My brother took his degree on the 4th of December, 1839, but resided for some months after at Wadham. During this period his mind was deeply exercised in coming to a decision on the important step, which now pressed itself upon him—that of becoming a missionary to the heathen.

He was ordained deacon by the Bishop of London, on the 21st of December, 1840, and married at Bagborough, Somersetshire, on the 30th of December, to Miss Elizabeth James, daughter of the late G. H. James, Esq., of Wolverhampton.

Previous to these events, he had come to the decision of devoting his life to the missionary cause: he offered himself to the Church Missionary Society, and the field of labour to which his attention had been directed was that of the Telugu people, or Northern Circars, who inhabit a district of South India, north of Madras, numbering ten millions of people, to whom, though subject to British rule for eighty years, no clergyman of the Church of England had ever been sent.

By a singular coincidence, the Rev. Robert T. Noble, of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, had had his attention drawn in the same direction, and they both offered their services for the same people, unknown to each other, at the same time.