As in our day, so it was in the days of William the III., when a vacancy occurred in the See of Canterbury, different names were suggested for its supply. Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, and Hall, Bishop of Bristol, were both mentioned, and their merits canvassed, but after the lot had been shaken a little in the Royal urn, guided by the Queen, it fell upon Thomas Tenison, Bishop of Lincoln. He had been a distinguished London clergyman, prominent in opposing Popery and King James. A nobleman, wishing to secure the Bishopric of Lincoln for some one else, and to prejudice the Queen against Tenison, told Her Majesty that he had delivered a funeral sermon for Nell Gwyn, and had praised that concubine of Charles II. “I have heard as much,” replied Mary; “this is a sign that that poor unfortunate woman died penitent; for if I can read a man’s heart through his looks, had not she made a truly pious and Christian end, the Doctor could never have been induced to speak well of her.”[233] Tenison’s conduct in the diocese of Lincoln increased the high estimation in which he was held by Mary, and consequently he was nominated to Canterbury on the 8th of December, 1694, and confirmed in his election in the Church of St. Mary-le-Bow on the 16th of January, 1695.
1695.
Between those two dates, his Royal patroness sickened with the small-pox, three days before Christmas, and died three days after. I shall employ a passage in the funeral sermon which he preached on the occasion, not only because it well describes the event, but also because it exhibits the preacher’s style, and occasioned at the time considerable controversy.
“Some few days before the feast of our Lord’s nativity, she found herself indisposed. I will not say that of this affliction she had any formal presage, but yet there was something that looked like an immediate preparation for it. I mean her choosing to hear read more than once a little before it, the last sermon of a good and learned man (now with God) upon this subject: ‘What, shall we receive good from the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?’ This indisposition speedily grew up into a dangerous distemper; as soon as this was understood, the earliest care of this charitable mistress was for the removing of such immediate servants, as might by distance, be preserved in health. Soon after this she fixed the times of prayers in that chamber to which her sickness had confined her.
TENISON.
“On that very day she showed how sensible she was of death, and how little she feared it. She required him who officiated there to add that collect in the Communion of the Sick, in which are these words, ‘That whensoever the soul shall depart from the body, it may be, without spot, presented unto Thee.’ ‘I will,’ said she, ‘have this collect read twice every day. All have need to be put in mind of death, and Princes as much as anybody else.’
“On Monday the flattering disease occasioned some hopes, though they were but faint ones. On the next day, the festival of Christ’s birth, those hopes were raised into a kind of assurance, and there was joy, a great joy seen in the countenances of all good people. That joy endured but for a day, and that day was closed with a very dismal night. The disease showed itself in various forms, and small hopes of life were now left. Then it was that he who performed the holy offices, believed himself obliged to acquaint the good Queen of the small hopes all had of any likelihood of her recovery. She received the tidings with a courage agreeable to the strength of her faith. Loath she was to terrify those about her; but for herself, she seemed neither to fear death, nor to covet life. It was, you may imagine, high satisfaction to hear her say a great many most Christian things, and this among them: ‘I believe I shall now soon die, and I thank God I have, from my youth, learned a true doctrine, that repentance is not to be put off to a death-bed.’ That day she called for prayers a third time, fearing she had slept a little, when they were the second time read; for she thought a duty was not performed if it was not minded.
1695.
“On Thursday she prepared herself for the blessed communion, to which she had been no stranger from the 15th year of her age. She was much concerned that she found herself in so dozing a condition, so she expressed it. To that, she added, ‘Others had need pray for me, seeing I am so little able to pray for myself.’ However, she stirred up her attention, and prayed to God for His assistance, and God heard her, for from thenceforth to the end of the office, she had the perfect command of her understanding, and was intent upon the great work she was going about; and so intent, that when a second draught was offered her, she refused it, saying, ‘I have but a little time to live, and I would spend it a better way.’
“The holy elements being ready, and several Bishops coming to be communicants, she repeated piously and distinctly, but with a low voice (for such her weakness had then made it) all the parts of the holy office which were proper for her, and received, with all the signs of a strong faith and fervent devotion, the blessed pledges of God’s favour, and thanked Him with a joyful heart that she was not deprived of the opportunity. She owned also, that God had been good to her, beyond her expectation, though in a circumstance of smaller importance, she having, without any indecency or difficulty, taken down that bread, when it had not been so easy for her, for some time, to swallow any other.