KEN, Thomas (1637-1711)

KEN, Thomas (1637–1711)

cons. 25 Jan. 1685 bp. of BATH AND WELLS; susp. 1 Aug. 1689 ; depr. Feb. 1691

First sat 19 May 1685; last sat 12 Feb. 1689

b. July 1637, yr. s. of Thomas Ken (d.1651) of London, att.1 and 2nd. w. Martha (d.1641), da. of John Chalkhill, poet, of St Giles Cripplegate, London and Berkhamsted Herts. educ. Winchester, 1651-6; Hart Hall, Oxf. 1657; New, Oxf., BA 1661, ord. 1662, MA, 1665, DD 1679. unm. d. 19 Mar. 1711; will undated, pr. 24 Apr. 1711.2

Chap. to Mary, Princess of Orange, 1679-80,3 to Charles II, 1680-84.

Fell. New Coll., Oxf. 1661-6, Winchester, 1666-85.

Rect. Little Easton, Essex, 1663-65, Brightstone, I.o.W, 1667-9; East Woodhay, Hants 1669-72; spiritual adviser to Margaret, Baroness Maynard 1663-82; chap. to George Morley, bp. of Winchester, 1665-84, to George Legge, Bar. Dartmouth, 1683-4; non-stipendary cur. St John in the Soke, Winchester, Hants 1665-75; preb. Winchester 1669.

Associated with: Little Berkhamsted, Herts.; Longleat, Wilts.; Poulshot, Wilts.

Likenesses: oil on canvas by F. Scheffer, c.1700, NPG 1821.

Thomas Ken has acquired a reputation for saintliness that far exceeds that of his fellow bishops. He was a man of seeming contradictions: both an ascetic who would not be parted from the luxury of his coffee-pot and a celibate with intense female friendships.4 Accounts of Ken’s life have tended towards hagiography from the first, written by his great-nephew William Hawkins.5 The perception of Ken as saint was established in his lifetime: John Dryden’s ascetic priest of ‘The Character of a Good Parson’ (1700), who ‘made almost a sin of abstinence’ and despised ‘the worldly pomp of prelacy’ while having been ‘in purple… crucified’, was probably intended as a portrait of Ken: although, as an ‘enlarged’ imitation of Geoffrey Chaucer‡, the parson’s principled opposition to the removal of a divinely-appointed monarch was presented as a rejection of the replacement of Richard II by Henry IV, a reader of 1700 would have had little doubt that James II and William III were meant.6 Ken’s piety, devotion to the sacred character of the priestly office and to the sacraments led in the nineteenth century to his appropriation by the Oxford Movement: as early as 1825 John Keble and his brother Thomas considered editing ‘some of Bishop Ken’s remains’, and in 1836 John Henry Newman proposed a form of service for his commemoration.7 Subsequently, Ken was commemorated by a lesser holy day by the Church of England. Nineteenth-century biographies were heavily informed by contemporary theological developments, but Edward Plumptre’s made the most effort to recover Ken’s own intellectual and social environment.8

Early career

After the death in 1651 of his father, a London attorney descended from the cadet branch of an armigerous Somerset family, Ken came under the guardianship of his half-sister Anne Walton.9 Anne’s husband, the royalist writer Izaak Walton (best remembered for The Compleat Angler), kept a sociable household where Ken came into contact with many churchmen, including Walton’s close friend George Morley. It has been suggested that Walton’s pet dog Bryan was even named after Brian Duppa, then bishop of Salisbury.10

At Winchester and at New College Oxford, Ken formed ’a friendship, so closely... cemented’ with Francis Turner, later bishop of Ely.11 Other enduring friendships were established with Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth, and George Hooper, eventually himself bishop of Bath and Wells. While at Oxford, he almost certainly joined Turner, John Fell, later bishop of Oxford, and John Dolben, later archbishop of York, for secret readings of the proscribed Prayer Book liturgy. Ken was presented to his first living by William Maynard, 2nd Baron Maynard, whose wife Margaret was of a devout temperament.12

Ken’s route to preferment was begun through Walton’s ecclesiastical connections. As chaplain to George Morley from 1665, Ken enjoyed the benefits of Morley’s patronage and own position in the household of James Stuart, duke of York. Ken’s network of friends and patrons was solidly Yorkist: Morley was spiritual adviser to the duchess of York, Francis Turner was one of York’s chaplains, Maynard was comptroller of York’s household. Both the king and the duke of York spent so much time visiting Morley’s Winchester and Farnham residences that they must have had frequent contact with Ken.13 Ken was also linked to the mercantile world through his older brother Ion Ken, who was in the service of the East India Company, and married to the daughter of Sir Thomas Vernon‡, a City merchant, but this seems to have played little part in his career.14

In 1675 Ken accompanied his nephew, the younger Izaak Walton, on a European tour, including a visit to Rome.15 The experience made him ‘more confirmed of the purity of the Protestant religion’, although according to Anthony Wood he lost some of his popularity as a preacher on his return, supposedly being ‘tinged with popery’. Those who thought so, he added, were ‘altogether mistaken’.16 Ken grew in popularity as a preacher, especially in London when he attended Morley at Winchester House. It may have been at the instance of Henry Compton, bishop of London, that around December 1679 he took over the chaplaincy to the duke of York’s daughter, the princess of Orange, at The Hague, from his friend, George Hooper, who had fallen out with the prince.17 Ken insisted to the English envoy, Henry Sydney, the future earl of Romney that he would confront the prince of Orange over his wife’s spiritual and physical welfare; whether and how he did so is unclear.18 By August 1680 Ken claimed to be ‘much in favour’ with both William and Hans Willem Bentinck, later earl of Portland. In January 1681, however, he angered William by persuading the prince’s kinsman William Henry Nassau de Zuylestein, later earl of Rochford, to marry Jane Wroth, whom Zuylestein had seduced, but Ken’s reputation within the English court probably protected him from dismissal.19

With Ken installed in the Dutch court, Compton and William Lloyd, later bishop of St Asaph and of Worcester, sought to use him as a mediator with Dutch Reformed churchmen with a view to uniting the Dutch and English churches. Ken did not cooperate, claiming that most Dutch divines considered English churchmen ‘at least half papists’ and would require the English Parliament’s acknowledgement of their ordination. Such a concession would have direct implications for a similar recognition of non-episcopal ordination in England (a common sticking point in negotiations for religious comprehension). Ken was far more concerned with the conversion of Catholics to the Church of England. His triumphal reports to William Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, and to Compton of his conversion to the Church of England of Colonel Fitzpatrick, a relation of James Butler, earl of Brecknock and duke of Ormond [I], elicited from Compton the prickly reminder that he had failed to extract from Fitzpatrick the required formal abjuration of Roman doctrine.20 On his return to England in late 1680 Ken was appointed a chaplain to the king. He remained close to the duke of York’s circle, especially to Maynard, for whose wife he preached the funeral sermon in June 1682.21 Probably early in 1683, he snubbed Nell Gwyn during a royal visit to Winchester by refusing to allow her accommodation in his house on the grounds that ‘A woman of ill-repute ought not to be endured in the house of a clergyman, least of all in that of the King’s chaplain’.22 It brought him to the king’s attention. Whether as reward or punishment, he was soon after made chaplain to George Legge, Baron Dartmouth, who left that August to dismantle the English fortifications at Tangier.23 Following their return and Dartmouth’s reappointment as master of Trinity House, Ken preached before the Trinity company on 26 May 1684, where he defended the historical authenticity of Noah’s Ark and the capabilities of seamen against their detractors. He presumably then joined the Trinity company feast with Dartmouth, William Craven, earl of Craven, and George Berkeley, earl of Berkeley.24 Ken’s links with Dartmouth’s political associates came to include James Grahme‡, another of the duke of York’s servants, with whom he was in correspondence by July 1684.25

Promotion to bishop

In October 1684, (Sir) William Trumbull‡ thought Charles II ‘was so pleased with a sermon of Dr Ken’s preaching at Westm[inster], that (now he has assumed the power) he will make him ere long a bishop.’26 The death of Morley and subsequent translation of Peter Mews, to Winchester, as well as the death of Anthony Sparrow, of Norwich, raised expectations of an opening for Ken, described as ‘a man as eminent for his learning as piety’. Bath and Wells, reportedly earmarked for Thomas Lamplugh, the future archbishop of York was thought to be the most likely see.27 The congé d’élire was issued at Whitehall on 24 Nov., and Ken elected on 16 Dec.28

The promotion of Ken to Bath and Wells followed the practice of the commission for ecclesiastical promotions in promoting reliable allies of the duke of York, although by the time of Ken’s promotion Charles II had revoked the commission. On 25 Jan. 1685, at the relatively young age of 47, Ken was consecrated in Lambeth Palace by Sancroft, Compton, William Lloyd, bishop of Peterborough, Nathaniel Crew, bishop of Durham, Thomas Sprat, bishop of Rochester, and his old friend Francis Turner. Ken refused to hold the customary celebratory banquet and instead donated £100 towards the rebuilding of St Paul’s.29 When the king suffered a stroke a week later, Ken was summoned to the royal bedside. He urged the king to repentance and exiled the duchess of Portsmouth from the bedchamber, reminding him of the wrong his maintenance of mistresses had done to the queen.30 Reports that Charles had refused Anglican Communion circulated widely and were included by Ken’s first biographer Hawkins, whose description of a sacrament ‘not absolutely rejected’ but ‘yet delayed’ by the king possibly came from conversation with Ken himself. Instead, Ken and the others attending – Sancroft, Compton, Crew and Turner – were dismissed from the room while Charles received the Catholic sacrament from Father John Huddlestone.31 Ken’s absence in London meant that he could not be enthroned as bishop in person, the cathedral chancellor, Thomas Holt, being installed as his proxy on 6 Feb.32 Although still absent from Wells, the diocesan loyal address to James II of 2 Mar. was explicitly and unusually from ‘the bishop and clergy’, made reference to James’s accession declaration to the privy council, and pledged ‘to teach and to inculcate allegiance’, perhaps indications of Ken’s direct involvement.33 He preached the Lenten sermon at Whitehall on 8 March.34

On 19 May 1685, Ken took his seat in the Lords to begin a parliamentary career that was truncated by the revolution. He attended almost 80 per cent of sittings in the only session of James II’s reign. On 22 May he attended for the king’s speech on the defence of the Church and supported the Lords’ reversal of the order on impeachment proceedings. The next day he was named to the committee to prevent minors from undertaking clandestine marriages and on 26 May to the committee on the naturalization of John Esselbron. On 3 June, Ken was present when the House went into committee on the reversal of the attainder of William Howard, Viscount Stafford. Between 4 and 27 June, Ken was named to a number of committees: that on the exportation of leather bill (leather being important to the economy of his own diocese) on 4 June, the bill to provide the king with carriages on 13 June, the bill for the maintenance of the piers at Great Yarmouth on 17 June, that for the relief of Edward Mellor’s debts on 18 June, the Bangor Cathedral bill on 23 June, the reviving acts bill on 26 June, and the tillage bill on 27 June.

Meanwhile, Ken’s diocese lay exposed to the rebellion of James Scott, duke of Monmouth, whose landing at Lyme was reported to the House on 13 June. On 18 June, Wells cathedral chapter lent the king, through the lord-lieutenant Charles Seymour, 6th duke of Somerset, £100 for the defence of the county.35 On 2 July 1685 Ken was present when the House was adjourned. If Ken spent the entire period of the rebellion in London, as seems probable, he missed the reprisals of early July carried out by Colonel Percy Kirke‡, whom he had known in Tangier. On 15 July 1685 Ken and Turner were sent to attend Monmouth before his execution, but Monmouth rejected Ken’s plea that the duke make a public confession.36 On 4 Aug. 1685 Ken was present when the House was again adjourned. 

Ken’s precise movements in the remainder of summer 1685 are unclear. On 5 Aug. he was in Winchester where he commended his book The Practice of Divine Love to his university friend Weymouth. At some point he returned to his diocese to deal with the consequences of the rebellion, especially the ‘Bloody Assizes’ presided over by George Jeffreys, Baron Jeffreys. According to his response to the Privy Council in 1696, he regularly visited ‘about a thousand or more’ rebel prisoners even though ‘many of them were such that I had reason to believe them ill men, and void of all religion… I supply’d them with necessaries myself, as far as I could, and encouraged others to do the same.’ 37 The condemned to whom he ministered included Alice Lisle, widow of one of the regicides of 1649 and a shelterer of fugitives, who was beheaded in Winchester on 2 September.38 Another was one of those fugitives, John Hickes, nonconformist minister and brother of George Hickes, dean of Worcester. George Hickes on 17 Oct. 1685 referred to Ken’s ‘charity towards his brother in praying with him and for him’.39 On 16 Sept. he joined the king (with whom he discussed miracles) Louis de Duras, 2nd earl of Feversham, Francis Newport, Viscount Newport, the earl of Arran – probably Richard Butler, earl of Arran [I] and Baron Butler of Weston – and John Evelyn for dinner at the home of Richard Meggott, dean of Winchester.40 The year saw the publication of Directions for Prayer for the Diocese of Bath and Wells, perhaps influenced by his meetings with rebels following the defeat of the Momnouth rebellion.41

Ken returned to the House on 11 Nov. 1685. He attended regularly until 19 Nov. when he supported Compton’s attack on the employment of Catholic officers in the army.42 After the prorogation the following day, Ken again entertained the king, and plead for the lives of remaining delinquents, perhaps including Charles Gerard, styled Viscount Brandon (later 2nd earl of Macclesfield), ‘to stop the vein that has already bled so plentifully’.43 Little is known of Ken’s attitude towards diocesan estate business, but a letter to Weymouth of 2 Oct. 1686 suggests that he may have treated tenants robustly, seeking to manage the episcopal estates to the general improvement of the bishop’s revenue in a manner that anticipated the governance of George Hooper, his eventual successor as bishop of Bath and Wells.44

Although Ken was opposed to Rome and to any policy that would actively disadvantage the Church of England, he nevertheless was not unsympathetic to the king’s inclination to religious toleration. When the royal pardon of 10 Mar. 1686 halted all legal proceedings against Dissent there is no evidence that Ken protested. His sermon at the chapel royal of 14 Mar. 1686, exhorting constancy towards the Protestant religion, surprised John Evelyn who found the sermon ‘unexpected’ from a bishop who had been suspected of sympathy towards catholicism, though ‘the contrary thereof no man could more shew’.45 The sermon may have suggested a greater sympathy to French Protestant exiles than officially allowed by Sancroft’s bill of that month. On 15 Apr. he wrote an encyclical to his diocesan clergy urging that they collect money on behalf of the French Protestants; and in April 1687 he remarked that ‘when he had, or if again he should have the greatest power to prosecute sober Protestant Dissenters – he never would for he knows many of them to be learned and godly persons’.46 However, as the king sought to extend toleration Ken took a prominent role in the rousing of public sentiment against catholicism. On 13 Mar. 1687, before Princess Anne and ‘an innumerable crowd of people, and at least 30 of the greatest nobility’, he made an impassioned but reasoned attack on ‘the Romish priests and their new Trent religion’, comparing the teaching of counter-reformation Catholic clergy to ‘legends and fables of the scribes and pharisees’.47

It was assumed in two parliamentary lists that Ken would oppose the repeal of the Test Acts. Following the publication of the first Declaration of Indulgence in April 1687, Ken continued to express his opposition to Catholic teaching. In May, while the queen was at Bath taking the waters, Ken preached in the Abbey a sermon only known from a Catholic pamphlet written in response, but which seems to have denounced Catholic doctrines and practices as innovations and idolatries.48 The response suggested that Ken was using the sermon to clear himself from suspicion being cast on his true religious allegiance; but suspicion continued. In a letter of 9 July Ken told William Wake, who would much later become archbishop of Canterbury, that he knew name was being used to win converts to Catholicism, as, it was claimed, he ‘would within a month declare himself of that religion’, though he felt that attacks from Catholic pamphleteers at least ‘satisfied the world I am no Papist’.49 The king retaliated against his sermon by conducting a ‘touching’ for the king’s evil in the Abbey in August, during his progress into the west country. Father Huddlestone preached a proselytising sermon during the ceremony. Ken told Sancroft shortly afterwards, in a letter of 26 Aug., that he was taken by surprise but could not challenge the king directly nor accommodate the crowds wishing to participate in the ‘great healing’ anywhere but the abbey church. His response was to preach another sermon in the Abbey on the shared belief in charity between Samaritan and Jew, an obvious metaphor for Catholic and Anglican. The king’s action was thereby delicately accommodated in an argument which depicted the monarch as outside the true Church but which appealed to areas of agreement between denominations and the king’s own policy of toleration.50 James’s progress through the western counties looked likely to incorporate Wells as well, a source of some worry to Ken, who on 6 Sept. 1687 wrote to Dartmouth, protesting that while he would accommodate the king he knew not how to entertain him.51

Despite the events in Bath, Ken was still treated with some suspicion or irritation by Sancroft. In October 1687, Ken defended himself to the archbishop for ordaining and instituting to livings clergy who were not graduates. Sancroft seems to have been exasperated by Ken’s ‘insincere dealing’ on the subject.52 On 17 Feb. 1688 Ken sent a pastoral circular to his clergy directed at their conduct at a time of political and spiritual crisis in England. He urged them to mourn ‘for the sins of the nation’ and to emphasize ‘public prayers, in the constant devout use of which the safety both of Church and state is highly concerned’53 His Lenten sermon at Whitehall on 1 Apr. was preceded by the noisy disruption of the communion service as crowds rushed into the chapel: he preached, wrote Evelyn, ‘with his accustom’d action, zeal and energy, so as people flock’d from all quarters to hear him’. Presenting himself as an English oracle (‘there are times when prophets cannot ... keep silence’), Ken employed the analogy of the church of Judah surviving her own ‘Babylonish persecution’.54 Hearing of the sermon, the king summoned him and berated him for its bitterness; Ken was reported to have told James that he had neglected his royal duty by being absent.55

On 3 Apr. 1688, Ken, Turner, William Lloyd of St Asaph, and Thomas Tenison, later archbishop of Canterbury, dined with Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon.56 Ken left London at some point afterwards, and was away as the bishops decided on a response to the reissue of the Declaration of Indulgence and the king’s order that it be read in churches. Summoned back after a meeting at Lambeth on 12 May, he returned to London on the 17th and on 18 May, he signed the petition of the seven bishops and with his colleagues visited James to present it. They were summoned, on 27 May, to appear before the council on 8 June. In the interim, Ken returned to his diocese and was said to have preached a sermon which ‘drew tears to his auditors’ eyes, believing it to be his farewell or last sermon’. Preparing to go back to London he took his leave of Princess Anne who was visiting Bath and who ‘seemed much concerned at his present trouble’.57 Back in London by 5 June, then and on the 6th he visited Clarendon to discuss the bishops’ legal position, accompanied by Turner on both days and by Lloyd of St Asaph and Thomas White, bishop of Peterborough, on the second. 58 On their appearance at council on 8 June, all seven bishops were sent to the Tower.59 Gilbert Holles, 3rd earl of Clare, Charles Talbot, 12th earl of Shrewsbury, and Charles Sackville, 6th earl of Dorset, were suggested by Compton as lords who would stand surety for Ken when the seven appeared at king’s bench on 15 June, with Sancroft adding Crew as an alternative.60 It was also rumoured that ‘a certain Quaker of considerable property offered his bail to the bishop of Bath and Wells’.61 This was almost certainly William Penn, Ken’s former associate from The Hague, and an ally of James in his quest for religious toleration. At the trial two weeks later, on the 29th and 30th, the bishops were acquitted. 

The Revolution

After his acquittal at the end of June, Ken returned to Wells. On 1 Sep. he wrote to Weymouth believing that ‘God is doing some great thing for the good of his Church, but in all probability, some medicinal chastisement will go before, to render us the more fit to receive a blessing’. In the meantime, he warned, ‘we are not to rely on the arm of flesh’.62 Ken probably understood confrontation as counter-productive both religiously (resisting God’s will) and politically (renouncing what influence he hoped to have with James II). In anticipation of the Church’s attitude towards James’s reign being called into question, George Hickes wrote to Francis Turner on 3 Sept. urging that he and Ken should make better known their intercession on behalf of ‘the wretched criminals in the west’ in 1685, and the Church’s opposition to the indiscriminate reprisals of the authorities.63 On 23 Sep., Ken informed Dartmouth that he had always thought ‘his Majesty would never believe our Church would be disloyal’ and that he was ready to serve James ‘as far as can be consistent with my superior duty to God and to that holy religion I profess’.64 He took part in the unproductive discussions some of the bishops had with James on 28 September. 65 He also took part in drawing up and presenting the bishops’ 10 propositions to the king of 3 Oct. 1688, including the demand that he desist from using the dispensing power until it had been settled in a new Parliament, for which James should issue writs immediately. There was another meeting on the 8th, at which the bishops were asked to draw up prayers to be read in churches in advance of the expected invasion, which Ken and Turner presented to him on 10 Oct., being thanked the next day.66 Ken then returned to Wells and was not part of subsequent discussions in London concerning the reaction of king and Church to William’s invasion. He did not sign the petition to James II for a free Parliament presented by Sancroft, Turner and others on 17 November.67

On 24 Nov. 1688, Ken informed Sancroft that the Dutch were ‘just coming to Wells’ and that he had fled to Wiltshire. He explained that his former connections with the Dutch court might give ‘occasions of suspicion’ and that he was ‘resolving to remain in a firm loyalty to the king’.68 Although Gilbert Burnet subsequently claimed that Ken (for whom he had barely a good word) had ‘declared heartily’ for William when he first landed ‘and advised all the gentlemen that he saw’ to join him, the accusation does not accord with Ken’s actual movements or subsequent behaviour.69

Ken remained in Wells and did not sign the Declaration of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of 11 Dec. 1688.70 He was reported on 22 Dec. to have been received ‘very kindly’ with other bishops by the prince of Orange, but it seems unlikely this meeting took place.71 On that day he wrote to Sancroft that he was unable to be in London before Christmas, but would make the journey as soon as the weather permitted.72 He returned to London only after the king’s departure, when he lodged with his friend George Hooper. On 15 Jan. 1689 he joined discussions at Lambeth on proposals for a regency, the return of the king upon conditions, or apprehensions of a republic.73 Ken attended the House of Lords on 22 Jan. for the first day of the Convention and was named to the committee of bishops who were to compose a prayer of thanksgiving for the revolution. On 28 Jan. 1689 the House issued an order to the bishops to compose a special prayer for the Prince of Orange; Ken was also named to the committee to consider amendments to the liturgy. He attended for the abdication debates and while partaking in the unanimous vote that it was ‘inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant nation to be governed by a popish prince’, voted consistently for a regency.74 Attending the House throughout the first week of February 1689 he voted against the abdication and vacancy of the throne and registered his dissent on the 6th.75 He continued to sit in the House until 12 Feb., but absented himself from the Lords’ sitting before their attendance at Whitehall on 13 Feb. for the proclamation of William and Mary as king and queen, and did not sit in the House thereafter. There is no evidence that he registered his proxy between that time and his deprivation. 

Ken retired west to manage his diocese. He told Weymouth on 2 Mar. that he would send to Convocation men who would ‘row against the stream, or those who … shall not have their brains turned by the air of the town’. Although he acknowledged Parliament’s latitude in giving the bishops an extended period to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, he wrote that it would not prevent his eventual ‘ruin’.76 On 15 Mar., Ken begged Weymouth for political news since he was now ‘wholly in the dark’ and needed advice as he was ‘certainly designed for ruin’. He promised to burn Weymouth’s reply.77 Two days later, it was reported that he would not appear at the House to take the requisite oaths before the deadline.78

Throughout the summer of 1689 came under pressure to take the oaths, and seemed less certain to hold out than some others. On the one hand, Roger Morrice thought it unlikely that any bishops would be faithful to oaths taken except perhaps Ken and one other; the ‘hierarchical party’ was, he thought, too weak to have any effect one way or the other.79 Ken’s vacillation and refusal to condemn those who did comply irritated more determined nonjurors such as Henry Dodwell, who wrote to him in May accusing him of ‘vacillation’.80 Ken was suspended on 1 August. In October, Gilbert Burnet, who acted as commissary for the diocese, wrote to him in some heat, suggesting that Ken had not been consistent in his views on the oaths, ‘giving great advantages to those who were so severe as to say there was somewhat else than conscience at the bottom’. Ken’s reply implied, what was already apparently rumoured, that he had considered taking the oaths when it was rumoured that James had ceded Ireland to France, but stuck to his original decision when the intelligence proved false.81 On 16 Sept. he replied to a circular letter sent requiring bishops to assess themselves for tax with a protest that he had ‘no goods by me but my books, and the necessary furniture of my house. I have no money at interest, and as for ready money, I thank God I have enough beforehand, to serve the present exigencies of my self, of my family and of the poor, and to pay every one their due’. As such, he argued, he was not liable for taxation.82 At a call of the House on 28 Oct. 1689, Ken was registered as absent, offering (in the words of Sir Charles Cottrell‡) ‘stiff adherence … to that highest point of passive obedience’.83

In January 1690, Ken went with Turner to see Clarendon, perhaps about his impending deprivation. It is not clear whether Ken endorsed a plan to promote a petition from the clergy of the diocese of Bath and Wells was prepared which was proposed in a number of dioceses seeking to prevent deprivation.84 A petition was made by the grand jury of Gloucestershire, which specifically cited Ken, on 29 Mar. 1690.85 The deadline for taking the oaths had by then already passed on 1 February. On that day Ken protested from his episcopal chair in Wells Cathedral and asserted his ‘canonical right’ (a phrase he chose, as he later wrote to Lord Weymouth’s chaplain, with some care) in the diocese.86 With four of the other nonjuring bishops (and having commented on the text in a letter of 17 July 1690), he signed Sancroft’s ‘Vindication’, a response to the pamphlet A Modest Enquiry into the Causes of the Present Disasters, denying involvement in plots or any correspondence ‘with any minister or agent of France’, not least since they had hazarded everything ‘in opposing popery and arbitrary power in England.87 By April 1691, it was known that the diocese of Bath and Wells had been offered firstly to William Wake and then to William Beveridge, later bishop of St Asaph; a warrant was issued for Beveridge’s election on 22 April.88 But that Ken was ‘exceedingly beloved’ in his diocese and was actively enlisting local support was a disincentive to any potential successor, and Beveridge, having taken advice from Sancroft, had cold feet in early May about taking it up.89 On 13 May Dr Blagrave wrote to William Lloyd, bishop of Worcester, that Ken ‘is a popular man, and perhaps affects to show his courage in suffering’; he favoured a solution by which a friend of Ken, such as George Hooper, might be installed at Bath and Wells in the hope that Ken could regard them as a coadjutor.90 In the event, when Beveridge withdrew from the field, Richard Kidder, rector of St Paul’s Covent Garden, was pressed to take Ken’s place.91 Ken referred to his ‘supplanter’ as ‘a person of whom I have no knowledge’.92

After deprivation

Ken subsequently resided principally at Longleat with his old friend Weymouth or at Poulshott with his nephew Isaac Walton, also visiting other friends in Dorset, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire.93 He continued to be suspected of treasonable activity, especially in 1691, after the flight of Turner, and when Weymouth came under scrutiny: in May Sancroft expected his arrest.94 He was sustained financially by the generosity of friends and admirers, and Weymouth’s conversion of the £700 accumulated from the sale of his effects at Wells into an annuity of £80. A further option was marriage to a wealthy woman: in June 1691 it was rumoured that he was to marry ‘Lady Gainsborough’, probably Katherine, née Greville, widow of Wriothesley Baptist Noel, 2nd earl of Gainsborough.95 The marriage did not take place, although he received £100 from her in June 1693.96 There is some evidence of Ken’s involvement in a peripatetic ministry, where he visited ‘non-swearers’ in Herefordshire and elsewhere.97

William’s absence abroad in spring 1692 was seen by James as an opportunity for a restoration, and an invasion was prepared with French support. Between 27 and 29 Apr. 1692, Ken made several attempts to communicate with the queen, warning her against ‘all unnatural opposition to her most tender and royal father’ using language suggesting that James II would return to ‘assert his right’ imminently. Ken helpfully assured Mary (whom he would not address as ‘majesty’) that he believed her ‘rather misguided than wilfully evil’. The letters suggest that Ken’s zeal for a restoration of both James and what he regarded as the Christian duty of a daughter to her father overcame any realistic assessment of how Mary or her servants could receive so self-righteous and disparaging an appeal 98 On 10 May 1692, warrants were issued for the arrest of a number of nonjurors, including Ken. He was reported to have been committed to the Tower, though any incarceration was probably brief.99

Ken wrote a response to Archbishop Tenison’s sermon at the funeral of Queen Mary in which he accused him of pastoral neglect in failing to bring her to repentance.100 Ken continued to behave provocatively and on 15 Apr. 1695 took the funeral service for his nonjuring friend, John Kettlewell, dressed in his full episcopal robes, an action regarded with extreme hostility by the government.101 Ken was one of the signatories of the letter dated 22 July 1695 organized by John Kettlewell recommending the deprived clergy to all ‘such tender-hearted persons as are inclined to commiserate and relieve the Afflicted Servants of God’.102 On 2 Mar. 1696, he expressed anxiety that a bill would be introduced making the declaration and oaths taken by ‘Association’ signatories universal and compulsory; if it passed into law, he claimed, ‘the prisons will be filled with the malcontents’, including himself. Following the execution of Sir John Freind‡ and his public absolution on the scaffold by two nonjurors, warrants went out for the five deprived bishops including Ken who had signed the circular appeal for assistance to the deprived clergy the previous July.103 On 28 Apr., Ken was questioned at length by the Privy Council and detained in custody until 23 May.104 On 11 Sep. 1696, the Lords Justices refused to allow Ken to minister to Sir John Fenwick‡ ‘by reason of the late ill behaviour of the non-jurors’.105

Ken was probably more important as a touchstone of ideological constancy than he was ever an active conspirator. The French spy Abbé Eusebe Renaudot commented that Ken was one of the principal nonjurors – and the only one he named – worth cultivating in England, though as a source of advice rather than as someone with practical political effect.106 In 1699, Ken stayed at Bagshot, where James Grahme had a house.107 Although Grahme was the younger brother of a prominent Jacobite (Richard Grahme‡, Viscount Preston [S]) and himself implicated in plots earlier in the decade, he was able to coexist with William’s regime.108 Apart from involvement in the project to solicit contributions for the deprived clergy, Ken seems not to have been closely involved with other nonjurors (though there must have been some contact with Turner), and he opposed the deepening of the nonjuring schism through clandestine consecrations.109 Ken even corresponded with George Hickes about the possibility of ending the schism in October and November 1701, possibly the reason for the rumours, current by then, that he intended to resign his bishopric, which Hickes bitterly opposed.110 However, he had not abandoned his principles, and on 10 Jan. 1702, Ken expressed concern over the bill of attainder ‘against a minor’ (the prince of Wales). He was even more concerned about the oath of abjuration and sought advance warning of its implementation.111 There is no evidence that Ken was ever tendered the oath.

On William III’s death in March 1702 and Anne’s succession, Ken was still unprepared to take the oaths or to acknowledge Anne as rightful monarch; but he responded to Lloyd’s approach, shortly after William’s death, that he would ‘gladly concur’ in ‘some expedient’ to end the schism, though he was unwilling to break his country retirement and engage once more in clerical politics. He was optimistic, too, that Convocation would break with the ‘Erastianism’ of William’s reign. He now spent more time at Poulshot than at Longleat, where he was no longer comfortable with family prayers following Weymouth’s recognition of Anne.112 However, Ken’s attitude to the new regime was a source of speculation: Weymouth’s appointment to the Privy Council was also an encouraging sign that the government now wanted to mend relations with nonjurors; Weymouth was said to have proposed an arrangement – the translation of Kidder – that might enable Ken to be restored to his see, but Ken refused to be involved.113 At Christmas 1702 it was rumoured that Ken might take the oath of allegiance but that the abjuration oath would probably bar the way to his full rehabilitation.114 In correspondence with William Lloyd during 1703, he expressed his fears for the Church of England from both the confirmation of a Presbyterian settlement in Scotland and from those nonjurors who ‘run too high’, to the advantage, he thought, of Catholicism. He also showed support for the occasional conformity bill. At Poulshot in November 1703, he learned of the death of Kidder and his wife in the great storm of November 1703. Hooper was offered the diocese, but indicated that he would give way to Ken. Ken instead assured his ‘worthy’ friend that he would now resign his canonical claim to the diocese and allow Hooper undisputed possession. He abandoned his abbreviated episcopal signature of ‘T. B. & W.’ for plain ‘T. K.’ on 20 Dec. 1703. Ken’s ‘lapse’ in resigning his bishopric in favour of a schismatic was an ‘occasion of great lamentation’ to the irreconcilable nonjurors, reinforced by Lloyd’s apparent co-operation with it, though Lloyd had apparently requested Ken only act once the opinion of other leading nonjurors was established. In a letter to Lloyd of 21 Feb. 1704, Ken presented his role in Hooper’s election as the means by which he had saved his flock from the ‘spirit of latitudinarianism, which is a common sewer of all heresies imaginable.’ Ken spent Christmas 1703 and the early months of 1704 with ‘the good virgins of Naish’, Mary and Anne Kemeys, daughters of the royalist Sir Charles Kemeys, bt. There, he received hostile letters from Bristol and London Jacobites who opposed his relinquishing his episcopal orders to Hooper, and admonition from Lloyd, from whom he had expected support. While resuming his episcopal signature of ‘T. B. & W.’, he also challenged Lloyd with examples of the compromises Lloyd had made with the regime, such as co-operating with or approving his son’s conforming to the post-revolution church. A series of letters ended on 1 May with Ken’s apology to Lloyd for his ‘indecent expressions’.115

Little more is known of Ken’s political life. He accepted a pension of £200 per annum from the Treasury in May 1704, and in June was happy to refer to Queen Anne as ‘her Majesty’ in a letter to Hooper, indicating that he could regard her as queen, perhaps as long as her half-brother James remained a Catholic. Lloyd’s death on 1 Jan. 1710 left Ken the last surviving nonjuring bishop. In an exchange of letters with Henry Dodwell, the leading nonjuring layman, he recommended the end of the schism and effectively accepted the legitimacy of the Revolution Church, in preference to leaving ‘good people in the country’ without divine office; by 1710, he was taking communion with Hooper. Nevertheless, he continued to absent himself from that part of the Anglican liturgy where the sovereign was named in person, even as he advised others to attend services, as he would not publicly cast doubt on his earlier insistence that James II (and therefore also his son James ‘III’) was the only lawful monarch nor invite exploration of his ambivalent attitude towards Anne.116 Increasingly weak from a variety of ailments, Ken appears to have been aware of his imminent mortality and returned to Longleat on 10 Mar. 1711. He dressed himself in his shroud, which he had carried with him for several years in order that his body might not be stripped after death, and spent that evening ‘adjusting some papers’.117 He then confined himself to his room, where he died on 19 Mar. 1711. Apart from modest bequests to family members and to the deprived clergy totalling £400, Ken left his large collection of French, Italian and Spanish books to Bath library. He was buried in Frome parish churchyard. The testy burial inscription that he composed for himself made the bald political statement that he was ‘uncanonically deprived for not transferring his allegiance’ from James II.118 It was never used.

B.A./M.C.K.

  • 1 E.H. Plumptre, The Life of Thomas Ken, DD, Bishop of Bath and Wells (1895), i. 1-4, 12.
  • 2 TNA, PROB 11/520.
  • 3 CSP Dom. 1680-1, p. 97.
  • 4 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 253.
  • 5 W. Hawkins, A Short Account of the Life of the R. Revd. Father in God Thomas Ken DD (1713).
  • 6 Poems of John Dryden ed. J. Kinsley, iv. 1736-40; J. Kinsley, ‘Dryden’s ‘Character of a Good Parson” ’, Rev. Eng. Stud. n.s. iii. 155-8.
  • 7 Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 267; Tracts for the Times, iii, no. 75, pp. 16, 125-35.
  • 8 W.L. Bowles, The Life of Thomas Ken, DD, Deprived Bishop of Bath and Wells (1830); [J. Anderdon], The Life of Thomas Ken Bishop of Bath and Wells By a Layman (1854).
  • 9 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 5-6.
  • 10 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 14-17.
  • 11 Hawkins, Short Account, 2.
  • 12 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 49-51, 70.
  • 13 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 86-9, 126-30.
  • 14 H. Rice, Thomas Ken, Bishop and Nonjuror, 20.
  • 15 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 106.
  • 16 Hawkins, Short Account, 6-7; Wood, Ath. Oxon. ed. Bliss, iv. 548.
  • 17 Sidney Diary, i. 201; Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 140.
  • 18 Sidney Diary, ii. 19.
  • 19 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 142-44.
  • 20 Bodl. Tanner 37, f. 138; Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 146-7, 149-54.
  • 21 T. Ken, A Sermon Preached at the Funeral of the Rt. Hon. the Lady Margaret Mainard (1682).
  • 22 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 158.
  • 23 HMC Downshire, i. 21, 22, 25.
  • 24 Evelyn Diary, iv. 379.
  • 25 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 173.
  • 26 Add. 72481, f. 39v.
  • 27 Beinecke Lib. OSB mss 1, box 1, folder 56, Yard to E. Poley, 7 Nov. 1684, E. Chute to E. Poley, 7 Nov. 1684.
  • 28 HMC Wells, ii. 456; CSP Dom. 1684-5, pp. 217, 266, 301.
  • 29 [Anderdon], Life of Thomas Ken, i. 230-32.
  • 30 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 184.
  • 31 CSP Dom. 1685, p. 41; Hawkins, Short Account, 11-12; Evelyn Diary, iv. 407-8; Morrice, Entring Bk. ii. 510-12.
  • 32 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 192-3.
  • 33 HMC Wells, ii. 456-7; Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 203-4; Tanner 32, ff. 195-6.
  • 34 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 193-4; 207.
  • 35 HMC Wells, ii. 458.
  • 36 Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 353-4; Evelyn Diary, iv. 456; Morrice, Entring Bk. iii. 26-27.
  • 37 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 228-37; ii. 99.
  • 38 Verney ms mic. M636/40, A. Nicholas to Sir R. Verney, 15 Sept. 1685.
  • 39 EHR, iii. 752-4.
  • 40 Evelyn Diary, iv. 468.
  • 41 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 237
  • 42 Conflict in Stuart England ed. W.A. Aiken and B.D. Henning, 231; Add. 72481, ff. 78-79.
  • 43 Add. 72481, ff. 78-9.
  • 44 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs, 19, f. 9.
  • 45 Evelyn Diary, iv. 504.
  • 46 Morrice, Entring Bk. iv. 9.
  • 47 Tanner 30, f. 181; Evelyn Diary, iv. 541.
  • 48 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 275, 279.
  • 49 Christ Church, Oxford, Wake mss, 17, f. 19.
  • 50 Tanner 29, f. 65.
  • 51 Plumptre, Life of Ken, i. 282.
  • 52 Tanner 29, f. 79; Round, 39-41.
  • 53 T. Ken, A Pastoral Letter from the Bishop of Bath and Wells to his Clergy (1688) 1, 2.
  • 54 Evelyn Diary, iv. 577.
  • 55 Hawkins, Short Account, 17.
  • 56 Clarendon Corresp. ii. 167, 172.
  • 57 HMC Portland, iii. 409.
  • 58 Add. 72516, ff. 65-66; Tanner 28, f. 35; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 171-5.
  • 59 CSP Dom. 1687-9, p. 203; Evelyn Diary, iv. 586.
  • 60 Tanner 28, f. 76; Evelyn Diary, iv. 587; Morrice, Entring Bk. iv. 283-5.
  • 61 Add. 34510, f. 134.
  • 62 Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 13.
  • 63 Bodl. ms Rawl. Letters 94, f. 176r.
  • 64 Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 15.
  • 65 Add. 28093, f. 258.
  • 66 Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 16-18.
  • 67 State Tracts (1692), 430-31.
  • 68 Tanner 28, f. 261.
  • 69 Burnet, History, iv. 10.
  • 70 Kingdom without a King, 71-72.
  • 71 Beinecke Lib. OSB MSS fb 210, ff. 365-6.
  • 72 Tanner 28, f. 299.
  • 73 Evelyn Diary, iv. 613-4.
  • 74 LJ, xiv. 109-10; Timberland, i. 339; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 256.
  • 75 Bodl. Rawl. D 1079, f 14b.
  • 76 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs, 19, f. 14; Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 38n.
  • 77 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs, 19, f. 16.
  • 78 Morrice, Entring Bk. v. 26-27.
  • 79 Tanner 27, f. 31-32.
  • 80 Stowe 746, f. 116.
  • 81 Burnet, iv. 11.
  • 82 Chatsworth, Halifax Collection B.22.
  • 83 Add. 72516, ff. 89-90.
  • 84 [Anderdon], Life of Ken, ii. 552-3; Clarendon Corresp. ii. 302.
  • 85 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs, 19, f. 56.
  • 86 Add. 32095, f. 401. Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 54.
  • 87 [Anderdon], Life of Ken, ii. 565-6; A Vindication of the Arch-bishop and Several other Bishops (1690).
  • 88 CSP Dom. 1690-1, p. 342; Tanner 26, f. 82; LPL, ms 3894, f. 13.
  • 89 Evelyn Diary, v. 51-2; Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs, 19, f. 56; HMC 7th Rep. 197-8.
  • 90 Glos. Archives, Lloyd Baker mss, D3549/2/2/1, no. 141.
  • 91 CSP Dom. 1690-1, p. 383.
  • 92 Add. 32095, f. 387.
  • 93 Add. 45511, f. 78; Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 56-59.
  • 94 Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 71.
  • 95 Add. 70015, f. 99.
  • 96 Tanner 25, f. 57.
  • 97 Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/A/2, R. Harley to J. Somers, 3 Sept. 1693.
  • 98 Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 306, 309.
  • 99 Hatton Corresp. ii. (Camden Soc. xxiii), 177; Wood, Life and Times, iii. 389-90.
  • 100 T. Ken. A Letter to Dr Tennison, upon Occasion of a Sermon ... (1716); Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 86-94.
  • 101 [Anderdon], Life of Ken, ii. 672.
  • 102 Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 96-7.
  • 103 Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 97, 102-3.
  • 104 Add. 35107, f. 41; Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 100-1.
  • 105 CSP Dom. 1696, p. 385.
  • 106 Ideology and Conspiracy ed. E. Cruickshanks, 137.
  • 107 Longleat, Bath mss, Thynne pprs, 19, f. 18.
  • 108 HP Commons 1660-90, ii. 428; HP Commons 1715-54, ii. 77.
  • 109 Plumptre, ii. 104, 107.
  • 110 Bodl. Rawl. Letters 68, iii-ix; Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 108-11. 113-14.
  • 111 Add. 32095, ff. 395, 397.
  • 112 Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 122, 124.
  • 113 Lansd. 987, f. 202.
  • 114 Nicolson, London Diaries, 151.
  • 115 Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 127-9, 131-9, 142-9.
  • 116 Plumptre, Life of Ken, ii. 156, 194-95.
  • 117 S. Cassan, Lives of the Bishops of Bath and Wells, 99.
  • 118 J.F.M. Carter, Life and Times of John Kettlewell, 245.