Bishop of the great and opulent see of Durham, a man nobly born,
and raised so high in his profession that he could scarcely wish
to rise higher, but mean, vain, and cowardly. He had been made
Dean of the Chapel Royal when the Bishop of London was banished
from the palace. The honour of being an Ecclesiastical
Commissioner turned Crewe's head. It was to no purpose that some
of his friends represented to him the risk which he ran by
sitting in an illegal tribunal. He was not ashamed to answer that
he could not live out of the royal smile, and exultingly
expressed his hope that his name would appear in history, a hope
which has not been altogether disappointed.100

Thomas Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, was the third clerical
Commissioner. He was a man to whose talents posterity has
scarcely done justice. Unhappily for his fame, it has been usual
to print his verses in collections of the British poets; and
those who judge of him by his verses must consider him as a
servile imitator, who, without one spark of Cowley's admirable
genius, mimicked whatever was least commendable in Cowley's
manner: but those who are acquainted with Sprat's prose writings
will form a very different estimate of his powers. He was indeed
a great master of our language, and possessed at once the
eloquence of the orator, of the controversialist, and of the
historian. His moral character might have passed with little
censure had he belonged to a less sacred profession; for the
worst that can be said of him is that he was indolent, luxurious,
and worldly: but such failings, though not commonly regarded as
very heinous in men of secular callings, are scandalous in a
prelate. The Archbishopric of York was vacant; Sprat hoped to
obtain it, and therefore accepted a seat at the ecclesiastical