XXXII. The Death of Sir Roger
The first number of The Bee, a weekly paper set up in 1733, by Addison's friend, Budgell, contains the following statement: "Mr. Addison was so fond of this character [Sir Roger de Coverley] that a little while before he laid down The Spectator (foreseeing that some nimble gentleman would catch up his pen the moment he quitted it), he said to an intimate friend, with a certain warmth in his expression which he was not often guilty of, 'By G——, I'll kill Sir Roger, that nobody else may murder him.' Accordingly the whole Spectator, No. 517, consists of nothing else but an account of the old knight's death, and some moving circumstances which attended it."
It seems probable that about this time both Steele and Addison were thinking of bringing The Spectator to a close, and this was the first of a series of papers which should dismiss all the members of the Spectator Club. In No. 544—the last of this volume—Captain Sentry succeeds to Sir Roger's estate, and passes from notice; in No. 549 the old clergyman is reported dead, and Sir Andrew Freeport gives up his business and retires into the country to make ready for the end; in No. 555 the Spectator makes his parting bow, and the volume closes.
Motto. "Alas for piety and ancient faith."
—Virgil, Æneid, vi. 878.
[211]: 16. The quorum. The justices of the peace for the county.
[212]: 9. The Act of Uniformity, passed in 1662, provided that all ministers should declare their unfeigned assent to everything in the Book of Common Prayer, and should use it at morning and evening service. The Act threw more than two thousand ministers out of their livings, and united all Dissenters against the Church. Of course Tories, like Sir Roger, held it to be a wise and necessary measure, of utmost importance to the security and stability of the Church.
212: 17. Rings and mourning. It was customary to give by will mourning rings and mourning gloves and hat bands to a large number of friends. They would be worn, of course, by such of the friends as attended the funeral services; but not afterward. See Ashton's Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne, Chap. iv.