As a priest he had the curacies of two consecutive parishes, then spent six years with his wife and children in South Africa as the inaugural Bishop of Zululand.

[3][4][5][6] Hooper John, Anne and their son Octavius are buried in the churchyard of St Mary's Church, Walsham le Willows.

[29] Green spent "several thousand pounds" in 1842 in transforming his house Felmersham Grange into "an Elizabethan-style mansion", and he was a benefactor to the Church of St Peter, Pavenham.

[30] After Annie died, Wilkinson had steps and gates installed at the west side of the Church of St Mary, Felmersham, in her memory.

On the day of the marriage, the church and churchyard were decorated with flowers, the villagers attended, and the local children presented gifts to the couple.

In spite of his bishopric and the Reform Act 1867 his request was refused on the grounds that the house belonged to his sister Miss Wilkinson, so as her tenant he had no right to vote.

[34] Wilkinson's last home was Bradford Court, Taunton,[52] but he died of dysentery at 3:45 am on 23 October 1914 at Khartoum, while travelling in a non-clerical capacity between Cape Town and Cairo.

[52] To his daughter Edith Howlett Wallis he left "the ikon presented to him by the Metropolitan of Petrograd,[nb 1] and his episcopal pastoral staff, mitre and pectoral cross".

[65] For twenty-five years between 14 August 1886 and 1911 he was coadjutor bishop of London for north and central Europe,[5][9][66] having been nominated by Frederick Temple.

On 30 December 1865, Wilkinson wrote a long letter to the Evening Mail about the need to establish local hospitals for infectious diseases, and the need to train nurses throughout the country.

He described the previous year's epidemic of fevers in the parishes of Ricklinghall Superior and Inferior, and the despair of local families regarding how to assist a patient.

[69] In 1870, Wilkinson established himself at the mission station which had been built at KwaMagwaza, South Africa in 1859, when the Anglican Diocese of Zululand was created, following an agreement between Bishop John Colenso and King Mpande.

)[71] During Wilkinson's era, the area encompassed by this diocese comprised ten nations: Russia, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, where at that period ruled three emperors and five kings, some of whom were Anglicans.

[72] He made 82 episcopal tours during this bishopric which was "lying over an area eight times the size of Great Britain, and entailing very broken and trying travel by land and sea".

[73][74] The following extract from his 1906 memoirs gives a partial insight into his concept of baptism and naming:[75] From Freiburg I went to Berne, staying with Mr. Leveson-Gower, attached to the Legation.

[75]In 1906, Wilkinson wrote to the Central Somerset Gazette to advocate the rebuilding of the Glastonbury Abbey ruins as a training college for missionaries.

Those statements may appear judgmental, however he also made one comment which may possibly define the middle road that he had to take in Africa, when the previous bishop, Colenso, had been excommunicated for questioning the literal truth of the Bible and for saying as Bishop of Natal, "that his aim was to defeat sin rather than to punish those who sinned",[78][79] and when Wilkinson himself had to continue the mission while respecting the same African cultures.

Wilkinson said, "In ministering to our own countrymen we should take heed of the lessons of the Eastern Church: never to interfere; to exercise the utmost care in no way to do what Rome is ever doing, i.e. to proselytise.

The first, known as the tin oven due to its lack of summer insulation, was the 1899 corrugated iron church, bought second hand from East London, under the new curacy of Tindal-Atkinson.

Here he recounts part of a journey between Bern and Lausanne in 1886:[75] From Geneva I went to Thun, Interlaken, and Grindelwald, at each of which places we have season chaplaincies ; in fact, all Switzerland is studded – mountains, lake-sides, and valleys – with what I call my button mushroom churches, for they spring up all over that country, and sometimes almost in a night!

A farmer's son at Grindelwald told me that corn and apple trees will grow now in that district, whereas in his father's day, when the glaciers came much further down into the valley, neither could be cultivated.

Sleeping at the Männlichen, then a rough hut far above the Wengen Alp Hotel,[nb 5] a grand panorama of the Jungfrau and the Oberland giants was obtained.

It is not known whether either man embellished it:[75] His most remarkable journey was from Pekin to England by land, long before the Trans–Siberian Railway was dreamed of – a wonderful feat for that day.

It took him six weeks to reach the Siberian frontier, thence by sledge, with a young Russian officer carrying dispatches through Siberia to Nizhny Novgorod.

I remember Mr. J. Hubbard, of Petersburg, accustomed to Russian sledge travelling, telling me that upon a journey of only three or four days over the Ural Mountains he had to tie up his jaw tight to prevent his teeth being broken by the shocks over what are called roads!

[75]After a reception I endeavoured to walk out upon the Thun Road, where I found Mr.St John in almost as great a plight as in his journey from Pekin to London.

In one, a man and his wife were found dead; their little child was alive under a table, warmed by a big dog which had curled itself round its young friend.