rrevocably fixed he should suffer the ensuing
day. They stayed with him all night, and in the morning of the 15th were
joined by Dr. Hooper, afterwards, in the reign of Anne, made bishop of
Bath and Wells, and by Dr. Tennison, who succeeded Tillotson in the see
of Canterbury. This last divine is stated by Burnet to have been most
acceptable to the duke, and, though he joined the others in some harsh
expostulations, to have done what the right reverend historian conceives
to have been his duty, in a softer and less peremptory manner. Certain
it is, that none of these holy men seem to have erred on the side of
compassion or complaisance to their illustrious penitent. Besides
endeavouring to convince him of the guilt of his connection with his
beloved lady Harriet, of which he could never be brought to a due sense,
they seem to have repeatedly teased him with controversy, and to have
been far more solicitous to make him profess what they deemed the true
creed of the Church of England, than to soften or console his sorrows, or
to help him to that composure of mind so necessary for his situation. He
declared himself to be a member of their Church, but, they denied that he
could be so, unless he thoroughly believed the doctrine of passive
obedience and non-resistance. He repented generally of his sins, and
especially of his late enterprise, but they insisted that he must repent
of it in the way they prescribed to him, that he must own it to have been
a wicked resistance to his lawful king, and a detestable act of
rebellion. Some historians have imputed this seemingly cruel conduct to
the king's particular instructions, who might be desirous of extracting,
or rather extorting, from the lips of his dying nephew such a confession
as would be matter of triumph to the royal cause. But the character of
the two prelates principally concerned, both for general uprightness and
sincerity as Church of England men, makes it more candid to suppose that
they did not act from motives of servile compliance, but rather from an
intemperate party zeal for the honour of their Church, which they judged
would be signally promoted if such a man as Monmouth, after having
throughout his life acted in defiance of their favourite doctrine, could
be brought in his last moments to acknowledge it as a divine truth. It
must never be forgotten, if we would understand the history of this
period, that the truly orthodox members of our Church regarded mo