A few days after the close of the trials at Manchester William returned to England.  On the twelfth of November, only forty-eight hours after his arrival at Kensington, the Houses met.  He congratulated them on the improved aspect of affairs.  Both by land and by sea the events of the year which was about to close had been, on the whole, favourable to the allies; the French armies had made no progress; the French fleets had not ventured to show themselves; nevertheless, a safe and honourable peace could be obtained only by a vigorous prosecution of the war; and the war could not be vigorously prosecuted without large supplies.  William then reminded the Commons that the Act by which they had settled the tonnage and poundage on the Crown for four years was about to expire, and expressed his hope that it would be renewed.

After the King had spoken, the Commons, for some reason which no writer has explained, adjourned for a week.  Before they met again, an event took place which caused great sorrow at the palace, and through all the ranks of the Low Church party.  Tillotson was taken suddenly ill while attending public worship in the chapel of Whitehall.  Prompt remedies might perhaps have saved him; but he would not interrupt the prayers; and, before the service was over, his malady was beyond the reach of medicine.  He was almost speechless; but his friends long remembered with pleasure a few broken ejaculations which showed that he enjoyed peace of mind to the last.  He was buried in the church of Saint Lawrence Jewry, near Guildhall.  It was there that he had won his immense oratorical reputation.  He had preached there during the thirty years which preceded his elevation to the throne of Canterbury.  His eloquence had attracted to the heart of the City crowds of the learned and polite, from the Inns of Court and from the lordly mansions of Saint James’s and Soho.  A considerable part of his congregation had generally consisted of young clergymen, who came to learn the art of preaching at the feet of him who was universally considered as the first of preachers.  To this church his remains were now carried through a mourning population.  The hearse was followed by an endless train of splendid equipages from Lambeth through Southwark and over London Bridge.  Burnet preached the funeral sermon.  His kind and honest heart was overcome by so many tender recollections that, in the midst of his discourse, he paused and burst into tears, while a loud moan of sorrow rose from the whole auditory.  The Queen could not speak of her favourite instructor without weeping.  Even William was visibly moved.  “I have lost,” he said, “the best friend that I ever had, and the best man that I ever knew.”  The only Englishman who is mentioned with tenderness in any part of the great mass of letters which the King wrote to Heinsius is Tillotson.  The Archbishop had left a widow.  To her William granted a pension of four hundred a year, which he afterwards increased