CHAPTER VIII.

T is a curious coincidence that Tillotson, Barrow, and

Howe were all born in the year 1630. Tillotson's father lived at Sowerby, near Halifax; a respectable clothier, a decided Puritan, a zealous Calvinist, yet at that time an Episcopalian in practice, for he had his child baptized in the Church of his native village, and a gentleman, afterwards Rector of Thornhill, stood godfather. When this little boy came to be Archbishop, his Puritan parentage, and the fact of his father being a Baptist, occasioned reproach; it was said that he had never been baptized in any way, and a preacher before the House of Commons, after Tillotson's elevation to the Primacy, is supposed to have alluded to the rumour, when he declared, with more absurdity than wit, that there were fathers of the Church who never were her sons. The register of Sowerby, however, sets that question at rest, showing that he was baptized in the parish church; and another moot point touching Tillotson's ecclesiastical life, namely, whether he was ever episcopally ordained, is now also settled; it appears he received ordination from a Scotch Bishopthe Bishop of Galloway. 1

Educated at Cambridge under the Commonwealth by Puritan tutors, he afterwards became identified with the

1 Grub's Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, iii. 188. Birch's Tillotson [2nd Edition], 18, 387.

Latitudinarian school of Divines, but in 1661 we find him amongst the Presbyterians, preaching a morning exercise at Cripplegate. He certainly conformed in 1662, and that fact itself implies his submission to Episcopal ordination. At an early period he attained celebrity as a preacher, although he read his sermons, and never was able to preach without a manuscript. It is related of him that on one occasion he made an attempt to speak extempore upon a plain text, and one upon which he has five discourses in his printed works; yet he found himself so much at a loss, "that after about ten minutes spent with great pain to himself, and no great satisfaction to his audience, he came down with a resolution never to make the like attempt for the future." He was successively Curate at Cheshunt; Rector of Ketton, or Kedington in the County of Suffolk; preacher at Lincoln's Inn; Tuesday Lecturer at St. Lawrence, Jewry; and Canon and Dean of Canterbury. After the Revolution he accepted the Deanery of St. Paul's, and his position in reference to public affairs at that juncture has been noticed already; here it will be sufficient to trace the steps by which he reached the highest position in the Church of England. In some way Tillotson had become a personal favourite with the Prince of Orange, and had been desired to preach before him at St. James's, soon after his arrival in London. Burnet interested himself zealously on the Dean's behalf; but, beyond personal grounds, the popularity of this Divine as a preacher, his eminent abilities, his opposition to the policy of the late King, his liberal politics, his desire for Comprehension, his conciliatory temper, and his moderation in ecclesiastical affairs, recommended him to the new Sovereign as

1 Birch's Life of Tillotson, 23. The text was 2 Cor. v. 10. I have related a similar anecdote of Sanderson, Church of the Commonwealth, 327.

fitted to occupy the post vacated by Sancroft. The very day Tillotson kissed hands on his appointment to the Deanery in September, 1689, the King told him, in reply to his thanks for an office which had set him at ease for the rest of his life, that this was no great matter, for his services would soon be needed in the highest office of the Church.1 In February, 1690, William pressed upon Tillotson the acceptance of the Primacy; of his extreme reluctance to accept it there can be no doubt; his conversation with his Royal Master, his correspondence with Lady Rachel Russell, and his own private memoranda, prove that if ever a man honestly said, Nolo Episcopari, Tillotson did. What he wrote within a year afterwards shows that to him the archiepiscopal throne was a bed, not of roses, but of thorns. The congé d'élire was issued May the 1st, and his consecration followed on Whit-Sunday at St. Mary-le-Bow, when the congregation included some of the principal Whig nobility, and his progress along Cheapside was an ovation amidst crowds who admired both his eloquence and his liberality.

He took possession of Lambeth Palace in November, 1691, having first repaired the building, altered the windows, wainscoted the rooms, and erected a large apartment for his wife, he being one of the earliest Archbishops living there in lawful wedlock.

With congratulations from friends there came insults from foes. Arian, Socinian, Deist, Atheist, were titles bestowed on his Grace; and in allusion to the doubts respecting his baptism, he received the nickname of Undipped John. His manner of bearing such treatment showed his proficiency in the Christian virtues of patience and meekness. One day, when he was conver

Life of Tillotson, 223.

sing with a gentleman, a servant brought in a sealed packet containing a mask. The Archbishop smiled, and said, "This is a gentle rebuke, if compared with some others in black and white," pointing to papers lying on the table. A bundle of letters, found after his death, exhibited a memorandum in his own handwriting, "These are libels. I pray God forgive them; I do." 1

It is interesting to follow Sancroft into his retirement. He left the Metropolis-never to see it againin August, 1691, for Fresingfield, a village in Suffolk, where his family had been settled for generations, where his ancestors lay buried in the parish church, and where he himself had been born and baptized. He went down at harvest-time, the sweet air and quiet of the place being, as he said, so preferable to the smoke and noise of London. Presently we find him busy in building a new house, reckoning up the time it would take to daub and tile it, to clothe and cover it in, amidst the dews and mists which might be expected to begin by St. Bartholomew's-daythen at hand. He complains of being weakly, and describes himself as eating bread-and-butter in a morning, and “superbibing a second dish of coffee after it;" waiting to see what that, and time, and native air would do for his health. He gave up pills, and swallowed juniper-berries, and lived upon plain food, and ate with a keener appetite than he had been accustomed to at Lambeth. In the late autumn the new house remained incomplete; there was winter work to do within doors, paving and flooring, daubing and ceiling, plastering, glazing, and wainscoting, making doors and laying hearths; the old tenement, in the meantime, being packed close from end to end with the Bishop, his little household and workmen.2

The

1

Life of Tillotson, 340, 341.

2 D'Oyley's Life of Sancroft, ii. 4, 16.

superintendence of building, which appears to have occupied him for a time, presents a strange contrast to previous employments in the Church and the Palace, the Court and the Council-Board; and the simplicity of Sancroft's rural life appears simpler still when we think of the palatial splendour in which he had previously moved. He wished to shut out the world; he sometimes felt like a dead man out of mind; old friends dropped off, and tales of sorrow aroused his sympathies; yet he seems, on the whole, to have spent a pleasant time down in Suffolk, although those who disliked his nonjuring principles did what they could to plague his peace. He was reported to be engaged with some of his brethren in plots for the restoration of the exiled Monarch; and Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, came under suspicion of the same offence, in consequence of which he was arrested in his orchard at Bromley one day, whilst quietly working out the heads. of a sermon. In the end, these charges of conspiracy proved to be abominable fabrications, which Sprat took care fully to expose.2 Other Nonjurors were suspected of treasonable intrigues, and Dean Hickes fell into great trouble. "If the persons," it is said in a letter written at the time, "now malignantly fermented, should find him walking abroad, they would certainly take him up and bring him forthwith to the King's Bench, and be ready with an information against him." The Dean was

1

D'Oyley's Life of Sancroft, ii. 25. 2 See "A relation of the late wicked contrivance of Stephen Blackhead and Robert Young, against the lives of several persons by forging an association under their hands, written by the Bishop of Rochester. In two parts: the first part being a relation of what passed at the three

examinations of the said Bishop by a Committee of Lords of the Privy Council; the second being an account of the two above-mentioned authors of the forgery." In the Savoy, 1692.-Harleian Missal (4to.) vi. 198.

Blackhead and Young seem to have been thorough-paced villains.