Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, the openness of whose countenance corresponded with the simplicity of his character,[203] is the best known of all the seven. A Wykehamist, and an Oxonian, he took orders in the Church just after the Restoration, and became Fellow of Winchester College, and Chaplain to the Bishop. In his former capacity he refused to admit to his lodgings Nell Gwynn, the mistress of Charles II., when she accompanied her lover on a visit to the romantic old city; and it is to the honour of the erring King, that, instead of showing resentment for this high-principled act, he rewarded with a mitre the virtues of the pure-hearted clergyman.[204] People suspected that, in consequence of a journey he made to the City of Rome, Ken had become tinged with Popery; but though ascetic in his habits, a High Churchman in principle, and decidedly “Catholic” in feeling, his protest from the pulpit against the errors of Rome, and his resistance of the policy of James, is sufficient to clear him from any suspicion of that kind: James did not personally dislike him, and listened to what he had to say on behalf of sufferers in the Monmouth Rebellion. His popularity appears to have been very great. Evelyn speaks of the crowd to hear him at St. Martin’s, as “not to be expressed, nor the wonderful eloquence of this admirable preacher;” and again at Whitehall, the same Diarist speaks of the Holy Communion after the Morning Service being interrupted by “the rude breaking in of multitudes, zealous to hear the second sermon to be preached by the Bishop of Bath and Wells.”[205] On that occasion Ken applied the story of the persecution of the Church of Judah, by the Babylonians, to the peculiar position of the Church of England; and he so powerfully urged the congregation to cling to the reformed faith, that they could scarcely refrain from an audible response. Sent for by James, and reproved for his boldness, Ken quietly replied “that if His Majesty had not neglected his own duty of being present, his enemies had missed the opportunity of accusing him.” But the Bishop’s wide fame rests mainly on his Morning, Evening, and Midnight Hymns, respecting which, it has been truly said, had he endowed three hospitals, he might have been less a benefactor to posterity.[206] Nor should we overlook the interest which he took in the young, his manual of prayer for Wykeham’s scholars, his establishment of parish schools, and his zeal for catechizing.[207] [Sidenote: BISHOP LLOYD.]