The eldest daughter, Mary, had great powers of organisation, was a keen philanthropist and her father's right hand at Norwich. In 1854 she took charge of a detachment of nurses who followed Miss Nightingale's pioneer band to the East, and worked devotedly for the Crimean sick and wounded at the hospital at Koulalee.
Katherine, the youngest daughter, a most original character, married Dr. Vaughan, headmaster of Harrow, Master of the Temple, and Dean of Llandaff. She survived her whole family and lived till 1899.
The home at Alderley lasted for thirty-three years, during which Edward Stanley had changed the whole face of the parish and successfully organised many schemes of improvement in the conditions of the working classes in his neighbourhood. He could now leave his work to other hands, and felt that his energies required a wider field, so that when in 1838 Lord Melbourne offered him the See of Norwich he was induced to accept the offer, though only "after[20] much hesitation and after a severe struggle, which for a time almost broke down his usual health and sanguine spirit."
"It would be vain and useless," he said, "to speak to others of what it cost me to leave Alderley"; but to his new sphere he carried the same zeal and indomitable energy which had ever characterised him, and gained the affection of many who had shuddered at the appointment of a "Liberal Bishop."
At Norwich his work was very arduous and often discouraging. He came in the dawn of the Victorian age to attack a wall of customs and abuses which had arisen far back in the early Georgian era, with no hereditary connection or influence in the diocese to counteract the odium that he incurred as a new-comer by the institution of changes which he deemed necessary.
It was no wonder that for three or four years he had to stem a steady torrent of prejudice and more or less opposition; but though his broadminded views were often the subject of criticism, his bitterest opponents could not withstand the genial, kindly spirit in which he met their objections.
"At the time of his entrance upon his office party feeling was much more intense than it has been in later years, and of this the county of Norfolk presented, perhaps, as strong examples as could be found in any part of the kingdom."
The bishop was "a Whig in politics and a staunch supporter of a Whig ministry," but in all the various questions where politics and theology[21] cross one another he took the free and comprehensive instead of the precise and exclusive views, and to impress them on others was one chief interest of his new position.
The indifference to party which he displayed, both in social matters and in his dealings with his clergy, tended to alienate extreme partisans of whatever section, and at one time caused him even to be unpopular with the lower classes of Norwich in spite of his sympathies.
The courage with which the Rector had quelled the prize fight at Alderley shone out again in the Bishop. "I remember," says an eye-witness, "seeing Bishop Stanley, on a memorable occasion, come out of the Great Hall of St. Andrew's, Norwich. The Chartist mob, who lined the street, saluted the active, spare little Bishop with hooting and groans. He came out alone and unattended till he was followed by me and my brother, determined, as the saying is, 'to see him safe home,' for the mob was highly excited and brutal. Bishop Stanley marched along ten yards, then turned sharp round and fixed his eagle eyes on the mob, and then marched ten yards more and turned round again rapidly and gave the same hawk-like look."