There appears to have been some dispute between the authorities of Church and State as to the offering up of prayers in the churches for the recovery of the King. William was anxious that the prayers should be offered at once, and the Privy Council assembled to make the order; but the Bishop of London raised an objection, not to the offering of the prayers, but to the suggestion that the prayers were to be offered in obedience to an order coming from the Lords in Council. The Bishop maintained that the Lords had no power to make any such order. In the discussion which took place it appears that some eminent lawyers were of opinion that even the King himself had no power to order the use of any particular prayers, or, at all events, that even if he had any such power it was in virtue of his position as head of the Church and not as head of the State. This was indeed to raise what the late Baron Bramwell once humorously described as "a most delightful point of law." The difficulty appears to have been got over by a sort of compromise, the Archbishop of Canterbury undertaking to order, on his own authority, that prayers should be offered up in all churches for the King's recovery, and the order was no {293} doubt dutifully obeyed. To complete the satirical humor of the situation King William ought actually to have died while the dispute was still going on as to the precise authority by which prayers were to be offered up for his recovery, but some sort of effective arrangement was made during the monarch's few remaining hours of life, and the appeal on his behalf was duly made. On June 19 the King was found to be falling deeper and deeper into weakness, which seemed to put all chance of his recovery out of reasonable consideration, and the Sacrament was administered to him by the Archbishop of Canterbury. One of the King's last utterances may be set down as in the best sense characteristic--it illustrated, that is to say, the best side of his character. "Believe me," were the words of the dying King, "that I have always been a religious man." It may be admitted, in justice to William, that according to his generally dull and often confused and hazy lights he did always recognize the standard, higher than that of mere expediency, or political compromise, or personal convenience, set up to regulate the conduct even of princes.