Page:The Story of Nell Gwyn.djvu/188

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172
THE STORY OF NELL GWYN.

the see, and that he lived to fill with honour to himself and service to the Church the more important office of Archbishop of Canterbury. It may, however, be new to some that in his own will he strictly forbids either funeral sermon or oration at his own interment. There is satire in this. To have praised even Tenison might by some courtier or another have been made a barrier to the promotion of an able and perhaps better deserving person.

The son acceded to the dying requests of his mother by the following memorandum beneath the codicil:—

Dec. 5, 1687.—I doe consent that this paper of request may be made a codicil to Mrs. Gwinn's will.

St. Alban's

King James continued the mother's pension to the son, and in the same month in which his mother died gave him the colonelcy of that regiment of horse from which Lord Scarsdale had been dismissed, for his opposition to the well-known designs of King James.[1]

While still young he distinguished himself at the siege of Belgrade, became in after-life a Knight of the Garter, and died the father of eight sons by

  1. Letter from Atterbury, dated Covent Garden, Dec. 1. 1687. Nichols's Atterbury, Vol. i. p. 1.