Later Stuart Portraits Catalogue

Thomas Tenison (1636-1715), Archbishop of Canterbury

Primate; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; BA 1657, MA 1660, BD 1667 and DD 1680; edited the papers of Sir Thomas Browne; an active controversialist, an advocate of tolerance towards Dissenters and a pioneer of charity schools and public libraries; Bishop of Lincoln 1691; Archbishop of Canterbury 1695; his Whig sympathies were not approved by Queen Anne and his last years were plagued by illness.

‘a plain, good, heavy, Man, now much in Years, and wearing out; very tall, of a fair Complexion, and seventy Years old’ (J. Macky, Characters of the Court of Great Britain, 1733).

This extended catalogue entry is from the National Portrait Gallery collection catalogue: John Ingamells, National Portrait Gallery: Later Stuart Portraits 1685-1714, National Portrait Gallery, 2009, and is as published then. For the most up-to-date details on individual Collection works, we recommend reading the information provided in the Search the Collection results on this website in parallel with this text.