LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 67 



and was a man of learning and worth, but died 

 December 12, very poor and almost wanting 

 necessaries. They caused him at their own 

 charges to be decently interred in a vault in 

 St. Giles's church, called the " Rector's Vault," 



But not to interrupt the account during the 

 following years of this reign with any more 

 incidents of this kind, let the testimony of Sir 

 John Chardin (who knew the Doctor at this 

 time), supply the place of them all, as it is given 

 in a letter which he wrote Anno 1703, in these 

 words. 



" If I am so free with the most eminent Arch- 

 bishop of York, it is by remembering tenderly 

 the Rev. Pastor of St. Giles's before the Revolu- 

 tion ; his zeal with the Protestants ; his fatherly 

 concern for the persecuted and exiled ; his in- 

 comparable writing and preaching in the defence 

 of the ti*uth and in advancement of Christian 

 virtue," &c. 



The next year, 1686, Dr. Sharp fell under 

 the displeasure of the King, for treating upon 

 some points in the Romish controversy in the 

 pulpit. Whereby a handle was given to the 

 court of proceeding against the worthy Bishop 

 of London, who for refusing to suspend the Doctor 

 was himself suspended by the Ecclesiastical 

 Commissioners. Father Orleans in his History 

 of the Revolutions in England, tells us that this 



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