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 conversing 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.”[219]
1692.
It is interesting to follow Sancroft into his retirement. He left the Metropolis—never to see it again—in 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-day—then 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.[220] The 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.[221] In the end, these charges of conspiracy proved to be abominable fabrications, which Sprat took care fully to expose.[222] 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 advised to abscond for the present, and so he became, “like the tortoise in winter-time, earthed for some days.” Dr. Bryan about the same time heard that a warrant had been issued for his apprehension, on account of his having written “flat treason.” “It was advisable for him to step out of the way.” Ten days later, Bishop Lloyd, to whom we are indebted for these snatches of information, wrote again to the archiepiscopalian recluse, that he found the Dean had removed his quarters, and desired to be very private, and that messengers were searching for Dr. Bryan.[223]
SANCROFT.
Sancroft, who escaped arrest because Sprat, when confronted with his accusers, exposed their falsehoods, seems to have been more annoyed a few months before by a very different accusation. “The spirit of calumny, the persecution of the tongue, dogs me even into this wilderness. Dr. Lake, of Garlick Hill, and others, have (as I am informed) filled your city with a report that I go constantly to this parish church, and pray for I know not whom, nor how, and receive the Holy Sacrament; so that my cousin had something to do to satisfy even my friends that it was quite otherwise.”[224] The fallen Primate’s intense dislike to the Establishment—as bitter as could be manifested by any virulent Dissenter—here bursts out in unmistakable fashion. The feeling remained as a sort of monomania to the day of his death. It kept him from setting foot over the threshold of a parish church, and led him to frame an instrument by which he appointed Lloyd, the deprived Bishop of Norwich, his Vicar in all ecclesiastical matters,[225] and inaugurated a voluntary and schismatical Episcopalian Church.
1693.
At the end of the year 1691 he removed into his new house, and on New Year’s-day at family worship he officiated himself, “in a very cold room where there never was a fire.” He would not employ a Chaplain. The preparation and arrangement of Laud’s MSS. for the press, occupied a good deal of his time, after which, in the month of November, 1693, his end approached. “It touched my spirits extremely,” says Mr. North, who visited him, “to see the low estate of this poor old saint; and with what wonderful regard and humility he treated those who visited him, and particularly myself.” His pious ejaculations were carefully recorded by his friends, and we are glad to find him saying to a visitor, “You and I have gone different ways in these late affairs, but I trust heaven’s gates are wide enough to receive us both. What I have done, I have done in the integrity of my heart.” The approach of mortality expands human charity, yet the ruling passion may be strong in death. Hence, though the dying man felt kindly towards all, he insisted that only Nonjurors should read prayers by his bedside, or officiate at his funeral. He entreated that God would bless and preserve His poor suffering Church, which by the Revolution had been almost destroyed; that he would bless and preserve the King, Queen, and Prince, and in His due time restore to them their undoubted rights.[226]
Sancroft had an active but narrow intellect, a playful but feeble imagination, a careful but perverted judgment. His powers had been cultivated by study, and his productions indicate compass and command of learning. Living in a narrow circle, his prejudices were strong; and bitter memories of Presbyterian oppression at Cambridge followed him to the grave. His nature was not destitute of affection and generosity, and he seems not to have been morose; he was simple in his living, rather than ascetic in his temper. By no means a Ritualist, he decidedly opposed Romanism, though his sentiments were what would be called decidedly High Church. Of his conscientiousness, honesty, and self-denial, the sacrifice of the Primacy is a sufficient proof; and of his obstinacy, the conduct he manifested on leaving Lambeth, and the persistency he showed in nonjuring habits, afford abundant evidence.
TILLOTSON.
Tillotson survived his predecessor little more than twelve months. He did not occupy his See long enough to accomplish much either as Bishop or Primate. In neither capacity has he left any memorials. No injunctions from him appear in the Archiepiscopal Register, and his biographer makes no mention of his visitations. We are told that he convened an assembly of Bishops at Lambeth, when they agreed with him upon certain regulations, which remained at his death unpublished, as he preferred they should appear with Royal as well as Episcopal authority, and he had not time to complete arrangements for that purpose. His biographer furnishes a list of his deeds, which form but a meagre total for a primacy of even two years and a half, when so much needed to be done. Le Neve, who is particular in noting archiepiscopal acts, has next to nothing to say of Tillotson’s archiepiscopal career. The most he can do is to supply extracts from a MS. diary, eulogizing the Primate’s eloquence and charities, and stating that William, after his Grace’s death, never mentioned him without some testimony of esteem. He used to say to Mr. Chadwick—son-in-law of the Archbishop—“I loved your father: I never knew an honester man, and I never had a better friend.”[227]