Lordships that there is any seeming strength in the proofs produced against me; if by private persuasions of my guilt, founded on unseen, unknown motives; if for any reasons or necessities of state, of which I am no competent judge, your Lordships shall be induced to proceed on this bill, God's will be done! Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return; and whether He gives or takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord!" The Bishop having ended this most eloquent and affecting defence, and one of the counsel for the bill having replied, the Lords took their debate on the question, That this Bill do pass. The ablest speeches on the Bishop's side were the Duke of Wharton's* and Lord Cowper's; the latter not merely maintaining Atterbury's innocence, but inveighing against any parliamentary deprivation of a Bishop. "The old champions of our church," said he, "used to argue very learnedly that to make or to degrade Bishops was not the business of the state; that there is a spiritual relation between the Bishop and his flock, derived from the church, with which the state has nothing to do. What the thoughts of our reverend prelates are upon these points does not yet fully appear; something of their conduct intimates as if our old divines were mistaken." In fact, most of the Bishops were now taking a forward and eager part against their brother; and one of them (Wynne, of St. Asaph), very little to his honour, even went so far as to volunteer evidence, which, when close pressed, he was not able to maintain. Their hostility provoked a bitter sarcasm from Lord Bathurst. Turning to their bench, he exclaimed, that he could hardly account for the inveterate malice some persons bore the learned and ingenious Bishop of Rochester, unless they were possessed with the infatuation of the wild Indians, who fondly believe they will inherit not only the spoils, but even the abilities, of any great enemy they kill! On a division, 43 Peers voted against the bill, but 83 for it; and it received the Royal Assent on the 27th of the same month. On the whole of this transaction we may, undoubtedly, condemn the vindictive severity which oppressed Atterbury in the Tower,† and which denounced any correspondence with him when abroad; but we can scarcely consider the main clauses of the bill as otherwise than moderate. The crime Atterbury had committed was no less than high treason; and had the Ministers been men of blood, there "This speech," says Dr. King, "was heard with universal admiration, and was, indeed, not unworthy of the oldest senator, or the most able and eloquent lawyer." (Anecdotes of his own Times, p. 35.) † Coxe endeavours to palliate this severity, and alleges a case where, by the conniv. ance of the Government, Atterbury received some money from a lease of the Chapter of Westminster. But here seems some error. He quotes a document of the Chapter, dated May 31, 1723, and speaking of Atterbury as the "present Dean.” But would he be so styled at that time, the bill for his deprivation having received the Royal Assent four days before? Memoirs of Walpole, vol. i. p. 171. 1 [See a fuller account of the speech in the Life of Lord Cowper in the "Lives of the Chancellors," vol. iv. p. 402, chap. cxvii.] might, I think, have been evidence sufficient (I am sure that there were voters ready) to bring him to the scaffold. His punishment was, therefore, a mitigation of that which our law imposes: nor should our admiration of genius ever betray us into an apology of guilt. But the great reproach to which his punishment is liable, is as setting aside those ordinary forms, and those precious safeguards, which the law of treason enjoins-a violence of which the danger is not felt, only because the precedent has, happily, not been followed.1 Atterbury received the news of his fate with fortitude and composure; in fact, he had foreseen it as inevitable. He took an affecting leave of his friends, who were now permitted to see him, especially of Pope. At their last interview Atterbury presented him with a Bible as his keepsake. "Perhaps," says Pope, with much feeling, "it is not only in this world that I may have cause to remember the Bishop of Rochester."* Next day, the 18th of June, the Bishop was embarked on board a man-of-war, without any of the tumults which the Ministers feared on that occasion, and conveyed to Calais. As he went on shore he was told that Lord Bolingbroke, having received the King's pardon, was just arrived at the same place, on his return to England. "Then I am exchanged!" said Atterbury, with a smile. "Surely," exclaims their friend at Twickenham, "this nation is afraid of being over-run with too much politeness, and cannot regain one great genius but at the expense of another!"t The pardon which Bolingbroke now obtained had been for a long time pending. When he was dismissed by the Pretender, in 1716, and renounced that party for ever, he found, as he says, Lord Stair instructed, from England, to treat with him. A negotiation was accordingly opened, Bolingbroke declaring that he would never reveal any secret, nor betray any friend; but that he was ready in future to serve his King and country with zeal and affection; and that he never did anything by halves. It was then that Bolingbroke took the measure of writing a private letter to Sir William Wyndham, pointing out the weakness of the Pretender's character, and the small hopes of his cause, and urging his friend to turn his thoughts elsewhere; which letter Bolingbroke sent, unsealed, to the * See Johnson's Life of Pope. This gift of a Bible has given rise to a most calum. nious story of something which Dr. Matty said, that Lord Chesterfield said, that Pope said, that the Bishop said! Excellent evidence to accuse of deism one of our greatest theological writers! See this story and some decisive evidence against it quoted in the Encyclop. Brit, art. ATTERBURY. It seems quite out of place in "Pope's Character by Lord Chesterfield ;" and was, I have no doubt, a fabrication surreptitiously inserted. † Pope to Swift, 1723. 1 ["There was no difficulty in producing a moral persuasion of the existence of the plot to bring in the Pretender, on which it (the bill for the banishment of Atterbury) was founded, but no ingenuity could justify the departure from the rules of evidence established for the safety of the subject, or an attempt to punish, by a ministerial majority, where there must have been an acquittal before the regular tribunals of the country."-Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, vol. v. p. 25, chap. cxxx. Life of Lord Hardwicke.] Postmaster-General, to be laid before the Government, and to be forwarded or not, as they thought proper.* In thus acting, Bolingbroke did no injury to his friend, who was already more than suspected of Jacobite principles, and who was not at all legally endangered by receiving such advice, while the adviser served himself by this decided and acceptable token of his new-born zeal for the House of Hanover. It was certain, as Lord Stair truly observed, that there was no man who could do so much injury to the Jacobite cause. The Ministers, therefore, were anxious to secure him,† and he had a zealous advocate in the Duchess of Kendal, to whom his purse was full of irresistible arguments. The animosity of the Whig party in general was, however, at that time, so strong, as to form an almost insuperable bar to his return; and a rumour of it, in 1719, was artfully turned by Walpole into a political weapon. In his pamphlet on the Peerage Bill, speaking of Lord Oxford, he remarks, with indignation, that "his rival in guilt and power even now presumes to expect an act of the legislature to indemnify him, and qualify his villainy." With such formidable opposition it seemed useless to propose so unpopular a measure; but when Walpole succeeded Stanhope and Sunderland in office, he quietly slid into this as into most of their other measures; and in May, 1723, the pardon of Bolingbroke passed the Great Seal. This pardon, however, was only so far as the King could grant it; it secured the person of Bolingbroke, and enabled him to visit England; but it required an act of parliament to restore his forfeited estates, and his seat in the House of Peers. To obtain such an act immediately became Bolingbroke's first and most anxious object; and a large sum which he had gained in the Mississippi speculations, afforded him fresh means to convince the Duchess of Kendal of the justice of his claims. His second object, during all this time, was to persuade his friends that he was nearly indifferent to his restoration, and quite happy in exile and in literary leisure. While his life was full of nothing but intrigue, his private letters are full of nothing but philosophy. "Some superfluous twigs are every day cut, and, as they lessen in number, the bough which bears the golden fruit of friendship shoots, swells, and spreads." . . . . "Those insects, of various hues, which used to hum and buzz about me while. I stood in the sunshine, have disappeared since I lived in the shade."‡ Great but ill-regulated genius! Cicero could not write better,— Clodius could not act worse! When the fallen minister arrived in England, he found that the King had already sailed for Germany, attended by Lords Towns This letter is dated Sept. 13, 1716; and printed in Coxe's Walpole, vol. ii. p. 308, together with one from Townshend to Stanhope on the subject. The original was duly forwarded to Wyndham. See his letter to Lord Stanhope, Nov. 9, 1717,-Appendix; and the Hardwicke State Papers, vol. ii. p. 558. Letters to Swift, 1721, 1723. hend and Carteret, and the Duchess of Kendal, and was not expected to return for some time; in fact, his Majesty extended his absence to six months, and his journey to Berlin, on a visit to his son-in-law, the King of Prussia.* Bolingbroke, therefore, could only write letters of thanks to the King, to the Duchess, and to Townshend, entreating, at the same time, their further favour; but he availed himself of his stay in England to renew his political connections, especially with his tried friends, Sir William Wyndham and Lord Harcourt. The former still stood at the head of the Tories in the House of Commons; the latter, who had filled the office of Chancellor in the last years of Anne, was by no means as steady in his public course. Even at that time Swift had called him "trimming Harcourt;"† but now he had entirely left his party, and risen so high in ministerial favour, as to be created a Viscount, gratified with a pension, and appointed one of the Lords Justices at the King's departure. Thus it had been in Harcourt's power greatly to promote the pardon of his friend, in May last, and he deserved gratitude, both in the true sense of that word, and in that which Bolingbroke gives it, where he says, in one of his letters, that "what we call gratitude is generally expectation."‡ Bolingbroke also waited on Walpole, and, alluding to Harcourt's accession, told him that Wyndham, Lord Bathurst, and Lord Gower, were beginning to be disgusted with a fruitless opposition. They had, he said, been for some time in communication with Lord Carteret; but now thought themselves deceived by him, and might probably be brought into the measures of the Court, and into a support of Townshend and Walpole. Nothing could have been more advantageous to the country than such a junction: it would have healed many wounds of faction, and broken one great lever of the Jacobites; but it might also have endangered the supremacy of Walpole, and given a strong claim to Bolingbroke. Walpole, therefore, with whom his own power was always the paramount consideration, received these overtures most coldly and ungraciously, and met them with a positive refusal; adding, that as Bolingbroke's restoration depended on a Whig parliament, he ought, in prudence, to shun any fresh connection with Tories; and that the Ministers would not hazard the King's affairs by proposing this restoration rashly.§ Bolingbroke, seeing that no impression was to be made in this quarter, seemed to acquiesce in the Minister's reasoning, and left England for Aix-la-Chapelle, in hopes, from thence, to pay a visit at Hanover. But not obtaining the desired permission, he returned to Paris, where a new field was opened to his ambition and abilities. Of the King's journey, Swift writes with much humour: "The next packet will bring us word of the King and Bishop of Rochester leaving England. A good journey to the one, and a speedy return to the other, is an honest Whig wish!" (To Mr. Cope, June 1, 1723.) The King's visit to Berlin is described in the Mém. de Bareith, vol. i. pp. 84-87. † Swift's Works, vol. x. p. 398. To Sir William Wyndham, January 5, 1736. Cardinal Dubois had died in August, and was followed by his patron, the Duke of Orleans, in less than four months. The young King having nominally come of age, no other Regent was appointed; but the new prime minister was the Duke de Bourbon, a weak man, chiefly governed by an aspiring mistress, Madame de Prie. Over this prince, and over this lady, Bolingbroke had great influence; "for these many years," says he, "I have been honoured with his friendship," and his own marriage with the Marquise de Villette, a niece of Madame de Maintenon, was another link of his close connection with the Court of France. There was no variation in the foreign policy of that Court; the scene had not shifted, though the actors were changed. But a struggle for power was now going on in the English cabinet between Lords Townshend and Carteret; and that struggle, as will presently be seen, was brought to issue on French ground, where Bolingbroke had both the means and the inclination to take an active part. The new Secretary of State, John Lord Carteret, (afterwards, on the death of his mother, Earl Granville,) was born in 1690. No one ever combined, in a more eminent degree, the learning of a scholar with the talents of a statesman. The ancient languages he had deeply studied; of the modern, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Swedish, were equally familiar to him. Mr. Harte, in a preface to his "Gustavus Adolphus," after Granville's death, and, therefore, without any interested adulation, celebrates his knowledge of Chemnitz and other recondite writers; and observes, that "he understood the German and Swedish histories to the highest perfection." He might have lectured upon public law. He might have taken his seat in a synod, and taught the Canonists. Yet in public life no rust of pedantry ever dimmed his keen and brilliant intellect. In debate, his eloquence was always ready, always warm, and has ever been blamed for the profusion of ideas which crowded from him. In council, men of letters are, in general, bewildered by too nice a balance of opposite advantages: Carteret, on the contrary, was always daring and decisive. Most remarkable testimonies to his ability might be gathered from the writings even of his strongest political opponents. Chesterfield was his enemy; yet Chesterfield writes to his son, "They say Lord Granville is dying. When he dies, the ablest head in England dies too, take it for all in all." Horace Walpole was his enemy; yet when Walpole weighs him in the balance with his own father, with Mansfield, and with Chatham, he declares that none of them had the genius of Granville.t Yet, with all this, Carteret neither fills, nor deserves to fill, any very high niche in the Temple of Fame. There was a want of consistency, not in his principles, but in his efforts and exertions. He would be all fire to day, all ice to-morrow. He was ready to attempt • To Lord Harcourt, December 28, 1723. † Letter, December 13, 1762. Memoirs of George the Second, vol. ii. p. 272. |