96 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SANCROFT. 



religious and civil liberties of the country ; a 

 stand to which the preservation of that goodly- 

 fabric in church and state, which they inherit 

 from their forefathers, is principally to be at- 

 tributed. 



The following is the letter* alluded to in a 

 former note (p. 90.) from Mr. Needham, Arch- 

 bishop Bancroft's chaplain, to his brother a 

 fellow of Emanuel College, written about a 

 month after the Archbishop's death. It affords 

 some interesting particulars respecting the 

 Archbishop's intentions in disposing of his pro- 

 perty ; and shows that Mr. Needham suspected 

 at that early period what eventually proved to 

 be the case, that the executors were not dis- 

 posed to fulfil the declared intentions of their 

 lord, further than they could be compelled by 

 law. 



Alresford^ St. Stephen's day, 1693, 



'' That my Lord's Grace went to heaven be- 

 fore he had actually made the intended division of his library, I 

 do not at all wonder, considering the nature of his distemper, 

 which daily flattered him with no unlikely expectations of reco- 

 vering so much strength, as might enable him to have his eye 

 at least, if not his hand too, in that sort of scholar-like toil, in 



* See Ayscough's Catalogue in the British Museum. 4223* 

 130. 



