et
the time' in their own society, for they were, many of them, men of
the most varied tastes and endowed with Christian tempers; whilst
their writings exhibit, as no other writings of the period do, the
saintliness and devotion which are supposed to be among the 'notes'
of the Catholic Church. Two better men than Kettlewell and Dodwell
are nowhere to be found, and as for vigorous writing, where is Charles
Leslie to be matched?

So long as the deprived fathers continued to live, the schism--for
complete schism it was between 'the faithful remnant of the Church of
England' and the Established Church--was on firm ground. But what was
to happen when the last Bishop died? Dodwell, who, next to Hickes,
seems to have dominated the Non-Juring mind, did not wish the schism
to continue after the death of the deprived Bishops; for though he
admitted that the prayers for the Revolution Sovereigns would be
'unlawful prayers,' to which assent could not properly be given, he
still thought that communion with the Church of England was possible.
Hickes thought otherwise, and Hickes, it must not be forgotten, though
only known to the world and even to Non-Jurors generally, as the
deprived Dean of Worcester, was in sober truth and reality Bishop of
Thetford, having been consecrated a Suffragan Bishop under that title
by the deprived Bishops of Norwich, Peterborough, and Ely, at
Southgate, in Middlesex, on February 24, 1693, in the Bishop of
Peterborough's lodgings. At the same time the accomplished Thomas
Wagstaffe was consecrated Suffragan Bishop of Ipswich, though he
continued to earn his living as a physician all the rest of his days.

These were clandestine consecrations, for even so well-tried and
whole-hearted a Non-Juror as Thomas Hearne, of Oxford, knew nothing
about them, though a great friend of both the new Bishops, until long
years had sped. It would be idle at this distance of time, and having
regard to the events which have happened since February, 1693, to
consider the nice questions how far the Act of Henry VIII. relating to
the appointment of suffragans could have any applicability to such
consecrations, or what degree of Episcopal authority was thereby
conferred, or for how long.

As things turned out, Ken proved the longest liver of the deprived
fathers. The good Bishop died at Longleat, one of the few great houses
which sheltered Non-Jurors, on March 19, 1711. But before his death he
had made cession of his rights