Indeed, he had the cure of three parishes, for that of Eiderdown was joined to Stogpingum.

He had resided in Italy for twelve years.

His first going there had been attributed to a sore throat, and that sore throat, though never repeated in any violent manner, had stood him in such stead that it had enabled him to live in easy idleness ever since.
He had now been summoned home--not, indeed, with rough violence, or by any peremptory command, but by a mandate which he found himself unable to disregard.

Mr.Slope had written to him by the bishop's desire.

In the first place, the bishop much wanted the valuable co-operation of Dr.Vesey Stanhope in the diocese; in the next, the bishop thought it his imperative duty to become personally acquainted with the most conspicuous of his diocesan clergy; then the bishop thought it essentially necessary for Dr.Stanhope's own interests that Dr.Stanhope should, at any rate for a time, return to Barchester; and lastly, it was said that so strong a feeling was at the present moment evinced by the hierarchs of the church with reference to the absence of its clerical members, that it behoved Dr.
Vesey Stanhope not to allow his name to stand among those which would probably in a few months be submitted to the councils of the nation.
There was something so ambiguously frightful in this last threat that Dr.Stanhope determined to spend two or three summer months at his residence in Barchester.