Convening the Eighth Provincial Synod of the clergy in August 1875, Bayley enacted many salutary regulations, particularly with regard to clerical dress, mixed marriages, and church music. Illness obliged him to ask for a coadjutor and Bishop James Gibbons of Richmond was appointed to that position on May 29, 1877. The archbishop then went abroad to seek for relief but in vain. He returned to his former home in Newark in August 1877 and after lingering for two months died in his old room, where he had labored for so long, on October 3, 1877.