p. 617). Dolben's tenure of the deanery of Westminster was marked by the frank energy, sound good sense, transparent candour, geniality, and generosity which rendered him one of the most popular of the ecclesiastics of his day. On the very day of his installation he prevailed with a somewhat reluctant chapter to make the abbey an equal sharer with themselves in all dividends, a plan which secured the proper repair of the building, till the change of system in the present century. As dean he also resolutely maintained the independence of the abbey of all diocesan control. As a preacher he rivalled in popularity the most celebrated pulpit orators of his day. People crowded the abbey when it was known he was to preach, and Dryden has immortalised him in his ‘Absalom and Achitophel’ (vv. 868–9) as
Him of the western dome, whose weighty sense
Flows in fit words and heavenly eloquence.
The few sermons which exist in print prove that this popularity was by no means undeserved. They are ‘clear and plain, written in a pure and terse style, with something of the downright abruptness of the soldier in the subject, argued out admirably in a very racy and practical fashion’ (Overton, Life in the English Church, pp. 243–4). He at first preached from a manuscript, but a hint from Charles II induced him to become an extempore preacher, and ‘therefore his preaching was well liked of’ (Wood, Life, cxii). During his residence at Westminster as dean the great fire of London broke out (1666), and the dean, ‘who in the civil wars had often stood sentinel,’ gathered the Westminster scholars in a company, and marched at their head to the scene of the conflagration, and kept them hard at work for many hours fetching water from the back of St. Dunstan's Church, which by their exertions they succeeded in saving (Autobiography of J. Taswell, Camd. Soc. p. 12).
On the death of Bishop Warner, Dolben was chosen to succeed him in the see of Rochester, to which he was consecrated at Lambeth Chapel by his uncle, Archbishop Sheldon, 25 Nov. 1666, the sermon being preached by his old friend and fellow-student, Dr. Robert South, from Tit. ii. 15 (South, Sermons, i. 122 ff). The income of the see being very small, he was allowed to hold the deanery of Westminster in commendam (State Papers, Dom. p. 257), thus inaugurating a system which continued till the time of Horsley, by which the income of a poor suburban bishopric was augmented, and a town residence provided for its occupant. He occupied the deanery for twenty years till his translation to York, being ‘held in great esteem by the inhabitants of Westminster,’ and spoken of as ‘a very good dean’ (Stanley, Memoirs of Westminster Abbey, p. 451). Dolben at once began at his own cost to repair the episcopal palace at Bromley, which had suffered severely during the Commonwealth, a work recorded by Evelyn, who more than once speaks in his ‘Diary’ with much esteem of his ‘worthy neighbour’ (Diary, 23 Aug. 1669, ii. 43; 19 Aug. 1683, ib. p. 183; 15 April 1686, ib. p. 252). Dolben had been scarcely bishop a year when the fall of Clarendon involved him in temporary disgrace at court. Pepys mentions in his ‘Diary,’ 23 Dec. 1667, the suspension of the Bishop of Rochester, who, together with Morley of Winchester, ‘and other great prelates,’ was forbidden the court, and deprived of his place as clerk of the closet. He also records a visit paid to Dolben at this time at the deanery, 24 Feb. 1668, in company with Dr. Christopher Gibbons, for the purpose of trying an organ which he was thinking of purchasing, when he found him, though ‘under disgrace at court,’ living in considerable state ‘like a great prelate.’ ‘I saw his lady,’ he continues, ‘of whom the Terræ Filius at Oxford was once so merry, and two children, one a very pretty little boy like him (afterwards Sir Gilbert Dolben [q. v.]), so fat and black’ (Pepys, Diary, ii. 430, iii. 329, 333, 366, 385). That Dolben's disgrace with Charles was not lasting is proved by his appointment as lord high almoner in 1675, and when five years later the death of Archbishop Sterne of York vacated that see, he was selected as his successor. He was elected ‘in a very full chapter’ 28 July, and enthroned 26 Aug. 1683, amidst the universal acclamation of the citizens. Burnet, who disliked him as having, as he believed, when engaged on the ‘History of the Reformation,’ used his influence to hinder his researches in the Cottonian Library, under the apprehension that he would ‘make an ill use of it’ (Own Time, i. 396, fol. edit.), and who sneers at him as ‘a man of more spirit than discretion, an excellent preacher, but of a fine conversation, which laid him open to much censure in a vicious court’—records that ‘he proved a much better archbishop than bishop’ (ib. p. 590). Beyond the commendation of men such as Evelyn, we have little if any evidence of his administration of the see of Rochester. His short archiepiscopate was one of much vigour. Thoresby tells us that ‘he was much honoured as a preaching bishop, visiting the churches of his diocese, and addressing the people in his plain, vigorous style’ (Diary, 1 May 1684). His first business was to reform his cathedral, which
