CHAPTER XXV.

THE BISHOP ADVISING LADY E. HASTINGS. PETTY SCHOOLS

AND OTHER CHARITIES IN MAN. 1737-1748.

CHAP. WHATEVER might be the shortcomings of the clergy XXV. or others entrusted with Church discipline in the island, the Bishop, it is clear, went on bravely so far as his health would allow. The Episcopalia failing us, we have no regular report of his doings, but we may trace him from time to time, always the same, in the annual Convocations, in educational work, and in such fragments as remain of his correspondence and family history. Whether or no he had missed his intended visit to Ledstone Hall in 1735, there is no doubt that he was constantly in communication with its noble-minded mistress, especially on the plans which filled her heart for making the most of her property when she should be gone. Dr. Wilson (who perhaps entered more entirely into his father's views on matters of that kind than on points of Church doctrine and discipline) notes a conversation between himself and a legal friend, Mr. Verney, Chief Justice of Chester:

"July 2, 1736. He told me that any person may leave what sum he will to corporations or otherwise, and leave it entirely to their honour whether they will lay it out in land in perpetuum or no, but nothing of that must be mentioned in the deed or will of bequest. This must be the method that Lady Hastings, &c. is to take."

He refers (inter alia) to her engagement recorded by his father six years before:

"Sept. 20, 1730. The Lady Betty Hastings, by my desire, has promised twenty pounds per annum, after her death, to the petty schools in my diocese "."

One letter of hers on this subject has been already given: two others, of a much later date, are also preserved in the Kirk Michael Registry. It appears that the Bishop had written to her early in 1737, at which time the trouble in the Church of Man concerning the impropriations was at its

Cruttwell, p. xciv.

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height, with this sore aggravation, that it came just when CHAP. a breathing time had been looked for in consequence of the change of dynasty. This is her reply:

"Ledstone, May 19, [1736.] "My Lord,-Yours of the 14th of April I received two posts ago, for which you have my most sincere thanks. I am grieved you yet struggle under such difficulties in regard to the state of your diocese. There has been a report, but whether it had any foundation I know not, that the King was about purchasing the Isle of Man". If so, I should hope your Lordship would be made easier in every respect. But however that is, I am persuaded all is working together for your greater degree of glory in a better life; and the example you give of Christian courage, of strong faith, and patient resignation to the Divine will, must, I trust, have a happy influence on all that either see or hear of it.

"Sometime after I wrote last to your Lordship, I received a letter from Mr. Wilson in relation to the pious work you are now upon, and I blame myself for not having sooner informed you of my readiness to be a contributor to it. But as I have set apart some of my estate for uses of piety and charity, will it not be as well to leave a charge of £5 per annum, or bushels of wheat to that value, out of my estate, as to leave £100 in money to be laid out for that purpose in your island? If not, apprise me of it. I will, as long as you and I live, my Lord, answer £5 yearly, whenever you acquaint me such a sum is wanted, for the widows or children of clergymen in your diocese.

“I shall observe your directions in regard to what I leave to your petty schools, and shall be vastly obliged to your Lordship for the rules and orders you have given to the masters of the free school you have erected and endowed at Burton, in Cheshire, and beg I may receive them with your first conveniency.

"I have determined my exhibitions to Queen's College, and not to Edmond Hall. I can't pretend to oblige the exhibitioners to go as missioners; but would give all the encouragement I could to those who shewed so much zeal for the cause of religion as to do it. "The great and good Mrs. Asbell died at Chelsea the 9th of this month; she was five days actually a-dying. Lady Catherine Jones was with her two days before her death; she then begged to see no more of her old acquaintance and friends, having done with the world, and made her peace with God; and what she had then to do was to bear her pains with patience, cheerfulness, and entire Cf. Dr. Wilson's expression, p. 783,-" I can't see that he intends to sell it to the Crown."

CHAP. resignation to the Divine will. Lady Catherine adds that she beXXV. lieves her words were turned into as perfect an exercise of those

economy.

virtues as ever mortality arrived at. She was carried off in less than two months, of a dropsy or swelling tympany. She had made a vast progress in the spiritual life for the last two or three years she lived.

"I have the truest sense of the many marks you give me of your favour and friendship, and am, with the sincerest esteem, my Lord, your most obliged and most humble servant,

"E. HASTINGS.”

"Lady Ann, Frances, and Margaret Hastings desire their compliments to your Lordship, and I beg mine to Mr. Wilson. I believe you know Miss Fox is married to a worthy son of the good Lord Digby."

Lady E. The mention of Queen's College relates to a transaction, Hastings' conducted under Bishop Wilson's advice, which brings out strongly one characteristic point in this admirable woman,her considerate, highly-principled economy. Placed, in the very bloom of her youth, virtually at the head of a noble family, she cared for the members of it not only with hospitable thought, but with something like parental care, as a sort of chieftainess.

"As her house and table were generally adorned by some parts of her family, so she made them all parts of herself, and embraced all her relations according as they stood in the several degrees of blood, with the truest and most tender affection: and she would moreover enquire after and seek out any of the withering and drooping branches of her family, and place them in a new light and a better situation: directing her aim by kinduesses of this nature, to bring them into the lucid path of virtue and religion. And she would do honour to the names and memories of remote ancestors, and inform herself of their public benefactions, and make them of more extensive use and service from her own pious munificence.

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But the care of all her cares was the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow; the needy and he that hath no helper; the lame, the halt, and the blind." These were her ordinary charities: "Her still larger applications were fixed pensions upon reduced families, exhibitions to scholars in the Universities, the maintenance of her own charity school, her contributions to others, disbursements to the religious societies, for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign

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Parts, and for Promoting Christian Knowledge at home; for erec- CHAP. tion, decoration, and augmentation of churches. Add ... free and frequent remission of debts in cases of straitness or insolvency; and flowing plenty and all becoming magnificence ever upheld in the house, and mighty acts of generosity to relations, friends, and to those that were neither. . . . This," adds the formal but plainly not untruthful memorialist, 66 may be illustrated by instances innumerable: £500 a-year given to one relation, £3,000 in money to another three hundred guineas, all the money that at the time was within her reach, and large promises of more, to a young lady who had very much impaired her fortune by engaging in the South-Sea scheme, &c., &c."

"All this," we are assured, "was done out of an estate short of £3,000 a-year: a fine part of which yet resteth in her family."

Here, of course, is implied an unwearied attention and a rare skill, to make the most of God's temporal gifts in the way of doing good. Accordingly when her health failed, "her employment very much was, to provide that all her settlements" for after times "might be secured from prostitution, and fenced about against spoil and depredation; and that all her holy, wise and good purposes might be attended with execution and effect. To this end, with unwearied industry she digested, improved, enlarged, and altered several respective schemes, rules, orders, and provisions, and very much from her own dexterity and wisdom."

hibitions

As a specimen of her work in this kind, the biographer Her exsubjoins the codicil whereby she eventually completed the at Queen's benefaction to Queen's College of which she speaks in the College. above-quoted letter to the Bishop; in the body of which document she distinctly acknowledges him as her adviser. Its main provisions therefore, curious in themselves, are doubly entitled to a place here, as recording his deliberate judgment on many material points in Church education.

She devises all her manors, lands, and hereditaments in Wheldale, in the West Riding, to the Provost and Scholars of Queen's College in Oxford for ever, subject however to a term of ninety-nine years, determinable upon the lives of certain annuitants; which being expired, £140 a-year is to be paid from the clear rents and profits to maintain five poor scholars, i Barnard's Historical Character of Lady E. Hastings, pp. 38-43, ed. 1742.

CHAP. each to have £28 per annum. They are to be selected from XXV. eight schools in Yorkshire - Leeds, Wakefield, Bradford, Beverley, Skipton, Sedbergh, Ripon, and Sherborne; two in Westmoreland-Appleby and Haversham; and two more in Cumberland-St. Bees and Penrith. Each to send a candidate every five years; not to Oxford, (by reason of the expense,) but to Aberford in Yorkshire, as a convenient place for the electors: the foundress making it her earnest request to three Rectors and four Vicars of parishes in that neighbourhood, (Berwick, Spofforth, and Bolton Percy; Leeds, Ledsham, Thorp-Arch, and Collingham,) to meet there, examine the candidates according to a form minutely specified, and report the result to the College. It was indeed to be a competition not of the individual boys only but of the schools, for the head master of each school was to send with his scholar "a certificate that he had distinguished himself above the rest of the same rank in his school for his morals and learning" as much as to say, "I send you the flower of my school." Also that he was "well grounded in the principles of the Church of England as by law established; that he hath competent parts and remarkable industry,' (observe the preference of the heart to the head); “and that he hath applied himself to the reading of Greek authors at least four years." He was not to be less than eighteen years old nor more than twenty-one: capable on the one hand of making up his mind to be a clergyman, (for that was the destination of them all,) yet not such an one as might have loitered in doing so. The mode of election is worth transscribing, were it only for its quaintness and singularity :—

"The Rectors and Vicars, at the expiration of every five years, for ever to meet together at the best inn in Abberforth, in the same county, namely, on Thursday in Whitsun-week, before 8 A.M." (The Bishop had chosen the same day for his Convocations: in both instances doubtless having respect to the great Gift of the week.) "Also all the boys to meet at the said best inn at Abberforth the night preceding the day of nomination, in order to be ready to begin their exercises the next morning. And I intreat the Rectors and Vicars aforenamed will be there half an hour before seven, that they may choose the boys' morning exercise, and put them upon beginning the same by eight of the clock. And my