Church of England which arrogated to itself
the presumptuous claim to be the Catholic party. Dr. Oliphant's learning
was indisputable; his liturgical knowledge was profound; his eloquence
in the pulpit was not to be gainsaid; his life, granted his sacerdotal
eccentricities, was a noble example to his fellow clergy. But had he
shown those qualities of statesmanship, that capacity for moderation,
which were so marked a feature of his predecessor's reign? Was he not
identified with what might almost be called an unchristian agitation to
prosecute the holy, wise, and scholarly Dean of Leicester for appearing
to countenance an opinion that the Virgin Birth was not vital to the
belief of a Christian? Had he not denounced the Reverend Albert Blundell
for heresy, an