Bishops and Pheasants

How should one address the Bishop of London? Sydney Smith (1774-1845), who was a canon of St Paul's from 1831, wrote to Bishop Blomfield in 1837; he said this:

My dear Lord,
I hope there was no incivility in my last letter. I certainly did not mean that there should be any; your situation in life perhaps, accustoms you to a tone of submission & inferiority from your Correspondents, which neither you, nor any man living will ever experience from me.

I wish I had found this letter earlier. It is not in the comprehensive Letters of Sydney Smith, published in 1953, but in the appendix to the volume St Paul's in its Glory by G.L. Prestige (bought in the very well stocked second-hand bookhop in Great Malvern). Incidentally Smith concludes his letter with words I could use myself:

I remain my dear Lord with respect, your obedt. Servt., Sydney Smith

There were huge numbers of dead pheasants on the roads of Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, suggesting a large living population, and many pubs carried the name The Pheasant. Smith wrote to someone in 1841 to acknowledge a friendly gift of pheasants:

Many thanks, my dear Sir, for your kind present of game. If there is a pure and elevated pleasure in this world, it is the roast pheasant and bread sauce - barn-door fowls for dissenters, but for the real churchman, the thirty-nine times articled clerk - the pheasant, the pheasant!
Ever yours,
Sydney Smith