28 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP BANCROFT. 



In this peaceful retirement at Fresingfield, 

 the venerable Archbishop passed the year 

 1692. His late chaplain, Mr. Wharton, men- 

 tions* that he visited him again in August in 

 this year, and found him in good health and 

 spirits, ready to enter into his new apartment, 

 then completely finished and furnished. He 

 again made him a tender of his constant ser- 

 vice and attendance; the Archbishop took the 

 offer in very kind part, but v^ould not accept 

 it, resolving to live without the service of any 

 chaplain or other clergyman. The prevailing 

 desires of his mind at this time seem to have 

 been to divest himself entirely of the forms 

 and trammels of his former greatness ; to live in 

 as close a seclusion from the world as he could; 

 and, considering himself on the brink of that 

 goal which was to terminate all his earthly 

 hopes and fears, to devote himself to those 

 serious reflections and those pious offices which 

 might fit him for the solemn change he was 

 soon to undergo. 



That the feeling which originally took pos- 

 session of his mind, of the unlawfulness of 

 taking the oaths to the new government, was 



phen Blackhead and Robert Young," by Thos. Lord Bishop of 

 Rochester, 1692. 

 * Wliarton's MSS. 



