3 - Letter to a Convocation Man (1696): Restraining the Press after the Lapse of Licensing

Summary

With the death of Queen Mary on 28 December 1694, bishops and clerics committed to the goal of godly reform lost their most significant supporter at the Williamite court. Her death was marked by a series of sermons and elegies bearing testimony to her personal piety and support for her husband in establishing a new godly regime. Thomas Tenison's funeral sermon epitomises the Williamite court's veneration of the departed queen. Recently appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Tenison ministered to the queen on her deathbed, and counselled William in his grief. Whilst praising the queen's personal virtue, Tenison noted why her death was such a grievous loss to the country. Tracing the principles and establishment of infidelity back to the previous reign, Tenison noted that Mary had advanced piety in a most ‘atheistical and profane age’. That promotion of piety and virtue, both by her own godliness and the advancement of movements against vice, was essential to fulfil God's providence. The last king had lost his throne because he prevailed over a nation beset by sin and immorality. The nation was still wicked, Tenison acknowledged, but Her Majesty's Letters for Reformation had gone some way to satisfying God's plan for the country and averting its degradation.

This official funeral sermon was supplemented by prominent supporters of the queen, many of whom echoed Tenison's assertion that her sponsorship of the campaign against vice had saved the nation from ruin. Nevertheless, there were dissenting voices. Thomas Ken (1637–1711) fundamentally disagreed with Tenison. Previously bishop of Bath and Wells, Ken refused to swear the oath to the new king and queen in 1689. He suggested the new archbishop had failed the queen. Far from examining the truth of her repentance from sins, he had simply praised and accepted her godliness. For Ken, this was not just a personal failure on the part of Tenison; it was a deliberate decision so that he might praise and preserve the queen's legacy. It was designed to justify the revolution and to promote the Church's approach to vice. For Ken, far from society being preserved, the country was mired in an athesitical and prophane age precisely because of the prevarications of the clergy and their accommodation with the political settlement of the Glorious Revolution.