clined to asceticism, and probably to an orthodox mysticism (see Plumptre, ii. 297, 298). The holiness and spirituality of his character impressed all who knew him. As bishop he was anxious for the good of the people of his diocese, and published for their instruction his ‘Practice of Divine Love,’ in which he afterwards altered some passages in a distinctively protestant direction, and his ‘Directions for Prayer.’ When, as his custom was, he gave alms to the poor whom he met, he would ask them if they could say the Creed and the Lord's Prayer. Finding the ignorance of the grown people hopeless, he took much pains to promote the religious education of the children, set up schools where they could be taught to read and say the catechism, and furnished the clergy with the necessary books for teaching them. In the summer he often went to some large parish on a Sunday, and would preach twice, confirm, and catechise. When at Wells on Sunday he would have twelve poor persons to dine with him, and would give them religious counsel. He was much concerned at the poverty of the Wells people, and wished to get a workhouse set up, but was forced to relinquish the plan, as the gentry gave him no help (Hawkins, p. 16).
James seems to have regarded Ken with respect and favour, while the bishop was too thorough a churchman and tory not to feel and profess profound respect for the king. In 1687, however, James was engaged in an attempt to depress the church and the protestant religion, and was carrying matters with a high hand when Ken was summoned to preach in his turn at Whitehall in Lent. The Princess Anne and many nobles came to hear him. He denounced the doctrines and practices of Rome, and exhorted his hearers to persevere in the faith taught in the church of England. This sermon was held to contribute much to the discomfiture of the ‘popish party’ (Evelyn, Diary, 10 March 1687). On 5 May he preached before the queen in Bath Abbey a sermon which was answered by a jesuit in a pamphlet dedicated to the king. When James came to Bath in the summer, he touched for the king's evil in the abbey church between the hours of service, a ritual of a Romish character being used. Ken wrote to Archbishop Sancroft that he had had no time to interfere, but on the next Sunday had declared in his sermon that the church doors might be set open ‘to a common work of charity,’ which he considered the best expedient to prevent scandal (letter of 26 Aug.; Plumptre, i. 280). On 1 April 1688, when the first Declaration of Indulgence had been put forth, he again preached at Whitehall, and, suggesting a parallel between the peoples of Judah, Edom, and Babylon, and the English church, the dissenters, and the Roman catholics, urged, in clear though guarded terms, the necessity of union between churchmen and dissenters in the face of the common foe. When James sent for him and reproached him with stirring up strife, he answered that ‘if his majesty had not neglected his own duty of being present, his enemies had missed this opportunity of accusing him.’ In May he joined the rest of the ‘seven bishops’ in a petition to the king against obliging the clergy to read the second Declaration of Indulgence. The interview between the king and the bishops took place on 18 May; on 8 June the bishops were summoned before the king in council, and were sent to the Tower for refusing, on the plea of their peerages, to enter into recognisances; on the 15th they were brought before the court of king's bench, and their plea being disallowed they entered into recognisances, and were allowed to be at large; on the 29th they were tried at the king's bench for having written or published a seditious libel, and the following morning were acquitted. In common with other bishops, Ken, by the royal command, attended the king to give him counsel on 28 Sept., 3 Oct., and some later days, and then went down to Wells, where he remained during the events of the revolution until after Christmas. He went up to London by Sancroft's request, and in the convention which met on 22 Jan. 1689 voted for the request that the Prince of Orange should continue the administration, for the declaration against government by a popish prince, for a regency, and against the declaration that the throne was vacant; he joined the protest against the declaration of William and Mary, and voted against the new oaths. For some months he was in doubt which line to adopt, and was reproached for his ‘fluctuation’ by Henry Dodwell the elder [q. v.] and other nonjuring friends. By October he declared publicly to his diocese his intention not to take the oaths, but he had no fellow-feeling with the more violent nonjurors; he thought that the question was one for each man's conscience, and decided according to the dictates of his own. In April 1691 he was deprived of his see.
Ken had no private fortune; he had been too liberal to lay by money during his episcopate, and when he left Wells had no more than 700l., raised by the sale of his goods, with the exception of his books. In exchange for this sum his friend Thomas, viscount Weymouth, guaranteed him a life annuity of
