Although frequently considered to have been a rather ineffectual diocesan and to have had a lax ordination standard, ordaining men rejected by other bishops, recent work has suggested that he had firm opinions on what made a man fit for ordination and preferred to deal with applications on a case-by-case basis, instead of applying blanket admission criteria which sometimes excluded deserving and promising candidates.[7]
Family
The bishop married Grace, a daughter of Charles Coote, dean of Kilfenora, and brother of Sir Eyre Coote. The union produced eight sons and three daughters.[8] His eldest son, Henry Bathurst, was a fellow of New College, Oxford, became chancellor of the church of Norwich in 1805; held the rectories of Oby (1806), North Creake (1809), and Hollesley (1828); and was appointed archdeacon of Norwich in 1814. He wrote Memoirs of the late Dr. Henry Bathurst, Lord Bishop of Norwich, 1837; he issued in 1842 a supplement, with additional letters of his father, entitled An Easter Offering for the Whigs . . . being a Supplement to the Memoirs of the late Bishop of Norwich, 1842, in which he concentrated criticism on the injustice of the Whig party in refusing to promote his father to a richer see. Archdeacon Bathurst died on 10 September 1844.
His second son, Lieut.-Gen. Sir James Bathurst, was a military commander. The bishop's third son, Benjamin Bathurst went missing in 1809 in Germany, and is believed to have been murdered; his elder daughter, Tryphena Bathurst Thistlethwayte, rewrote her father's memoirs from her eldest brother's papers.[9] His youngest daughter Caroline de Crespigny (1797-1861) was a poet and for many years a close confidante of Shelley's cousin and biographer Thomas Medwin.[10]
