XIII TILLOTSON AND TENISON 251 them, Vox Cleri, recalled the fact that the last revision had conciliated no one, and that what would now conciliate dissenters would alienate loyal Church folk. "What though there be some few that are really but causelessly offended at our ceremonies, must we for their sakes give offence to the Church of God? Is it necessary that a parent should yield to a disobedient child on his own unreasonable terms ? " The Houses met for actual business on December 4, and they did little but wrangle, chiefly on the question whether in an address to the king the Church of England should be described as a Protestant Church. In the end the more correct phrase, "the Protestant religion," was used. Finally the session came to an end without tangible results. Without result. Tillotson as archbishop. It would have been natural to appoint Compton to the primacy when Sancroft was deprived, but William had seen in Tillotson the simplicity and submissiveness which he desired. Reluctant to accept the high office, "a man of extraordinary piety and a great lover of peace," he warmly supported the efforts made for the reform of morals and the inauguration of missionary effort, and he was a constant and admired preacher. In other respects it may be said that his primacy had no history. He never summoned Convocation; and, for himself, he studied to be quiet. He died on November 22, 1694; and his successor was a man of temper not unlike his own, Dr. Thomas Tenison, who in 1691 had been made Bishop of Lincoln. Tenison, Tenison, though not so much beloved, was a man of much stronger mould, of the same comprehensive sympathies and of piety as sincere as Tillotson. Evelyn in 1683 "one of the most profitable Abp. of regarded him as preachers in the Church of England, being also of a Canterbury, 1695-1705. most holy conversation, very learned and ingenious"; and added, in his Diary, "the pains he takes and care of his parish (St. Martin-in-the-Fields) will, I fear, wear him out, which would be an inexpressible loss." He had taken considerable part in public affairs, having been present when the seven bishops drew up their declaration, and having come forward prominently in controversy during the reign of James II. He was a warm advocate of comprehension. In 1683 he had published An Argument for Union, in which he urged the dissenters to "do as the ancient nonconformists did, who would not separate, though they feared to subscribe"; but he limited the possibility of union to the Presbyterians and possibly some of the Independents; as for "Arians, Socinians, Anabaptists, Fifth - Monarchy men, sensual Millenaries, Behmenists, Familists, Seekers, Antinomians, Ranters, Sabbatarians, Quakers, Muggletonians-they may associate in a caravan, but cannot join in the communion of a church." His opinion, in fact, agreed with that of Camber, who, writing to Patrick, declared that the Independents as a body were "incapable of anything but toleration, and cannot be taken in but by such concessions as will shake the foundations of our Church." In the see of Lincoln Tenison had done well. Kennett says that he "restored a neglected large diocese to some discipline and good order." Elected to the archbishopric at the beginning of 1695, he remained primate of all England for twenty years. He did nothing to modify the Erastian character of William III.'s dealings with the Church. He was content to issue royal injunctions and to acquiesce in the abeyance of the constitutional power of the clerical estate. The Trinitarian controversy and the Convocation controversy were no very serious disturbances to the even tenor of his way. He was content to sit at Lambeth and be quiet. His close personal association, however, with the royal family exposed him to considerable comment. Queen Mary, who had excused him when he preached a funeral sermon for Nell Gwyn, had him for her minister on her deathbed, and the glowing eulogy which he delivered after her death was met by very severe criticism from Ken, on the ground of her undutiful conduct towards her father. On the other hand, helped by the letter which Mary wrote to her husband in her last illness, he severely reproved William for his adulterous life, and having received his promise of amendment, preached a sermon "concerning holy resolution," which was printed by the royal command. Reserving for later treatment the controversies and the religious and philanthropic work, which were the chief features of the ecclesiastical history of William's reign, we may note that at its close the non-juring schism was widened by an XIII NATIONAL FEELING OF THE CHURCH 253 ill-judged Act, which showed how little regard was paid by the government and the clergy whom it favoured to the conscientious scruples of the seceders. On the death of James II. in 1701 the original cause of disunion ceased; no one had taken oaths to his son. It was probable that the non-jurors would now be willing to take the oaths to William as de facto king; but an Act of Parliament was passed which required all the clergy to abjure King James's son and his descendants, and to declare William to be rightful and lawful king. This the high Tory principles of the non-juring clergy would not suffer them to accept: the schism remained unhealed, and the numbers of the non-jurors were increased. The condition of the Church on other grounds was far from satisfactory. There were some serious scandals. In 1699 Thomas Watson, Bishop of St. David's, one of those appointed by James II., "one of the worst men that I ever knew in holy orders," says Burnet, was deposed for simony. Jones, who had been translated by William III. from Cloyne to St. Asaph in 1692, escaped, with difficulty, a similar fate. of bishops. William, during the later years of his life, made some endeavours to conciliate the Church. He appointed a commission of six prelates (Tenison, Sharp, Burnet, Lloyd William's of St. Asaph, Patrick, and Stillingfleet) to advise him commission in Church appointments, and he became reconciled to the Princess Anne. But in the former case the practical result was that the Church became controlled by the Whig bishops, and the division between the Episcopate and the clergy was widened. And it was not until the king's death, on March 8, 1702, that Anne's influence was perceptible. Strong national feeling of the Church. With the death of the Dutch king the dangers which the Revolution settlement had brought home to the Church were at an end. The religious sympathies of James II. and William III. had equally threatened the national character of the established English religion. James would have brought the Church again, and unconditionally, under the sway of the Roman pontiff; William would also have swept away the distinguishing features of Anglicanism by assimilating the principles of the ecclesiastical constitution to those of the foreign Protestant bodies. But the feeling of the Church was at once strongly national and strongly conservative. Doctrine and organisation of a definite type were essential parts of her system, as Englishmen understood it, and these they had shown a fixed determination to preserve. Thus the Revolution, though it caused a schism which was in many respects both dangerous and unnecessary, left the Church, after a few years of unsettlement, undisturbed in its position and in the character which it had borne since the Reformation of Elizabeth's day. AUTHORITIES. — D'Oyly, Life of Sancroft; Birch, Life of Tillotson; Burnet, History of his own Time; Autobiography of Bishop Patrick; Ken's Works; Nicholas, Defence of the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England; Lansdowne Collection, Kennett MSS. (British Museum); Stillingfleet MSS. (in possession of the Stillingfleet family); Tanner MSS. and Rawlinson MSS. in Bodleian Library; State Papers, Domestic, in Record Office; The Letters of Dean Grenville (Surtees Society); The Life of John Kettlewell, prefixed to his works, 1719, by Francis Lee, Bishop Hickes, and others. The alterations suggested in 1689 by the committee for the revision of the Prayer-book were printed by order of the House of Commons in 1854, and are also to be found in the revised Liturgy, edited by John Taylor, 1855. Among modern books may be mentioned, as above, Perry and Stoughton, Lathbury, History of the Non-Jurors; and Overton, Life in the English Church; also Dictionary of National Biography, especially articles on Tillotson, Tenison, Stillingfleet; and Overton, The Non-Jurors. CHAPTER XIV THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE Queen Anne as a church woman. IN Queen Anne the Church welcomed a sovereign who was in thorough sympathy with her principles. The granddaughter of Charles I. and of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, she seemed to inherit their sober and sincere churchmanship and their warm affection for the national Church. Taught by Bishop Compton, guided in her spiritual life by Archbishop Sharp, she endeavoured to live as a consistent member of the Anglican communion, and to use her great opportunities for the glory of God and the good of the Church. Conscientious, affec tionate, easily influenced, she was in political matters sometimes moved from acting on the principles which she held in her heart, or, more probably, she had schooled herself by the experiences through which she had passed to observe with strict self-repression the position of the constitutional sovereign of a limited monarchy. In religion, on the other hand, she did not move an inch from the principles of Charles I. and Laud and Sancroft. Her husband, Prince George of Denmark, was a Danish Lutheran, and she was deeply attached to him, but she showed no desire to bring the English Church nearer to the Protestant bodies. There can be no doubt that to the end of her life she felt deeply the deprivation of her father and her brother, but she was content to accept the judgment of her spiritual advisers that her own position was fully justified, and she was fully determined to preserve to the Church the position which the coronation oath, so lightly regarded by James II., guaranteed. If James, her brother, |