Within a few miles of Frome, in Somersetshire, stands Longleat House, a palatial abode, surrounded by gardens, in the midst of a wooded park, worthy of the beauty and magnificence of the mansion. Just outside the park paling rises the old church of Horningsham, and hard by is a little Dissenting meeting-house, the most ancient in our island. The place is not above twenty miles from Wells, and part of the domain comes within the diocese. There the most eminent and the most admirable of Nonjurors, Thomas Ken, took up his abode, at the request of Lord Weymouth, the possessor of Longleat; and if social gatherings like those of Shottesbrook did not occur there, the residence of the Prelate rendered it a source of the purest Nonjuring influence. He occupied a room at the top of the house, removed from the noise and bustle of an English hall, “open to all comers of fashion and quality.” Surrounded by his large library, “he wrote hymns, and sang them to his viol, and prayed, and died.”[476] The most popular of all his sacred lays--the Morning and Evening Hymns--were composed on the top of a hill, which, from the prospect it commands through a break in the woods, is well known throughout the neighbourhood by the beautiful name of “the Gate of Heaven.” [Sidenote: NONJURORS.] Whether he attended the services at the parish church is matter of controversy. One of his biographers thinks that up to the accession of Queen Anne he enjoyed, in Lord Weymouth’s private chapel, “the privilege of pure services, without alloy of the State prayers;” but it is added, “During his visits to his nephew at Poulshot, or when he was in other places where he could not find any Nonjuring assembly, we may conclude, from what he himself says, that, rather than be debarred the solace of Christian communion, he went to church.”[477] At all events, Ken was distressed at the idea of perpetuating schism; he had no sympathy with the spirit of Hickes; though he allowed excuses for clandestine consecration, he declared his own judgment to be against them; and though his scruples compelled him to retire from his bishopric, he longed earnestly for the reunion of the Church. Ken survived King William some years, but two of the Nonjuring Prelates, in addition to those already deceased, expired before the Sovereign whose rights they would not acknowledge. [Sidenote: 1694–1702.]