LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SAXCROFT. 91 



benevolence was largely exercised, although, 

 from not having courted the public eye, it lives 

 in no, records to claim the encomiums of pos- 

 terity. Bishop Burnet has thrown out the in- 

 sinuation that he was busily employed in 

 amassing a private fortune for his relations ; 

 and both he* and Dr. Birch,! the biographer of 

 Archbishop Tillotson, have stated it as a fact, 

 that he actually did raise a large estate out of 

 the archiepiscopal revenues. There is the 

 fullest reason to believe that both the insinua- 

 tion, and the statement of the fact, are without 

 foundation. Among the records of his family 

 no traces are to be found of his having pur- 

 chased any private estate, or left behind him 

 what can in any just sense be called a fortune. 

 The sum, which, as we have seen, he expended 

 in erecting for himself a small dwelling after his 

 retirement, and the property accumulated in 

 books and furniture, seem to have constituted 

 the whole or the greater part of what he amassed 

 from the see. As to Bishop Burnet's insinua- 



* Burnet endeavours to deprive him of all merit in giving 

 up his high station for the sake of his conscience, by saying 

 that " his deprivation was probably a matter of no great morti- 

 fication to him, as he had raised an estate in the see of Canter- 

 bury, which was probably more than sufficient for one of his 

 retired disposition.'' 



t See Birch's Life of Tillotson, p. 346. 



