i6o IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 



then at Christ Church College, Oxford, and re- 

 turned more convinced than before of the errors 

 of the Romish Church. When at Winchester, 

 Morley made him his domestic chaplain, and later 

 on, that is, in January 1685, he became Bishop of 

 Bath and Wells, and attended Charles II. on his 

 deathbed. He opposed James II. in his en- 

 deavours to introduce Popery, and was one of the 

 seven bishops sent to the Tower. Though he was 

 a non-juror he refused, unlike Bancroft, to conse- 

 crate bishops in order to continue the Episcopal 

 succession among the non-jurors, who only died 

 out in 1805. Queen Anne granted him a pension 

 of £200 a year. Ken's Morning and Evening Hymns 

 are perhaps the most popular in our language. 

 Ken was attended in his last illness, which was 

 very painful, by his physician, Dr Mere wether, 

 whose daughter married William Hawkins, grand- 

 son of Izaak Walton.^ Ken died a bachelor in 

 1711, and was buried in the Parish Church of 

 Frome in Somersetshire. In his will he said : " I 

 die in the Holy Catholic and Apostolic faith, pro- 

 fessed by the whole Church before the division of 

 East and West; more particularly, I die in the 

 communion of the Church of England as it stands 



1 Ken would not continue to take opium to relieve his sufferings, 

 and wrote : — " Verse is the only laudanum for my pains." He died 

 with the words "Laus Deo" trembling on his lips. The Eev. A. S. 

 Wyndham Merewether (see p. 135) has Ken's watch, seal and Greek 

 Testament. 



