decisive weight with him; but his angry passions prevailed. Ken quietly
retired from the venerable palace of Wells. He had done, he said, with
strife, and should henceforth vent his feelings not in disputes but in
hymns. His charities to the unhappy of all persuasions, especially to
the followers of Monmouth and to the persecuted Huguenots, had been so
large that his whole private fortune consisted of seven hundred pounds,
and of a library which he could not bear to sell. But Thomas Thynne,
Viscount Weymouth, though not a nonjuror, did himself honour by offering
to the most virtuous of the nonjurors a tranquil and dignified asylum in
the princely mansion of Longleat. There Ken passed a happy and honoured
old age, during which he never regretted the sacrifice which he had made
to what he thought his duty, and yet constantly became more and more
indulgent to those whose views of duty differed from his. [53]

Sancroft was of a very different temper. He had, indeed, as little to
complain of as any man whom a revolution has ever hurled down from an
exalted station. He had at Fressingfield, in Suffolk, a patrimonial
estate, which, together with what he had saved during a primacy of
twelve years, enabled him to live, not indeed as he had lived when he
was the first peer of Parliament, but in the style of an opulent country
gentleman. He retired to his hereditary abode; and there he passed
the rest of his life in brooding over his wrongs. Aversion to the
Established Church became as strong a feeling in him as it had been in
Martin Marprelate. He considered all who remained in communion with her
as heathens and publicans. He nicknamed Tillotson the Mufti. In the room
which was used as a chapel at Fressingfield no person who had taken
the oaths, or who attended the ministry of any divine who had taken
the oaths, was suffered to partake of the sacred bread and wine. A
distinction, however, was made between two classes of offenders. A
layman who remained in communion with the Church was permitted to be
present while prayers were read, and was excluded only from the highest
of Christian mysteries. But with clergymen who had sworn allegiance to
the Sovereigns in possession Sancroft would not even pray. He took care
that the rule which he had laid down should be widely known, and, both
by precept and by example, taught his followers to look on the most
orthodox, the most devout, the most virtuous of those who acknowledged
William's au