"He was also," as Burnet says, "much set on reforming abuses, and on raising in the clergy a due sense of the obligations they lay under." He thought that a strict search ought to be made into the morals, tempers, and capacities of those who were to be admitted into holy orders, and licensed as public preachers; and that "painful, mature, and sober preaching and catechising, and studies of all kinds, ought to be so far considered in the collating of church preferments and dignities, and that so much of duty should be required of clergymen, and so little left arbitrary and at large, that every church preferment in this kingdom might have such a due burden annexed to it, that no ignorant person should be able, no lazy or luxurious person willing or forward to undergo it."

Well therefore might the church weep over her departed son, but for himself the change was happily timed, since it released him from bodily sufferings, which would have continued to afflict him to the end of his days, -rescued him from the temptations of prosperity which he feared, saved him the pain of witnessing the increase of vice and irreligion, which he sorrowfully anticipated,and bore him to those pure and peaceful habitations for which he had been constantly preparing.

The day of his death was that on which parliament assembled for the purpose of recalling the king. On the following evening he was buried without pomp, for so he requested, in the neigbouring parish church of Hampton, the service of the church of England being used on that occasion. Multitudes of persons, of various classes, assembled to testify their grateful and respectful remembrance of the piety and virtues of the deceased; and the clergymen who were present showed their affection by bearing his body to the church, where it was deposited in the vault of that generous family whose friendship he had experienced during so many years of his life.