Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Tenison, Thomas

TENISON, Thomas (1636–1715), archbishop of Canterbury, was the son of Rev. John Tenison, rector of Mundsley, Norfolk, by Mary, daughter of Thomas Dowson of Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, where he was born on 29th September 1636. He was educated at the free school, Norwich, whence he entered Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, as a scholar on Archbishop Parker’s foundation. He graduated B.A. in 1657, M.A. in 1660, was chosen fellow in 1662, and became B.D. in 1667. For a short time he studied medicine, but in 1659 was privately ordained. In 1667 he was presented to the living of Holywell-cum-Needingworth, Huntingdonshire, by the earl of Manchester, to whose son he had been tutor, and in 1670 to that of St Peter’s Mancroft, Norwich, In 1680 he received the degree of D.D,, and was presented by Charles II. to the important cure of St Martin’s-in-the-Fields. Tenison, according to Burnet, “endowed schools, set up a public library, and kept many curates to assist him in his indefatigable labours.” Being a strenuous opponent of the Church of Rome, and “Whitehall lying within that parish, he stood as in the front of the battle all King James’s reign.” In 1678, in a Discourse of Idolatry, he had endeavoured to fasten the practices of heathenish idolatry on the Church of Rome, and in a sermon which he published in 1681 on Discretion in Giving Alms was attacked by Andrew Pulton, head of the Jesuits in the Savoy. Tenison’s reputation as an enemy of Catholicism led the duke of Monmouth to send for him before his execution in 1685, when Bishops Ken and Turner refused to administer the Eucharist; but, although Tenison spoke to him in “a softer and less peremptory manner” than the two bishops, he was, like them, not satisfied with the sufficiency of Monmouth’s penitence. Under William, Tenison was in 1689 named a member of the ecclesiastical commission appointed to prepare matters towards a reconciliation of the Dissenters, the revision of the liturgy being specially entrusted to him. A sermon which he preached on the commission was published the same year. He appears to have been better satisfied with the religious sentiments of Nell Gwynn on the approach of death than with those of the duke of Monmouth, for in 1691 he preached her funeral sermon, in which he represented her as truly penitent,—a charitable judgment which did not meet with universal approval. The general liberality of Tenison’s religious views commended him to the favour of William, and, after being made bishop of Lincoln in 1691, he was promoted to the primacy in December 1694. He attended Mary during her last illness and preached her funeral sermon in Westminster Abbey. When William in 1695 went to take command of the army in the Netherlands, Tenison was appointed one of the seven lords justices to whom his authority was delegated. Along with Burnet he attended William on his deathbed, and it was from their hands that he received the Eucharist. He crowned Queen Anne, but during her reign was not in much favour at court. He was a commissioner for the Union in 1706. A strong supporter of the Hanoverian succession, he was one of the three officers of state to whom on the death of Anne was entrusted the duty of appointing a regent till the arrival of George I., whom he crowned on 31st October 1714. Tenison died at London on 14th December of the following year. Besides the sermons and tracts above mentioned, and various others on different points of the Popish controversy, Tenison was the author of The Creed of Mr Hobbes examined (1670) and Baconia, or Certain Genuine Remains of Lord Bacon (1679).

The Memoirs of the Life and Times of the Most Rev. Father in God, Dr Thomas Tenison, late Archbishop of Canterbury, appeared without date not long after his death. See also Burnet’s History of his own Time and Macaulay’s History of England.