This was Francis Massingberd's diary entry for 3 July 1831. Undeterred by the rejection, he published his pamphlet privately, and persuaded Rivingtons to take a revised version of it in 1833, entitled Some Considerations on Church Reform, and on the Principles of Church Legislation. Massingberd's approach was characteristic of the rage to participate in the reform debate that swept through the Church in the early 1830s. Geoffrey Best has suggested that 1833 was the peak year for publications of this sort. ‘Untold dozens of churchmen buckled down to the self-imposed task of communicating to the world their views, and their views on other writer's views, on this engrossing subject.’ The writings of the most influential and often cited contributors, Thomas Arnold, Edward Berens, Edward Burton and Lord Henley, represent just the tip of an iceberg; church reform was an issue on which no clergyman was likely to remain indifferent.

Among the labyrinth of proposals, it was Henley's suggestion that the Church's capitular, collegiate and episcopal property would be more efficiently managed by a body of commissioners, who should be a mix of both senior churchmen and politicians, which was to find particular favour with his brother-in-law Sir Robert Peel, when he became prime minister in 1835.