With the energy and impetuosity noted by Lang, Henson worked continually over the next seven years to improve the parish, restoring the fabric of the church, opening clubs for his parishioners, and holding popular open-air services in the vicarage grounds. At Barking his high-church leanings were welcomed, and he was invited to preach from time to time at St Alban's Holborn, a central London bastion of Anglo-Catholicism. He was never physically strong, and his relentless work at Barking put a strain on his physique. In 1895 he accepted an offer from Lord Salisbury of a less arduous post, the chaplaincy of St Mary's Hospital, Ilford, which he held until 1900. In 1895 and 1896, Henson was select preacher at Oxford, and from 1897 he served as chaplain to John Festing, Bishop of St Albans. He had time for writing; between 1897 and 1900 he published four books, ranging from purely theological studies to analyses of Church politics. His beliefs had changed from his early high-churchmanship to a broad-church latitudinarianism; his 1899 "Cui bono?" set out his concerns about the strict ritualists in the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church.