Francis Hare (1731-1740) then filled the vacancy. He wasted some of his time in useless controversy, and, as the Duke of Marlborough's chaplain, made his office cheap, though perhaps popular, by occasionally dilating in his sermons upon the genius and military skill of his patron. He was a man of some capacity, who advised conformity to the meagre and starved ideals of the then accepted orthodoxy. Apparently he deemed this course a safe one, where there could, it appears, be little other guidance for those who still had any faith, except in the conventionalities of what had become ecclesiastical custom. He saw that the interpretation which individual opinion in its practical rejection of Christian ordinances would read into faith was likely to be no more than a new expression of early and mediæval heresies.
Mathias Mawson (1740-1754) was bishop after Hare; and then Sir William Ashburnham (1754-1799) came to the diocese and occupied the see for forty-five years, "the longest episcopate since the foundation of the see."[42]
Before the close of the eighteenth century John Buckner (1799-1824) succeeded Ashburnham.
In 1824 Robert James Carr, and in 1831 Edward Maltby, were appointed to the see.
William Otter succeeded (1836-1840). During his episcopate the Diocesan Association was founded in 1838 to help the clergy and laity of the diocese to provide themselves with better schools, to increase the means of instruction and
ministration, to restore or enlarge their churches and schools, and to provide new ones when they had the opportunity afforded by sufficient means. Bishop Otter and Dean Chandler succeeded in establishing a theological college in the city.
Philip N. Shuttleworth (1840-1842), Ashurst Turner Gilbert (1842-1870), and Richard Durnford (1870-1895) were succeeded by Ernest Roland Wilberforce, the present bishop, who was translated to the see from Newcastle in 1895.