Alexandria. Five years later, after an unsuccessful attempt to establish a seminary in Williamsburg, both helped form the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria to train young men for the ministry in Maryland, Virginia and southern states. Meade also supported the American Tract Society, and the Bible Society, except as the former grew to support abolitionism, as discussed below. Later, from 1842 to 1862, bishop Meade served as the seminary's president, as well as delivered an annual course of lectures on pastoral theology. Meade also helped found the Evangelical Knowledge Society (1847) and served as its president. That organization opposed what it considered the heterodoxy of many of the books published by the Sunday School Union, and attempted to displace them by issuing works of a more evangelical type. Episcopate In 1829, after Wilmer's unexpected death and as Bishop Moore approached retirement, Meade became assistant Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia. Three years earlier, he had refused suggestions that he apply to become the now-elderly Bishop William White's assistant in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania. Nonetheless, Bishop White led several other bishops who gathered at St. James' Church in Philadelphia during Meade's consecration as Bishop Moore's assistant. The new suffragan's first official act, on October 30, 1829, was consecrating a new building for Christ Church in Winchester. Meade then began an extensive visitation of the diocese, which took him to Martinsburg, then through the Shenandoah valley (Woodstock, Harrisonburg, and Staunton) before conducting Christmas services in Halifax and returning north to Alexandria. In 1832, Meade traveled across the Appalachian mountains for visitations in Kentucky and Tennessee. He also served as rector of Christ Church, Norfolk in 1834–1836, which may have prompted Meade to resign as rector of his home Cunningham Chapel parish (Rev. Stringfellow succeeded him for five years, followed by several longer-serving rectors). Rt. Rev. Meade thus became the first Virginia bishop to hold his position full-time, without concurrent responsibilities for an individual parish (as had bishop Moore with Monumental Church) or institution (as had bishop Madison with the College of William and Mary). In 1841, Meade traveled to London and met the future archbishop of Canterbury J.B. Sumner, among others. When Bishop Moore died later that year, Meade succeeded him as Bishop of Virginia, and soon consecrated Maryland native John Johns as his assistant (and successor more than two decades later). Whereas the diocese had 44 clergy serving 40