"...the composure, the fortitude, the resignation, and the religion, which marked his last moments"

Jonathan Rowe's post on the posthumous Christianizing (or make that orthodox-izing...) of George Washington reminded me of the early 19th-c. British equivalent: the posthumous, but not altogether successful, Christianizing of William Pitt the Younger.  George Rose, whom I'm quoting in my title, did his best to help this process along, although the main responsibility devolved on Pitt's former tutor, the Bishop of Lincoln, George Pretyman Tomline, and Pitt's old friend, the Tory author and editor William Gifford.   Not all devout Protestants were particularly impressed by the end result, however.  Pitt's niece, Lady Hester Stanhope, did much to knock the legend on its head, thanks to her memoirizing physician, Charles Lewis Meryon.  Similarly, the evangelical William Wilberforce, a great friend of Pitt's,  had to admit that the religion of Pitt and his associates was not what it could have been (in fact, Wilberforce had compassionate, but sterner, things to say).  For a brief summing-up of Pitt's beliefs, or lack thereof, see the third volume of John Ehrman's standard biography  (826-29).