The date is established by the relationship between this letter and the letter from J. D. Hooker, 26 November 1880.

In his letter of 26 November 1880, Joseph Dalton Hooker had provisionally agreed to sign the memorial that CD had prepared in support of a civil list pension for Alfred Russel Wallace but had wondered whether Wallace’s belief in spiritualism should be mentioned privately to the minister. For Hooker’s previous letter stating that Wallace’s chances of a pension were hopeless, see Correspondence vol. 27, letter from J. D. Hooker, 18 December 1879. William Ewart Gladstone was a correspondent of CD’s and visited Down on 11 March 1877 (see, for example, Correspondence vol. 27, letter from W. E. Gladstone, 24 July 1879, and Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242)). For Gladstone’s sympathy with spiritualist beliefs, see Windscheffel 2006.