Before Queen Mary, Tillotson, archbishop of Canterbury, fell sick and died, towards the middle of November. He had rendered the Church of England the great service of throwing the weight of his character and eloquence on the side of submission to the new power, by frankly and simply accepting the oaths of allegiance. He had been strongly urged to do so by Lady Russell. "The time seems to me to have come," she had written to him, in 1691, "to put in practice anew that principle of submission which you have formerly asserted so much yourself and recommended so much to others. You will be a true public benefactor, I am convinced. Reflect how few capable and upright men the present time produces, I beg you, and do not turn your resolution over endlessly in your mind: when one has considered a question in all its aspects, one only succeeds, by returning incessantly to it, in throwing oneself into new difficulties without seeing any the clearer into the matter." Sancroft having obstinately refused the oath, Tillotson had become Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1691, to the great disgust of Compton, Bishop of London, who had hoped for the primate's see. Henceforward, the nonjuring bishops and clergy loaded Tillotson with their wrath and contempt. {57} Gentle, sensitive, used to the admiration aroused by his eloquence and the esteem for his irreproachable life, the new archbishop suffered cruelly from the injuries of which he was the object. When he died there was found among his papers a packet of pamphlets published against him, with this phrase in his handwriting: "I pray God to pardon them; I pardon them." "I have lost the best friend I have ever had, and the best man I have ever known," wrote William to Heinsius. He loaded the widow with favors. Such was the popularity of the archbishop as a preacher, that the publisher of his sermons bought their ownership at the price of; £2,500, a sum unheard of at that period. Milton had sold the manuscript of the "Paradise Lost" for five pounds sterling, and Dryden, at that time the most illustrious of English poets, had received £1300 for his translation of Virgil's complete works. A more poignant grief was about to strike William. He had come to Whitehall to give his assent to the bill for Triennial Parliaments, which he had once objected to. The many members of the two Houses who pressed into the hall of sessions found the King's face changed and his mood gloomy. He hastened to return to Kensington. The report spread that the queen was ill, and it was soon known that she had the small-pox.