After their father’s death, Thomas and his brother, William, moved to London and established a merchant business that became immensely successful.

[9][10] Charlotte’s portrait by George Romney depicts her sitting at a keyboard in a sumptuous white dress, looking elegant and graceful.

[13][14] Thomas (junior) joined the family business; Richard became a banker;[15][16] and George became a director of the East India Company.

[3] Whether his cruelty stemmed from by a tortured psyche or twisted religious ideas about the depravity of human nature is impossible to say.

There, he excelled in classics and became a close friend of John Bird Sumner, the future Archbishop of Canterbury.

[18] On 18 May 1800, Raikes entered St John’s College, Cambridge, where he cultivated valuable friendships but failed to apply himself wholeheartedly to his studies.

[3] After his return from Greece, Raikes lived with his parents in their house at 14 Upper Grosvenor Street, Mayfair.

[27] On 18 December 1808, the Bishop of Winchester ordained him as a priest and licensed him to the curacy of Betchworth, a parish near Dorking.

[3] On 16 March 1809, Raikes married Augusta Whittington at St George's, Hanover Square, Westminster.

Raikes’s father gave the newly married couple a marriage settlement comprising £4,000 and two farms.

On 29 July 1809, Sir William Gell wrote to Philip Gell of Hopton Hall, Wirksworth, Derbyshire, on Raikes's behalf to obtain more information about a living:" I sent or rather wrote you a letter yesterday on the subject of the living but I don't know whether you will even get it or not, so I repeat, Henry Raikes the Revd 14 upper Gros St Gros Square wants to buy it but must have particulars & know where your agent is to be seen in town to set his agent about it.

[38][39] His old friend, John Sumner, offered consolation by quoting Jesus’s words: “What I do thou knowest not now, but though shalt know hereafter.”[3] In 1822, Raikes inherited great wealth from his parents.

In 1824, he inherited more property when his uncle and former tutor, Richard Raikes, left him all his freehold and leasehold lands and buildings.

[42] After leaving Burnham, Raikes lived with his brother, Thomas, at Sudbrook Park, Petersham, Surrey.

[3] The house came with five acres of land, outbuildings, pleasure grounds, a kitchen garden, and a lawn that sloped to the sea.

[3] In the summer of 1827, he preached a series of sermons about the attributes of God at the nearby proprietary chapel of St John’s, Bognor.

[47] In 1828, Raikes’s prospects changed dramatically when his old friend, John Bird Sumner, was appointed Bishop of Chester.

[54] Raikes delayed moving to Chester for more than a year, using the time to finish and publish Remarks on Clerical Education, a book that proved influential in its call for better training of ordinands.

[57] He became so deeply involved in the running of the diocese that Charles Simeon, a prominent evangelical churchman, is supposed to have remarked that Chester enjoyed a double episcopacy.

[66] Raikes was a leading contender to be the first Bishop of Manchester but lost out to James Prince Lee, the headmaster of King Edward’s School, Birmingham.

[67][68][69] The Whig Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, probably rejected Raikes because of his Tory sympathies.

[95][96] He gave the Chetham Society access to early diocesan records and permitted them to publish the antiquarian notes of Bishop Gastrell.

The task did not suit his skill set, and the resulting book, published in 1846, is long, tedious, and full of extraneous religious musings.

Over a thousand people joined in the procession as it travelled from St John’s Parochial Schoolroom to the Cemetery Chapel.

His will, made on 28 February 1853, refers to a valuable marriage settlement, £21,000 in bank annuities, three farms, and land in Gloucestershire.

[110] In February 1857, after deciding that the best location was over Raikes’s grave, the committee asked a local architect, Thomas Penson, to design a structure that was solid, imposing, and ecclesiastical.

[114] Today, few visitors to the cemetery realise his tomb is a public memorial erected by the citizens of Chester to show their gratitude and respect.

[115] Contrary to some authorities, he did not write The Reform of England by the Decrees of Cardinal Pole[116] or A Popular Sketch of the Origin and Development of the English Constitution from the earliest period to the present time.