was
announced that the Convention had declared the throne vacant, found that
Sancroft's thoughts were not with England or English freedom--they were
concentrated on the question whether James's child were a supposititious
one or no. "He wished," he said, "they had gone on a more regular method
and examined into the birth of the young child. There was reason," he
added, "to believe he was not the same as the first, which might easily
be known, for he had a mole on his neck." The new Government bore long
with the old man, and Bancroft for a time seems really to have wavered.
He suffered his chaplains to take the oaths and then scolded them
bitterly for praying for William and Mary. He declined to take his seat
at the Council board, and yet issued his commission for the consecration
of Burnet. At last his mind was made up and the Government on his final
refusal to take the oath of allegiance had no alternative but to declare
the see vacant.

For six months Bancroft was still suffered to remain in his house,
though Tillotson was nominated as his successor. With a perfect
courtesy, worthy of the saintly temper which was his characteristic,
Tillotson waited long at the deprived Archbishop's door desiring a
conference. But Sancroft refused to see him. Evelyn found the old man in
a dismantled house, bitter at his fall. "Say 'nolo,' and say it from the
heart," he had replied passionately to Beveridge when he sought his
counsel on the offer of a bishopric. Others asked whether after refusing
the oaths they might attend worship where the new sovereigns were prayed
for. "If they do," answered Sancroft, "they will need the Absolution at
the end as well as at the beginning of the service." In the answer lay
the schism of the Nonjurors, and to this schism Sancroft soon gave
definite form. On Whitsunday the new Church was started in the
archiepiscopal Chapel. The throng of visitors was kept standing at the
palace gate. No one was admitted to the Chapel but some fifty who had
refused the oaths. The Archbishop himself consecrated: one Nonjuror
reading the prayers, another preaching. A formal action of ejectment was
the answer to this open defiance, and on the evening of its decision in
favour of the Crown Sancroft withdrew quietly by boat over Thames to
the Temple. He was soon followed by many who, amidst the pettiness of
his public views, could still realize the grandeur of his self-devotion.
To one, the Earl of Aylesbury, the Archbisho