London. Another was to issue sets of queries for the beneficed clergy of the diocese to answer, no information having been obtained in that way since 1788, and in August and September 1829 he made his first visitation of the counties under his charge. He pressed upon the clergy the necessity of providing schools for the poor, pleaded with landlords for the provision of better houses for their tenants, and protested against trading on Sundays. During his occupation of the bishopric of Winchester he made ten visitations, the last being in October and November 1867, and he twice issued a ‘Conspectus’ of the diocese (1854 and 1864). By 1867 there were 747 permanent or temporary churches in the diocese, 201 being new and additional, and 119 having been rebuilt since 1829. During the same period there had been provided 312 churchyards and cemeteries, and the new districts, divided parishes, and ancient chapelries formed into separate benefices, amounted to 210, while nearly every living had been supplied with a parsonage-house. He proved himself an admirable administrator.
Sumner's munificence and energy were beyond praise. His revenues were great, but his liberality was equal to them. In 1837 he formed a church building society for the diocese, in 1845 he instituted a ‘Southwark fund for schools and churches,’ and in 1860 he set on foot the ‘Surrey Church Association.’ When the lease for lives of the Southwark Park estate lapsed in the summer of 1863, he refused to renew it, and entered into negotiations with the ecclesiastical commissioners. They bought out his rights for a capital sum of 13,270l., and for an annuity of 3,200l. during the term of his episcopate. The whole of this sum, both capital and income, he placed in the hands of the two archdeacons and the chancellor of the diocese for the purpose of augmenting poor benefices. It ultimately amounted to 34,900l.
The religious views of Sumner were evangelical, and most of the preferments in his gift were conferred upon members of that party. But he bestowed considerable patronage upon Samuel Wilberforce, who succeeded him in the see, and he conferred a living on George Moberly, afterwards bishop of Salisbury. The appointment of Dr. Hampden to the see of Hereford was not approved of by him, and he was vehement against the action of the pope in 1850 in establishing bishoprics in England. He was attacked in 1854 as being lukewarm over the revival of convocation. Though he strongly opposed the establishment of the ecclesiastical commission, he loyally aided in carrying out its designs, and from 1856 to 1864 was a member of its church estates committee.
The bishop was seized with a paralytic stroke on 4 March 1868, and in August 1869 he sent to the prime minister the resignation of his see. John Moultrie [q. v.] addressed some lines to him on this event, beginning, ‘Last of our old prince bishops, fare thee well.’ He took a smaller pension from the revenues of the see than he might have claimed, and an order in council continued to him the possession of Farnham Castle as his residence for life. He died there on 15 Aug. 1874, and was buried on 21 Aug. in the vault by the side of his wife under the churchyard of Hale, where he had built the church at his own cost. His wife was born on 23 Feb. 1794, and died at Farnham Castle on 3 Sept. 1849. They had issue four sons and three daughters.
To Sumner was entrusted the editing of the manuscript treatise in Latin of the two books of John Milton, ‘De Doctrina Christiana,’ discovered by Robert Lemon (1779–1835) [q. v.] in the state paper office in 1823. By the command of George IV it was published in 1825, one volume being the original Latin edited by Sumner, and another consisting of an English translation by him. William Sidney Walker [q. v.], then a resident at Cambridge, where the work was printed, superintended the passing of the work through the press. In this task he took upon himself to revise ‘not only the printer's, but the translator's labour’ (Moultrie, Memoir of Walker, 1852, p. lxxviii; Knight, Passages from a Working Life, ii. 29–31). Macaulay highly praised the work in the ‘Edinburgh Review,’ August 1825 (Works, ed. 1871, v. 2). The Latin version was reprinted at Brunswick in 1827, and the English rendering was reissued at Boston (United States) in 1825, in two volumes.
Sumner published many charges and sermons, as well as a volume entitled ‘The Ministerial Character of Christ practically considered’ (London, 1824, 8vo). It was an expansion of lectures which he had delivered before George IV in the chapel at Cumberland Lodge, and it passed through two editions. Bernard Barton [q. v.] dedicated to him in December 1828 his ‘New Year's Eve,’ for which he was quizzed by Charles Lamb (Letters, ed. Ainger, ii. 210), and visited him at Farnham Castle in 1844. The world insisted on identifying Sumner with Bishop Solway in Mrs. Trollope's novel of ‘The Three Cousins,’ but she had no knowledge of him (Life of Mrs. Trollope, ii. 79).
Sumner's portrait was painted in 1832 by Sir Martin Archer Shee; it was presented
