Sancroft's name was not indeed struck out of the list of Privy Councillors: but, to the bitter mortification of the friends of the Church, he was no longer summoned on Council days.

"If," said the King, "he is too sick or too busy to go to the Commission, it is a kindness to relieve him from attendance at Council." [99] The government found no similar difficulty with Nathaniel Crewe, 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.