[15] The death of Reginald Senior in February 1804 left the living of parish of St Luke, Hodnet vacant, and may have prompted Heber's decision to seek ordination, though he delayed it for some years.

However, in 1804 the Napoleonic Wars made much of Europe inaccessible, and so they delayed their departure until the summer of 1805 and took a route through Sweden, Norway and Finland to Russia, instead of the usual journey through France and Italy.

[25] They spent two months in the city; through influential British Embassy contacts they visited places generally closed to the public, including Tsar Alexander's private quarters in the Winter Palace.

Heber sent home a vivid account of the night celebrations for Easter at Novo Tcherkask, the Cossack capital: "The soft plaintive chaunt of the choir, and their sudden change at the moment of daybreak to the full chorus of 'Christ is risen' were altogether what a poet or a painter would have studied with delight".

[33] The course of the war in Europe had meanwhile shifted to allow Heber and Thornton to pass through Poland, Hungary, Austria and Germany to the port of Hamburg,[34] by way of Austerlitz, where they heard accounts of the recent battle.

[34] On his return to England, Heber prepared for Holy Orders at Oxford, where he found time for literary pursuits, was active in university politics and led a busy social life.

He had not at this time determined his own doctrinal position; writing to Thornton he admitted that he was still searching: "Pray for me, my dear friend, that I may have my eyes open to the truth ... and if it please God that I persevere in his ministry I may undertake the charge with a quiet mind and a good conscience".

He withdrew from Oxford, having secured his M.A., and set himself up permanently in the Hodnet rectory; finding this too small for his wife's liking he had the house demolished and a larger replacement built.

[41] He refused an appointment as a canon at Durham, preferring to continue his work in Hodnet in which, after 1814, he was assisted by his younger brother, the Revd Thomas Heber, who served as his curate until his death, at the age of 31, in 1816.

[44] At the start of the 19th century the Anglican authorities officially disapproved of the singing of hymns in churches, other than metrical psalms, although there was considerable informal hymn-singing in parishes.

[45] Betjeman characterised Heber's style as consciously literary, with careful choices of adjectives and vivid figures of speech: "poetic imagery was as important as didactic truth".

[46] A more recent analysis by J. R. Watson draws attention to Heber's tendency to deliver what he terms "a rather obvious sermon",[47] and to his mixing of powerful description with "a rather trite moralism".

[49] One whose popularity has waned is the missionary hymn "From Greenland's Icy Mountains", written in 1819 as part of a country-wide campaign on behalf of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG).

Watson describes this as "a conspicuous example of that fervent belief to convert the world to Christianity which led Heber and others to lay down their lives in the mission field",[50] and while widely sung until the second half of the 20th century, it was for instance omitted from the 1982 revision of the Episcopal Church hymnal.

[51] Betjeman felt that in the modern world, the words of this hymn seem patronising and insensitive to other beliefs, with references to "...every prospect pleases and only man is vile", and to "the heathen in his blindness [bowing] down to wood and stone".

[49] These phrases and the assumptions behind them offended Gandhi, who drew attention to them in a speech at YMCA Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1925: "My own experience in my travels throughout India has been to the contrary ... [Man] is not vile.

Within days he had written again, regretting the refusal and asking if the post was still available, at which Williams-Wynn quickly obtained the formal approval of King George IV to the appointment.

After his ceremonial installation by the Governor General, Lord Amherst, Heber preached his first sermon as bishop on Sunday 12 October, in St John's Cathedral Church.

A major area of concern was Bishop's College, a training school for local clergy founded by Middleton in 1820, the development of which had stalled due to financial and management problems.

Heber reinvigorated the project by extensive fundraising, by persuading the government to increase its grant of land, and by restarting the building programme; within a few months the college boasted a library and a new chapel.

[6] Occasionally his easy manner and lavish hospitality clashed with the principles of the more puritan and evangelical of his clergy; one such, Isaac Wilson of the CMS, used a sermon to mount a direct attack on the bishop after what he considered were excessive celebrations following a baptismal service.

[63] The general plan was to travel by boat to the upper waters of the River Ganges, then overland into the foothills of the Himalayas before turning south and west, crossing Rajputana to reach Bombay.

[6] The journey was almost aborted near to its beginning when Stowe fell ill in Dacca (present-day Dhaka, Bangladesh) and died there; after some hesitation, Heber decided that the tour should continue.

It was a wholly Indian city without a European population, sacred to Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists but with a well-established CMS school and a substantial Christian minority.

[71] Heber wished to pass on to the Governor General, Lord Amherst, much of what he had learned and observed on his long voyage, and on his return to Calcutta busied himself with a series of detailed reports.

[73] Many local matters also demanded Heber's attention: the next phase in the development of Bishop's College, the preparation of a Hindustani dictionary, and a series of ordinations including that of Abdul Masih, an elderly Lutheran whose reception into Anglican orders had earlier been resisted by Bishop Middleton, on unspecified grounds[72][74] In spite of the pressures on his time, Heber set out again on 30 January 1826, this time heading south for Madras, Pondicherry, Tanjore, and ultimately Travancore.

[75] Watson records that a contemporary engraving shows his body "being carried from the bath by his servant and chaplain, the latter immaculately attired in a frock coat and top hat".

Sir Charles Grey, an old Oxford friend who was serving as Calcutta's Chief Justice, spoke of Heber's cheerfulness, his lack of self-importance, his good humour, patience and kindness.

[79] In St John's church in Trichinopoly, initially a simple plaque above the grave recorded the date and place of Heber's death; this was in due course made much more elaborate.

[88] Another tribute was provided by Letitia Elizabeth Landon with her poetical illustration to an engraving of a painting by H. Melville on the Death of Heber in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1839.