Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/502

 mayor and corporation of the City of London attended in state and at least 1500 persons were present, and many presentations were made to the archbishop. The 'Morning Post' stated that 'the history of church work in London since Dr. Temple entered upon the diocese has scarcely a parallel in the history of church work during the century.' He was enthroned in Canterbury Cathedral in 1897. With the consent of the ecclesiastical commissioners he sold Addington Park, the country residence of the archbishops since its purchase by Archbishop Manners Sutton, and with part of the proceeds of the sale he bought a house in the precincts at Canterbury known as the Old Palace, which he converted into a suitable residence. On 21 June 1897 the archbishop attended in state the great service in St. Paul's to commemorate the sixtieth year of Queen Victoria's reign, and on the following Tuesday he was the principal figure on the steps of St. Paul's, when Her Majesty made her progress through the city. Immediately after he presided at the fourth Lambeth Conference of bishops of the Anglican communion. On 3 July he received in Canterbury Cathedral the members of the conference at an inaugural service, and delivered an address from the chair of Augustine. The summary of the resolutions arrived at by the conference, called the encyclical letter, was drafted in the course of a night entirely by himself, and with but slight exceptions it was adopted by the conference and published. In 1898, at the invitation of Dr. James Paton, convener of the committee on temperance of the Church of Scotland, the archbishop paid a visit to the general assembly, and delivered an address chiefly on temperance. He visited Scotland a second time in 1902 at the request of Bishop Wilkinson for the dedication of the chapter house added to St. Ninian's Cathedral, Perth, in memory of Bishop Charles Wordsworth. During the six years of his archbishopric he made two visitations of his diocese. In his first charge in 1898 he dealt with the questions of 'the doctrine of the eucharist,' 'improper objects of worship,' and 'prayers for the dead.' The second charge was entirely devoted to the education bill of 1902.

In 1899 the lawfulness of the use of incense and of processional lights was referred to the archbishops of the two provinces for judgment. The 'hearing' took place at Lambeth on 8, 9, and 10 May, and their decision was delivered by Temple at Lambeth, 31 July 1899. They decided that the two practices were neither enjoined nor permitted by the law of the Church of England. A third question, viz. the reservation of the Blessed Sacrament, referring only to the southern province, was brought before the archbishop of Canterbury alone, and he decided that the Church of England does not at present allow reservation in any form.

Temple, who had been made hon. LL.D. of Cambridge on 20 Jan. 1897, received the honorary freedom of the city of Exeter on 22 Jan. 1897, and of the borough of Tiverton on 3 Oct. 1900. In January 1901 he officiated at the funeral of Queen Victoria in St. George's Chapel, Windsor. He crowned King Edward VII in Westminster Abbey on 9 Aug. 1902, and received the collar of the Victorian order.

He spoke for the last time in the House of Lorda on 4 Dec. 1902, when Mr. Balfour's education bill came up for the second reading. Earl Spencer, as the leader of the opposition, spoke against the bill, and the archbishop followed in its favour, but before he had completed his speech he was seized with illness and had to leave the house.

He died at Lambeth Palace on 22 Dec. 1902, and was buried in the cloister of Canterbury Cathedral.

Great as was the work which Archbishop Temple was able to accomplish owing to his unusual vigour of mind and body, the man was greater even than his work. He had a rugged force of character and a simplicity which distinguished him from his most able contemporaries. No one ever less 'beat about the bush' : he went straight to his point with a directness which sometimes earned for him the reputation of brusqueness, or even of want of consideration for other people's feelings. This, however, was a superficial view of his character, as those who worked with him and knew him well soon came to acknowledge. With his strength he combined a tenderness of feeling and warmth of affection which not unfrequently were noticeable, in spite of himself, in his public utterances. His devotion to his mother, who lived with him till the day of her death, and to whose opinion he always reverently deferred, was a marked trait in his character. As a preacher, he was not eloquent in the usual sense of the word ; any tricks of oratory were utterly alien to his nature, but his sermons in^Rugby School chapel (of which three volumes were published) are eloquent from their force and terseness, their earnestness and genuine feeling. The effect of them on the boys was, by the testimony of many