to provide for the education of her nephew, Robert Tillotson, as well as to maintain two of her grandchildren.
Testimony is unanimous as to Tillotson's sweetness of disposition, good humour, absolute frankness, tender-heartedness, and generosity. A sensitive man, he bore with an unruffled spirit the calumnious insults heaped upon him by opponents. He spent a fifth of his income in charity. His interest in learning is shown by his encouragement of Matthew Poole [q. v.], and by his obtaining preferment for George Bull [q. v.] and Thomas Comber, D.D. (1645–1699) [q. v.]; his appreciation of intellectual power by his editorial work in connection with the manuscripts of Wilkins and Isaac Barrow (1630–1677) [q. v.], though it is true that his modernising of Barrow's style proves the wisdom of not permitting him to mend the English of the collects. He was perhaps the only primate who took first rank in his day as a preacher, and he thoroughly believed in the religious efficacy of the pulpit; ‘good preaching and good living,’ he told Beardmore in 1661, ‘will gain upon people.’
The first collected edition of Tillotson's works contains fifty-four sermons and the ‘Rule of Faith;’ two hundred were added in succeeding editions, edited by Ralph Barker, 1695–1704, 8vo, 14 vols., and reprinted 1728, fol., 3 vols. The best edition is edited, with ‘life,’ by Birch, 1752, fol., 3 vols. (contains 255 sermons, and is otherwise complete). Editions of single sermons and of the works, and selections from them, are very numerous; the latest is a selection annotated by G. W. Weldon, 1886, 8vo. The transubstantiation discourse was translated into French, 1685, 12mo; a selection of the sermons in French appeared at Amsterdam, 1713–18, 2 vols. 8vo; in German at Dresden, 1728, 8vo; and Helmstadt, 1738–9, 8 vols. 8vo (with life, revised by Mosheim). Transcripts in French of some of his sermons, dated 1679–80, are in Addit. MS. 27874. Some letters to Sir R. Atkins of 1686–9 are in Addit. MS. 9828.
Besides the monument in St. Lawrence Jewry, there is a mural memorial in the parish church at Halifax. In Sowerby church is a full-length statue by Joseph Wilton, R.A. (1722–1803), erected at the cost of George Stansfeld (1725–1805) of Field House. Tillotson's portrait was painted by Lely during his tenure of the deanery, and in 1694 by Kneller. The Lely portrait was engraved by A. Blooteling and the Kneller by Houbraken, R. White, J. Simon Faber, Vertue, and many others. In a third portrait by Mary Beale, now at Lambeth (engraved by White and Vanderbank), he wears a wig, and is the first archbishop of Canterbury so depicted. A fourth portrait (also by Mary Beale) was bought for the National Portrait Gallery in 1860. In person he was of middle height, with fresh complexion, brown hair, and large speaking eyes; when young very thin, but corpulent as he advanced in years.
[Of primary importance for Tillotson's life are ‘Some Memorials’ by Beardmore, ‘written upon the news of his death,’ and printed as an appendix by Birch. Burnet's funeral sermon, 1694, evidently uses, not always correctly, the information supplied by Beardmore. Of criticisms upon Burnet's delineation the most valuable are in ‘Some Discourses,’ 1695, by George Hickes, disfigured by animus, but not always met by Burnet's ‘Reflections,’ 1696, in reply. The ‘Life,’ 1717, by F[rancis] H[utchinson], has been superseded (not entirely) by Birch's ‘Life,’ 1752; 2nd edit. 1753. The ‘Remarks,’ 1754, on Birch by George Smith are of little value. Birch's volume is a maze of general biography, but as a life of Tillotson it is inferior to the article by P.[?William Nicolls, D.D.] in the Biographia Britannica, 1763 (the writer knew Tillotson's nephew, Robert, at Cambridge, 1722–28). See also Reliquiæ Baxterianæ, 1696, ii. 219, 337, 437, iii. 15, 19, 78, 110, 131, 156, 157, 179; Calamy's Abridgment, 1713, pp. 350 sq., 439 sq.; Calamy's Account, 1713, pp. 86, 795; Whiston's Memoirs, 1753, pp. 24 sq.; Gent. Mag. 1774 p. 219, 1779 p. 404; Watson's Hist. of History of Halifax, 1775, p. 294; Granger's Biographical History of England, 1779, iii. 256, iv. 297; Noble's Continuation of Granger, 1806, i. 77; Chaloner Smith's Mezzotinto Portraits, 1883, pp. 431, 937, 1120; Evans's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, i. 347; Cardwell's Documentary Annals, 1839, ii. 326 sq.; Cardwell's History of Conferences, 1841; Hunter's Oliver Heywood, 1842, pp. 239, 435; Lathbury's History of Nonjurors, 1845; Lathbury's History of Convocation, 1853; Le Neve's Fasti (Hardy), 1854; Taylor's Revised Liturgy of 1689, 1855; Lathbury's History of the Book of Common Prayer, 1858, pp. 383 sq.; Miall's Nonconformity in Yorkshire, 1868, p. 365; Hunt's Religious Thought in England, 1871 vol. ii., 1873 vol. iii.; Carr's History of Colne, 1874, p. 9; Nonconformist Register (Turner), 1881, p. 67; Oliver Heywood's Diaries (Turner), 1881, ii. 32; Stoughton's Religion in England, 1881, v. 97 sq.; Stansfeld's History of the Family of Stansfeld, 1885, p. 209; Perry's Hist. of the Engl Church, 1891, ii. 554 sq.; extracts from parish registers of Halifax; extracts from parish registers of Sowerby, per Rev. T. Hinkley; information and extracts from the records of Clare Coll. Cambridge per the Rev. E. Atkinson, D.D., master.]
TILLY, WILLIAM, of Selling (d. 1494), prior of Christ Church, Canterbury. [See Celling, William.]
