Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/12

 form of government.’ The king refused to accept his resignation, and promised to pursue a milder policy. In June 1669 the first ‘indulgence,’ which allowed the presbyterian ministers to resume their duties on certain conditions, was granted, and was accepted by the most eminent of them. To justify the indulgence, which was complained of by some of the episcopal party as illegal, and to authorise other pacific measures, the Scottish parliament in November 1669 passed an act declaring the external government of the church an inherent right of the crown. Under this act Alexander Burnet, archbishop of Glasgow, was deprived for opposing the indulgence, and his see was offered to Leighton, who accepted it in the hope of reconciling the presbyterians. With the sanction of the king he drew up proposals of ‘accommodation,’ which placed the ecclesiastical power in presbyteries and synods with bishops merely as permanent moderators. No oath of canonical obedience to them was to be required, and ministers who were presbyterian by conviction were to be free to declare it. Several conferences were held with the leading presbyterian clergy from August 1670 till 11 Jan. 1671, when they gave their final answer that they were not free in conscience to unite on the terms proposed. Upon this Leighton said: ‘Before God and man I wash my hands of whatever evils may result from the rupture of this treaty. I have done my utmost to repair the temple of the Lord.’ As he could make no progress with the presbyterians, and offended many of the episcopal party, and as none of his own clerical friends would accept vacant bishoprics, the disposal of which the government had entrusted to him, he despaired, and sent in his resignation in 1672. The king promised to allow him to retire at the end of a year if his mind was then unchanged, and his resignation was accepted accordingly in August 1674. He went back to the university of Edinburgh, where he had always kept rooms, but soon removed to Broadhurst in Horsted Keynes, Sussex, the property and home of his sister, the widow of Edward Lightmaker. There he spent the remainder of his life in study and devotion, in works of mercy among the poor, and in preaching and reading prayers in the neighbouring churches. Soon after the murder of Sharp and the risings at Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge, the king wrote to him that he was ‘resolved to try what clemency could prevail upon such in Scotland as would not conform to the government of the church there,’ and desiring him to ‘go down to Scotland with his first conveniency and take all possible pains for persuading all he could of both opinions to as much mutual correspondence and concord as could be.’ Leighton was willing to undertake this mission of peace, but events soon led to a change of policy. In 1684 he went up to London to meet Lord Perth, the Scottish chancellor, who, through Bishop Burnet, had earnestly desired the benefit of his spiritual advice. Burnet was surprised at finding Leighton so young-looking and active, but he told him that ‘he was very near his end for all that.’ The next day he was seized with pleurisy, and on the day following—25 June—he breathed his last in Burnet's arms at the Bell Inn, Warwick Lane. He had often expressed the wish to die in an inn. He was buried in the chancel of the church of Horsted Keynes beside his brother, Sir Elisha. His will is printed in ‘Bannatyne Club Miscellany,’ vol. iii.

As saint, author, and peacemaker, Leighton presents a combination of qualities which has called forth almost unrivalled tributes of admiration. Thomas à Kempis was one of his favourite books, and the ‘imitation of Christ,’ whose darling virtues he said were humility, meekness, and charity, was the business of his life. He shrank from every approach to ostentation, and so far from courting the riches and honours of the world he looked upon them with something of holy contempt. On accepting the bishopric he said, ‘One benefit at least will rise from it. I shall break that little idol of estimation my friends have for me, and which I have been so long sick of.’ Burnet never saw his temper ruffled but once during twenty-two years of close intimacy, and could not recollect having ever heard him say an idle word. When reminded of his former zeal for the national covenant, he replied, ‘When I was a child I spoke as a child,’ and when charged with apostatising from his father's principles, he meekly answered that a man was not bound to be of his father's opinions. He was habitually abstemious, kept frequent fasts, and often shut himself up in his room for prolonged periods of private devotion. Everything that he could spare was given to pious purposes, and he employed others as the agents of his charity that he might not get the credit of it. He founded bursaries in the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, made some permanent provision for the poor, and left his valuable library of more than fifteen hundred volumes to the clergy of the diocese of Dunblane. In his ‘Rules and Instructions for a Holy Life’ we have an ideal which perhaps tends too much towards mysticism and abstraction from the world. He printed nothing during his lifetime, and gave