 In 1762, Johnson and the board of Governors hired the Oxford-trained minister Myles Cooper, a young man recommended by the Archbishop of Canterbury, as professor of moral philosophy with the expectation that Cooper would someday succeed him.Johnson quickly bonded with Cooper, who "was with him as a son".However, on February 9, 1763, Johnson lost his second wife Sarah to smallpox, and a few weeks after, amidst an unpleasant controversy with the Board of Governors over funding his pension, "he committed the care of his affairs to Mr. Cooper", and returned to Stratford by sleigh during a snowstorm.