because it was the best place for obtaining gifts, should be sent where they would be better maintained at less expense, and where they might make themselves of some service. Then,touching upon a notorious evil, he remarked, that others would then have no excuse for frequenting coffee-houses and hunting after benefactions, but would have time to promote their own improvement, and he advised those who sought relief, simply to note their sufferings, without making reflections.1 He did not confine himself to sectarian charity, but sought also to promote the welfare of persons not of his own communion, of which a monument remained after his death, in a comprehensive trust, of which he was the founder.2

Kettlewell remained a Nonjuror to the last, and on his death-bed expressed his distinctive principles; but he did something better, and beautifully uttered the language of Christian hope.

He expired April the 12th, 1695, in London, and was buried in the parish church of All Hallows, near the Tower, in the same grave which had contained the remains of Archbishop Laud from his death till the Restoration. Ken was permitted by the Incumbent to read Evening Prayers on the occasion, and to attend in his episcopal robes to perform the burial service.

Kettlewell's scheme of charitable relief received the sanction of the Nonjuring Bishops, who wrote a letter in its favour. The proceeding was laudable; yet such was the political antipathy to the Nonjurors by those in power, that Ken had to appear before the Privy Council to account for putting his name to the appeal; and of the interrogations he received and the answers he gave, there remains a report under his own hand.

1 Kettlewell's Works, i., Appendix.

2 Miscellaneous Papers of Dr. Birch, Brit. Mus., 4297. Secretan's Life of Nelson, 52.

Dodwell threw his whole soul into the Nonjuring cause, and continued on its behalf, after the schism had occurred, the advocacy he had undertaken at the beginning. His pen was busy with denunciations and encouragements; in private letters to those whom he suspected of timidity, he deplored the general apostacy from Church principles; described the apostates as pretending to the name of the Church of England, whilst acting on the principles of its adversaries; spoke of latitudinarian notions as tincturing those of the laity who were so warm for what they call liberty of conscience; and expressed his deep sorrow for what he considered vacillation and cowardice.

No multitude of apostates, he declared, could ever be pleaded as an authoritative example against a small number continuing firm. The doctrine and practice of these faithful Abdiels, he added, had been maintained by the Church in all the cases which had occurred from the beginning of the Reformation to that very day. In the case of Queen Mary and the Lady Jane Grey, in the case of Cromwell and King Charles II., nay, in the present case, and in opposition to republican adversaries. He believed there were few of these great lapsers but would, a few years before, have resented it, like Hazael, as a great calamity and scandal had they been charged with doing the things which they had since actually done.

He denounced all compliance, eschewed all compromise, and reprobated all "carnal politics;" warned against balancing expediency with conscience, and against seeking to promote Protestantism by a sacrifice of Church principles.1 He set aside reasons for taking the oaths, by saying there is no cause so bad

1 Dodwell to Ken. Baker MSS., 40, 82, et seq.

but something may be said in its support, and by referring to Carneades' Oration on Injustice, Burgess and Barnet's Defence of Sacrilege, and the Hungarian's Vindication of Polygamy. As an illustration of the lengths to which party spirit will carry people, I may cite the following passage from Dodwell's vehement lucubration: "It is not a particular sect or opinion that we contend for, but the very being of a Church and of religion. Whether there shall be any faith that shall oblige to our own hindrance? Whether religion, which ought to add to its sacredness, shall be made a pretence for violating it? Whether our Holy Mother, the Church of England, which hath been famous for her loyalty, shall now be as infamous for her apostacy? Whether there be any understanding men who, in this incredulous age, can find in their hearts to venture the greatest worldly interest for their religion; that is, indeed, whether there be any that are in earnest with religion ?"1

Yet Dodwell wrote from Shottesbrook, August 29th, 1700, to Archbishop Tenison, requesting him to use his influence in providing Bishops for the colonies. "The occasion of this present address," he says, "is not to beg any favour for myself, nor for our dear fathers and brethren whom I follow in this excellent cause; it is for that very body which is headed by you against us, which, we hope, will at length unite with us on the old terms, when worldly concerns are removed. You have an opportunity put into your hands of doing God service in the plantations, and of entitling yourself thereby to greater rewards from God than you can expect from any of your worldly designs." And in November of the same year I discover him corresponding with the same distin

1 Dodwell to Sherlock. Baker MSS., 86, et seq.

guished person as to healing the Church's wound. First, he despatched a feeler on the subject, which was civilly received, with a request for further communication, and then he propounded certain terms of recommunion. He thought the Clergy who had taken the oaths might agree with the Nonjurors so far as to maintain, in opposition to all Commonwealth's-men, the doctrine of passive obedience "to the lawful Prince for the time being," each party being left to apply the principle in his own way. As to the doctrine of the Church's independency, he proposed there should be "expressions as full as possible disowning the validity of the Lay Act with regard to conscience, and protesting against what had been done in this matter as unfit to pass into a precedent." As to prayers for the reigning family, so strongly objected to by Kettlewell, he did not regard them as obliging a separation. He took, he says in obscure language, the right of public offices to belong to governors who might bona fide differ in opinion from their subjects, and, notwithstanding, be included by them in their intercessions. He did not mean that men might own those opinions as true which they believed false, yet they might let them pass as the sense of the community of which they were members. At the beginning Dodwell suggested, if the reconciliation could be effected, that the remaining deprived Bishops should "hold their places, with a third part of the profits, without taking the oaths;" and in the end, "If you will do nothing on your part to qualify you for union with us, our fathers will have performed their part, and you alone must be answerable for the consequences of it."1

Hickes, Suffragan Bishop of Thetford, resided in

'Lambeth Library. Gibson Papers, ii. 38-41.

Ormond Street, exerting an influence very different from that of Ken, Kettlewell, and Nelson; for whilst they kept aloof from political intrigues, he plunged deeply into the eddying whirlpool, and whilst they allowed the laity to attend parish churches, he denounced those who did so. He most absurdly maintained that even when no State prayers occurred in the service, simply to hold fellowship with schismatics-and such he denominated all except Nonjurors-was a flagrant betrayal of Christian principle.1

On another point he was at variance with Kettlewell. Hickes thought it lawful to wear a military disguise that he might escape detection, and once was introduced, in Kettlewell's presence, as Captain or Colonel Somebody, for which a patriotic precedent was characteristically alleged, by quoting the case of a certain Bishop of old, who, amidst an Arian persecution, assumed a military title. Nor did Turner object to the practice of absconding under borrowed names. But against everything of this kind the severely truthful Kettlewell set his face like a flint, and would not have swerved a hair'sbreadth from the straightest line of honesty to save his life.2

Eccentric individuals might be found amongst those who, by Nonjuring sympathies, were drawn together in a city then, as now, containing social worlds, scarcely by any chance touching each other. Such precisians cut themselves off from general intercourse and form narrowminded habits, which satisfy their own consciences, but provoke the ridicule of other people.

Amongst those who in William's reign often met together and talked over the affairs of the deprived Clergy, occurs the name of Dr. Francis Lee-Rabbi Lee, as he

1 Life of Ken by a Layman, 409.

2 Life of Kettlewell, 471.