He became rector of St James's, Westminster, in 1733, and bishop of Bristol in 1735.
The Lower or Bristol Avon rises on the eastern slope of the Cotteswold Hills in Gloucestershire, collecting the waters of several streams south of Tetbury and east of Malmesbury.
In 1800 he settled at Westbury near Bristol, and began to determine star-places with a fine altitude and azimuth circle of 22 ft.
The cliffs and woods have been so far disfigured by quarries that public feeling was aroused, and in 1904 an "Avon Gorge Committee" was appointed to report to the corporation of Bristol on the possibility of preserving the beauties of the locality.
Christopher went to school near Bristol, in England, returned to America in 1741, was afterwards employed in a counting house in Philadelphia, and became a merchant and planter at Charleston.