"These are to certify that I have sworn and admitted Nahum Tate into ye place and quality of Poet-Laureate to her Majesty in ordinary, to have, hold, and exercise and enjoy the said place together with all rights, profits, privileges, and advantages thereunto belonging, in as full and ample manner as any Poet-Laureate hath formerly held and of right ought to have held and enjoyed the same.
"Given under my hand this 24th day of Decr., in the first year of her Majesty's reign.
During this reign the appointment was placed in the gift of the Lord Chamberlain, and Tate was re-appointed in 1714.
In his position as Laureate little can be said to his honour. His excuse we find in what we know of the literary men of that era. He was, as Mr. Macaulay says, in morals something between a beggar and a pander. In times of sudden change, it is scarcely probable that we should find the life of a necessitous man of letters, free from the inconsistency which blemished the careers of even the rich and noble. Tate was nearly five-and-twenty years a Poet-Laureate. He eulogized the memory of Charles II.; hailed the accession of James; welcomed William more enthusiastically; panegyrised Mary and Anne, living and dead; and wrote one official ode for George I. Dryden and Waller, however, before him, had exhausted fancy in lauding Cromwell, and at the Restoration were lavish of their praise on the Merry Monarch. To say good things on a great occasion, was all they aimed at. Conscience and consistency were quite out of the case.
It is difficult to discover by what interest Tate gained the appointment, for he had eulogized Charles and James, and had been the friend and coadjutor of the deposed Dryden. His Christian name may possibly have recommended him—or his father's puritanical leaning have
