Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/419

 of the communion service. 3. Standing during the prayer of oonsccration on the west aide of the holy table, in such manner that the congregation could not see the manual acts performed. 4. Causing the hymn 'Agnus Dei' to be sung after the prayer of consecration. 5. Pouring water and wine into the paten and chalice after the service, and afterwards drinking such water and wine before the congregation. 6. The use of lighted candles on the holy table, or on the re-table behind, during the communion service, when not needed for the purposes of light. 7. During the Absolution and Blessing making the sign of the cross with upraised hand, facing the congregation. These facts were not disputed, and all the archbishop had to do was to decide whether they were or were not conformable to the laws of the church.

The trial was delayed by various protests made on behalf of the bishop, and the actual hearing of the case did not begin till 4 Feb. 1890. The archbishop's judgment, delivered on 21 Nov. 1890 after due deliberation, was substantially in the bishop's favour, although each party was ordered to pay its own costs. The archbishop decided (1) that the mixture of the cup must not be performed during the service; (2) and (3) that the eastward position was lawful if so managed as not to make the manual acts invisible; (4) that the 'Agnus Dei' might be sung; (5) that the ablutions after the service were permitted; (6) that lighted candles on the holy table, if not lighted during the service, were permitted; (7) that the sign of the cross at the absolution and the blessing was an innovation which must be discontinued. Much dissatisfied by this result, the Church Association appealed to the judicial committee of the privy council; but on 2 Aug. 1892 the appeal was dismissed, and the archbishop's judgment upheld. It had no widespread effect, but was scrupulously obeyed by the bishop of Lincoln, even when celebrating in his private chapel.

The duration of these proceedings and the anxieties and distresses inseparable from them told heavily on the bishop's health and spirits. But great sympathy was evoked, and his hold on the affections of his diocese was sensibly strengthened. Henceforward he was beyond question 'the most popular man in Lincolnshire.' In January 1900, at a representative gathering of the county, his portrait, painted by public subscription, was presented to him by the lord-lieutenant. Lord Brownlow; and on his twenty-ninth birthday he received a cheque from the clergy and laity of the diocese amounting to nearly 2000l. This he devoted to the Grimsby Church Extension Fund. After, as before, the trial he was unremitting in the discharge of his episcopal duties. He played an active part in opposition to the education bills of the liberal government, and he continued to take his annual holiday abroad, but went less and less to London, though he always attended convocation and the bishops' meetings at Lambeth. On 1 June 1909 he presided, as visitor of the college, at the opening of the new buildings at Brasenose, and on 30 Nov. following he was present in the House of Lords to vote for Lord Lansdowne's amendment to the budget.

In January 1910 his health began to fail; but he took three confirmations in February. On 2 March he dictated a farewell letter to the diocese, and on the 8th he died at the Old Palace. He was buried in the Cloister Garth of Lincoln Cathedral. He was unmarried. He did not in the least condemn the marriage of the clergy, but he did not feel himself called to it.

Late in life King separated himself from the high church party as a whole by sanctioning the remarriage of the innocent party in a divorce suit. In politics he was a staunch tory: 'I have been voting against Gladstone all my life,' he said, 'and now he makes me a bishop.' Yet he favoured the franchise bill of 1884, on the ground that the agricultural labourers must be taught to be citizens of the kingdom of God by being citizens of the kingdom of England. King's character and career manifested with peculiar clearness the power of purely moral qualities. He had no commanding gifts of intellect, no great learning, and no eloquence; but his faculty of sympathy amounted to genius, and gave him an intuitive knowledge of other people's characters, and a power of entering into their difficulties, which drew them to him with no effort on his part. To this must be added the most perfect refinement of thought and bearing, a sanctified commonsense, and a delicate humour.

King published, besides sermons and charges and pamphlets on the 'Lincoln Case': 1. 'The Communicant's Manual' (edited), 1869, &c. 2. 'A Letter to the Rev. C. J. Elliott. . . being a reply to Some Strictures, &c.' by E. King, &c. 1879. 3. 'Ezra and Nehemiah,' 1874. 4. 'Meditations on the Last Seven Words of our Lord