78 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SAXCROFT. 



The grand feature in Archbishop Bancroft's 

 character is his firm and unbending integrity, 

 his lofty and immoveable uprightness of mind, 

 which made him, on all occasions, steadily ad- 

 here to that cause which he believed to be 

 right, and postpone to this proud feeling every 

 consideration of worldly interest. 



'* Even in his greener days," as his panegyrist 

 expresses it, '* this great quality of his soul 

 was ripe and perfected." Bred up a true son 

 of the Protestant church, and in firm attach- 

 ment to the kingly form of government, he 

 could never be brought to countenance, in any 

 shape or degree, the measures which were 

 directed to the subversion of the altar and 

 the throne, to approve the actors in those 

 scenes of rebellious guilt, or to acquiesce in 

 their acts when success had unhappily crowned 

 them. At the time when the oaths of the Cove- 

 nant and the Engagement were pressed through 

 the nation for the purpose of propagating and 

 confirming rebellion, he had lately risen into 

 life : examples abounded on every side of him, 

 of persons of more advanced years, and more 

 ripened experience than himself, who were in- 

 duced readily to comply with all that was re- 

 quired by the prevailing powers of the day ; 

 and there was every appearance that, without 

 bending to these usurped authorities, the door 



