[56] These were Sheldon and Morley. Sheldon was bishop of London, and was promoted to the see of Canterbury on the death of the venerable Juxon. Burnet describes him as generous and charitable, and extremely dexterous in politics; but adds, that he only spoke of religion as an engine of government, and _thus_ gained with the king the character of a wise and honest clergyman. He was much blamed by the Low Church divines, for the rigour with which he followed up the parliamentary deprivation, by which two thousand divines, as was alleged, were ejected for non-conformity. Blandford, successively bishop of Oxford and Worcester, was an able and excellent divine, modest and humble, says Burnet, even to a fault. Morley, bishop of Winchester, had recommended him to the duchess to be her spiritual director in his stead, when he himself retired from court in 1667: “And I made choice of him,” says that prelate, “not only because, in regard of his learning, piety, gravity, and modesty, together with the gentleness and sweetness of his address and conversation, he was at least as fit as any I could think of for that employment, but in regard of his former relation of chaplain to her father, to whom he owed his rise in the church.”—_Preface to Bishop Morley’s Treatise_, p. xiv. [57] Stillingfleet, being at this time dean of St Paul’s, stood in the van of the controversy with the Papists. He had learning, penetration, some power of language, without much nicety of expression, and, above all, that intrepidity and undaunted resolution which the times required. After the Revolution, he reaped the harvest of his labours in the bishopric of Worcester. This eminent divine was born in 1635, and died in 1699. The tract which follows, is the third part of his Answer to the Papers published by James, respecting the conversion of his brother and wife to the Roman Catholic faith. [58] This prelate was Dr George Morley, who, during the time of the usurpation, was domestic chaplain to Sir Edward Hyde, afterwards Lord Clarendon; and educated his daughter, Anne Hyde, in the faith of the church of England. See page 189. Upon the Restoration, Morley was made successively bishop of Worcester and Winchester. “He was,” says Burnet, “a pious, charitable man, of an exemplary life, but extremely passionate and obstinate.” This prelate, who was deeply and justly afflicted with the Duchess’s change of religion, vindicated himself from the suspicion of having neglected his duty towards her, by publishing, in 1683, a collection of tracts, with an apologetical preface already quoted, and a letter which he had written to the Duchess in 1670-1, some months before her death, upon hearing a rumour that she was shaken in her adherence to the Protestant faith. [59] Preface to his Treatise, p. 5. [60] Letter to her Royal Highness, p. 3, 4.