It was a very powerful and impressive speech, and perhaps occasioned Dr.Tomline, Bishop of Lincoln, to recommend the speaker to the Earl of Buckinghamshire for the bishopric created the next year.
The office would be, humanly speaking, most trying, laborious and perplexing, and neither Archdeacon Middleton's age (forty-five) nor his habits inclined to enthusiasm.

He shrank from it at first, then "suspected," as he says, "that I had yielded to some unmanly considerations," and decided that it was his duty to accept the charge as a call from his Master.

He was consecrated in the chapel at Lambeth, by Archbishop Manners Sutton, with the Bishops of London, Lincoln, and Salisbury assisting.

The sermon was preached by Dr.Rennell, Dean of Winchester, but was withheld from publication for the strange reason that there was so strong an aversion to the establishment of episcopacy in India, that it was thought better not to attract attention to the fact that had just been accomplished.
Bishop Middleton, his wife, and two of his Archdeacons (the third was already in India) sailed on the 8th of June, 1814, and they landed at Calcutta on the 28th of November.

There was no public reception, for fear of alarming the natives, though, on the other hand, they were found to entertain a better opinion of the English on finding they respected their own religion.