92 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SANCROFT. 



tion, it is certainly true that, as his personal 

 desires were most moderate, so his own indivi- 

 dual expenses must have been small ; but there 

 is no ground whatever for supposing that he 

 contracted his private habits of life from avari- 

 cious motives. On the contrary, all accounts 

 state that he maintained the hospitalities of his 

 high station with the liberality and dignity 

 which became him.* Thus, although it cannot 

 be allowed that it would have been in any sense 

 matter of blame if, after satisfying the just 

 claims which his station imposed upon him, he 

 had been enabled to save some portion of the 

 revenues which he long enjoyed, to benefit his 

 family, or, as in the event of things would have 

 happened, to supply himself with comforts 

 when deprived of his station ; still the fact ap- 

 pears to have been otherwise ; he neither ac- 

 tually saved a fortune, nor husbanded his re- 

 sources with the view of saving ; and, when he 

 retired from the see to a private station, he 

 appears to have been well nigh reduced to the 

 sum of fifty pounds a year, his paternal inhe- 

 ritance, on which, on the first prospect of the 



* Bevil Higgons in his remarks on Burnet's character of 

 Sancroft, in " a short View of English History," says, " the 

 poor of Lambeth were ahnost maintained by the mmiificent 

 charities of Sheldon and Sancroft, daily allowances being pro- 

 vided for them," 



