“Right Reverend Father in God,—Though you might assure yourselfe that you should alwaies find that reception with mee which is due to your quality and merits yet I should have been sorry that your respect to mee should have induced you to a journey injurious to your health the preservation of wh for the good of the Church I have great reason to wish and doe desire you to be perswaded that I should be glad of any occasion whereby I might show you that I am

“Your affectionate friend

“Anne.”[[246]]

[246]. Rawlinson MS. (Bodleian).

This was written from York where the writer was with her husband on one of their “progresses,” and the prelate to whom it was addressed was no other than the saintly Cosin. During his exile at Charenton, near Paris, he had been much engaged in controversy, on one occasion, with the Prior of the English Benedictines, whom he had defeated by the force of “much learning and sound reasoning.”

At the Restoration he had returned to his deanery of Peterborough, where he was the first person to use the Restored Prayer Book in the cathedral, but the same year was consecrated Bishop of Durham, where he died in 1672,[[247]] in the seventy-eighth year of his age. He displayed extraordinary munificence throughout his episcopate, and one of his bequests recalls a very real need of that period, for he left a sum for the redemption of Christian slaves.

[247]. “Sufferings of the Clergy.” Walker.

For some time after the incident of Macedo’s exposure, the Duchess of York seems to have been to all intents and purposes a loyal churchwoman, and indeed to Morley himself she never owned the change in her faith, even though she stayed at the episcopal palace at Farnham after she wrote the letter of recantation which will be noticed later.

Moreover Blandford, Bishop of Worcester, succeeded Bishop Morley in her household after the latter’s resignation when involved in Clarendon’s disgrace; therefore up to that time she had certainly not severed her connection with the Church of her baptism.

There now comes the difficult task of seeking the motive for so grave a resolution.