;'[14] and Evelyn, noting in his diary that he had been to hear him,
calls him 'a pious and holy man, excellent in the pulpit for moving the
affections.' His letters, of which several remain, written to Ken,
Lloyd, and Sancroft, about the end of the seventeenth and the beginning
of the eighteenth centuries, give the idea of a man of unaffected
humility and simple piety, of a happy, kindly disposition, and full of
spirit and innocent mirth. Though he could not take the oaths, he
regularly communicated at the parish church.[15] Controversy he
abhorred; it seemed to him, he said to Kettlewell, as if the one thing
needful were scarcely heard, amidst the din and clashings of _pros_ and
_cons_, and he wished the men of war, the disputants, would follow his
friend's example, and beat their swords and spears into ploughshares and
pruning hooks.[16]

John Kettlewell died in 1695, to Nelson's great loss, for he was indeed
a bosom friend. Nelson had unreservedly entrusted him with his schemes
for doing good, his literary projects, his spiritual perplexities, and
'the nicest and most difficult emergencies of his life; such an opinion
had he of his wisdom, as well as of his integrity.'[17] More than once,
observes Dr. Lee, he said how much gratitude he owed to Kettlewell for
his good influence, sometimes in animating him to stand out boldly in
the cause of religion, sometimes in concerting with him schemes of
benevolence, sometimes in suggesting what he could best write in the
service of the Church. They planned out together the 'Companion for the
Festivals and Fasts;' they encouraged one another in that gentler mode
of conducting controversy which must have seemed like mere weakness to
many of the inflamed partisans of the period. Nelson proposed to
preserve the memory of his friend in a biography. He carefully collected
materials for the purpose, and though he had not leisure to carry out
his design, was of great assistance to Francis Lee in the life which was
eventually written.[18]

Bishop Ken used to speak of Kettlewell in terms of the highest reverence
and esteem. In a letter to Nelson, acknowledging the receipt of some of
Kettlewell's sermons, which his correspondent had lately edited, he
calls their author 'as saintlike a man as ever I knew;'[19] and when, in
1696, he was summoned before the Privy Council to give account for a
pastoral letter drawn up by the nonjuring bishops on behalf of the
deprived clergy, he spoke of it