Hardwicke Rawnsley money to buy Brandlehow Wood, the National Trust's first purchase in the Lake District. In 1898, Rawnsley was offered the bishopric of Madagascar, but declined it, feeling himself committed to his conservation work in the Lake District and, by then, in many other parts of the British countryside. In 1912 he was appointed to the largely honorary position of chaplain to the King, and he held the post of chaplain to the Border Regiment of the Territorial Force, with the rank of colonel. Rawnsley published more than forty books, mostly non-fiction, some on religious subjects, many with a Lake District
Octavia Hill up and copied, with her enthusiastic support, in continental Europe and the United States of America. Beatrice Webb said that she "first became aware of the meaning of the poverty of the poor," while staying with her sister, who was a rent collector for Octavia Hill in the East End. Queen Victoria's daughter, Princess Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt, was taken incognito on a tour of some of Hill's properties, and she translated Hill's "Homes of the London Poor" into German. Among those whom Hill trained was her assistant and secretary, Maud Jeffery, who was later engaged by the Commissioners of Crown