to the government. Patrick succeeded the traitor
Turner. Fowler went to Gloucester. Richard Cumberland, an aged divine,
who had no interest at Court, and whose only recommendations were his
piety and erudition, was astonished by learning from a newsletter which
he found on the table of a coffeehouse that he had been nominated to
the See of Peterborough. [57] Beveridge was selected to succeed Ken;
he consented; and the appointment was actually announced in the London
Gazette. But Beveridge, though an honest, was not a strongminded man.
Some Jacobites expostulated with him; some reviled him; his heart
failed him; and he retracted. While the nonjurors were rejoicing in
this victory, he changed his mind again; but too late. He had by his
irresolution forfeited the favour of William, and never obtained a mitre
till Anne was on the throne. [58] The bishopric of Bath and Wells
was bestowed on Richard Kidder, a man of considerable attainments and
blameless character, but suspected of a leaning towards Presbyterianism.
About the same time Sharp, the highest churchman that had been zealous
for the Comprehension, and the lowest churchman that felt a scruple
about succeeding a deprived prelate, accepted the Archbishopric of York,
vacant by the death of Lamplugh. [59]

In consequence of the elevation of Tillotson to the See of Canterbury,
the Deanery of Saint Paul's became vacant. As soon as the name of
the new Dean was known, a clamour broke forth such as perhaps no
ecclesiastical appointment has ever produced, a clamour made up of yells
of hatred, of hisses of contempt, and of shouts of triumphant and half
insulting welcome; for the new Dean was William Sherlock.

The story of his conversion deserves to be fully told; for it throws
great light on the character of the parties which then divided the
Church and the State. Sherlock was, in influence and reputation, though
not in rank, the foremost man among the nonjurors. His authority and
example had induced some of his brethren, who had at first wavered,
to resign their benefices. The day of suspension came; the day of
deprivation came; and still he was firm. He seemed to have found, in the
consciousness of rectitude, and in meditation on the invisible world,
ample compensation for all his losses. While excluded from the pulpit
where his eloquence had once delighted the learned and polite inmates
of the Temple, he wrote that celebrated Treatise on Death which, during
many years, s