For two or three years longer the embers of war continued to blaze up here and there. In 1867 an inter-tribal quarrel arose in the hitherto peaceful north. A few lives were lost, and a day was fixed for a pitched battle near Pakaraka--the opposing forces numbering nearly 600 men. No such muster had been seen in that region since the time of Heke's war, twenty years before. But on the morning of the battle day a message went round both the camps, which stilled the passions of the combatants: "Te Wiremu" was dead (July 16, 1867). The outbreak of strife had indeed hastened the end. Instead of fighting out their quarrel, the leaders sorrowfully made their way to take part in the old peace-maker's funeral, and when they returned they made peace with one another. Thus appropriately died this greatest of New Zealand missionaries. As a chief said at the unveiling of the monument which the Maori Church erected to his memory at Paihia: "This island was a very hard stone, and it was Archdeacon Williams who broke it." Within a few days of Henry Williams' death, Bishop Selwyn sailed for England, to attend the first meeting of bishops at Lambeth. While in England he was offered by the prime minister the bishopric of Lichfield. Without any long delay, he sent his answer declining the proposal, and the see was offered to another. This decision reveals, as no other act could do, the magnificent heroism of the man. He had come to New Zealand twenty-five years before with youthful ambitions of building a new Jerusalem at the end of the earth. He had met with much success, but now his work seemed to be destroyed. All he could hope to do was "to sit amid the ruins of the spiritual temple which he had been allowed to build, and to trace out new foundations on which to build once more." He had begun his life with visions of restoring to the faith of Christ the regions which had been desolated by Islam: he had lived to see his own once loyal and Christian diocese swept by a propaganda compared to which even Islam is a noble creed. The task which remained to him in New Zealand was far harder than that which confronted him when he began his episcopate. Yet then, he had the buoyancy of youth, and he had offers of assistance from other youthful and sanguine spirits. Now, he was nearing the age of 60, and there were no eager volunteers to help. No Pattesons nor Whyteheads nor Abrahams had come out to him during the last decade: indeed he had found it hard to secure any new clergy at all. His own stipend had been cut down to less than half its original amount, and he could with difficulty raise any funds for his diocese. To refuse an English bishopric with its honours and emoluments, its seat in the House of Lords, its great opportunities for influencing the policy of the Church, and for playing a noble part in the eyes of the nation: surely this was a sacrifice of the rarest and highest kind. Yet, to his eternal honour, George Augustus Selwyn made this "great refusal."