There were also large Sunday-schools connected with his chapel, and taught by the members of his congregation, and these led to the first organization of a district visitors' society, one of the earliest attempts of the slowly reviving English Church to show her laity how to minister to the poor under pastoral direction.
His father-in-law, Mr.William Wilson, had purchased the advowson of the living of Islington, and, when it became vacant in 1824, presented it to him, when he carried thither all his vigour and thoroughness.

Church building was his first necessity, and he absolutely prevailed on his parish to rate themselves for the purpose, so that three churches were begun almost at once, and by the time his Life was written in 1860 the great suburb had multiplied its single church in thirty-six years into fifteen.

At Islington the chief sorrows of his life befel him.

He had had six children, of whom one died an infant and two more in early childhood.

The second son, John, after a boyhood of great promise, fell into temptation at the University and led a wild and degrading course; ending by his retirement to the Continent, where he died in 1833, after a very painful illness, in which he had evinced great agony of mind, which softened at length into repentance and hope.