It is a singular circumstance that although Watts received such marks of favour from the Abney family, Sir Thomas and Lady Abney do not appear to have, in the first days of their acquaintance, belonged to the church of which Watts was pastor. Sir Thomas was a member of that church during the pastorate of Mr. Caryl, whose daughter was his first wife. After Mr. Caryl’s death he united himself with the church of which John Howe was the minister. Nonconformists were at that time, as they have been frequently since, Lord Mayors of the City, usually complying by occasional conformity so far as to attend one part of the Sunday at church, the other at their own place of worship. When Sir Humphrey Edwin, who was a member of Pinners’ Hall congregation, was Mayor, he very unwisely caused the regalia of the City to be carried to his meeting-house, and it created a vehement storm. But it is remarkable that Mr. Milner, usually very accurate, in his life of Dr. Watts quotes a paragraph from “The Shortest Way with the Dissenters,” speaking of it as a piece of High Church vituperation, apparently unaware that this was the very production of Defoe, the satire for which he was put in the pillory; Mr. Milner, misled by the heartiness of the composition, like many of Defoe’s day, came to the conclusion that it was the work of an enemy to those whose interests the pamphlet was intended to serve. The paragraph points immediately to Sir Thomas and his friend Watts, as the reader will perceive by the designations italicized: “But a lady, Queen Anne, now sits on the throne, who though sprung from that blood which ye and your forefathers spilt before the palace-gates, puts on a temper of forgiveness, and, in compassion to your consciences, is not willing that you should lose the hopes of heaven by purchasing here on earth. She would have no more Sir Humphreys tempt the justice of God, by falling from his true worship and giving ear to the cat-calls and back-pipes at St. Paul’s; would have your _Sir Thomas’s_ keep to their primitive text, and not venture damnation to play at long spoon and custard for a transitory twelvemonth; and would have your _Sir Tom_ sing psalms at Highgate Hill, and split texts of Scripture _with his diminutive figure of a chaplain_, without running the hazard of qualifying himself to be called a handsome man for riding on horseback before the City trainbands.” It may be noticed now how much the interest of King William and the Hanover succession to the throne of England were served by the Protestant dissenters of the City of London, and by no one more than by Sir Thomas Abney. He lived to a good old age, dying at his house at Theobalds in the year 1722. Nor can we wonder that his friend should pay a high tribute to his memory in a funeral sermon, and seek to give it a more durable place in a sketch in his “Miscellaneous Thoughts.”