Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 3, Athens-BOI

ATTERBURY
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many Tories seemed a crime. On the sad night on which
Addison was laid in the chapel of Henry VII., the West¬
minster boys remarked that Atterbury read the funeral
service with a peculiar tenderness and solemnity. The
favourite companions, however, of the great Tory prelate
were, as might have been expected, men whose politics
had at least a tinge of Toryism. He lived on friendly
terms with Swift, Arbuthnot, and Gay. With Prior he
had a close intimacy, which some misunderstanding about
public affairs at last dissolved. Pope found in Atterbury
not only a warm admirer, but a most faithful, fearless,
and judicious adviser. The poet was a frequent guest at
the episcopal palace among the elms of Bromley, and
entertained not the slightest suspicion that his host, now
declining in years, confined to an easy chair by gout, and
apparently devoted to literature, was deeply concerned in
criminal and perilous designs against the Government.
The spirit of the Jacobites had been cowed by the events
of 1715. It revived in 1721. The failure of the South
Sea project, the panic in the money market, the downfall
of great commercial houses, the distress from which no
part of the kingdom was exempt, had produced general
discontent. It seemed not improbable that at such a
moment an insurrection might be successful. An insur¬
rection was planned. The streets of London were to be
barricaded ; the Tower and the Bank were to be surprised ;
King George, his family, and his chief captains and coun¬
cillors were to be arrested, and King James was to be
proclaimed. The design became known to the duke of
Orleans, regent of France, who was on terms of friendship
with the house of Hanover. He put the English Govern¬
ment on its guard. Some of the chief malcontents were
committed to prison ; and among them was Atterbury.
No bishop of the Church of England had been taken into
custody since that memorable day when the applauses and
prayers of all London had followed the seven bishops to
the gate of the Tower. The Opposition entertained some
hope that it might be possible to excite among the people
an enthusiasm resembling that of their fathers, who rushed
into the waters of the Thames to implore the blessing of
Sancroft. Pictures of the heroic confessor in his cell were
exhibited at the shop windows. Verses in his praise were
sung about the streets. The restraints by which he was
prevented from communicating with his accomplices were
represented as cruelties worthy of the dungeons of the
Inquisition. Strong appeals were made to the priesthood.
Would they tamely permit so gross an insult to be offered
to their cloth 1 Would they suffer the ablest, the most
eloquent member of their profession, the man who had so
often stood up for their rights against the civil power, to
be treated like the vilest of mankind] There was con¬
siderable excitement: but it was allayed by a temperate
and artful letter to the clergy, the work, in all probability,
of Bishop Gibson, who stood high in the favour of Walpole,
and shortly after became minister for ecclesiastical affairs.
Atterbury remained in close confinement during some
months. He had carried on his correspondence with the
exiled family so cautiously that the circumstantial proofs
of his guilt, though sufficient to produce entire moral con¬
viction, were not sufficient to justify legal conviction. He
could be reached only by a bill of pains and penalties.
Such a bill the Whig party, then decidedly predominant
in both Houses, was quite prepared to support. Many
hot-headed members of that party were eager to follow the
precedent which had been set in the case of Sir John
Fenwick, and to pass an act for cutting off the bishop’s
head. Cadogan, who commanded the army, a brave
soldier, but a headstrong politician, is said to have exclaimed
with great vehemence, “ Fling him to the lions in the
Tower.” But the wiser and more humane Walpole was
always unwilling to shed blood, and his influence prevailed.
When Parliament met, the evidence against the bishop was
laid before committees of both Houses. Those committees
reported that his guilt was proved. In the Commons a
resolution pronouncing him a traitor was carried by nearly
two to one. A bill was then introduced which provided
that he should be deprived of his spiritual dignities, that
he should be banished for life, and that no British sub¬
ject should hold any intercourse with him except by the
royal permission. This bill passed the Commons with
little difficulty; for the bishop, though invited to defend
himself, chose to reserve his defence for the assembly of
which he was a member. In the Lords the contest was
sharp. The young duke of Wharton, distinguished by his
parts, his dissoluteness, and his versatility, spoke for
Atterbury with great effect; and Atterbury’s own voice
was heard for the last time by that unfriendly audience
which had so often listened to him with mingled aversion
and delight. He produced few witnesses, nor did those
witnesses say much that could be of service to him.
Among them was Pope. He was called to prove that,
while he was an inmate of the palace at Bromley, the
bishop’s time was completely occupied by literary and
domestic matters, and that no leisure was left for plotting.
But Pope, who was quite unaccustomed to speak in public,
lost his head, and, as he afterwards owned, though he had
only ten words to say, made two or three blunders.
The bill finally passed the Lords by eighty-three votes to
forty-three. The bishops, with a single exception, were in
the majority. Their conduct drew on them a sharp taunt
from Lord Bathurst, a warm friend of Atterbury and a
zealous Tory. “ The wild Indians,” he said, “ give no
quarter, because they believe that they shall inherit the
skill and prowess of every adversary whom they destroy.
Perhaps the animosity of the right reverend prelates to
their brother may be explained in the same way.”
Atterbury took leave of those whom he loved with a
dignity and tenderness worthy of a better man. Three
fine lines of his favourite poet were often in his mouth—
“ Some natural tears he dropped, hut wiped them soon :
The world was all before him, where to chuse
His place of rest, and Providence his guide.”
At parting he presented Pope with a Bible, and said,
with a disingenuousness of which no man who had studied
the Bible to much purpose would have been guilty, “ If
ever you learn that I have any dealings with the Pretender,
I give you leave to say that my punishment is just.”
Pope at this time really believed the bishop to be an
injured man. Arbuthnot seems to have been of the same
opinion. Swift, a few months later, ridiculed with great
bitterness, in the Voyage to Laput^- the evidence which
had satisfied the two Houses of Parliament. Soon, however,
the most partial friends of the banished prelate ceased to
assert his innocence, and contented themselves with lament¬
ing and excusing what they could not defend. After a
short stay at Brussels he had taken up his abode at Paris,
and had become the leading man among the Jacobite
refugees who were assembled there. He was invited to
Rome by the Pretender, who then held his mock court
under the immediate protection of the Pope. But Atter¬
bury felt that a bishop of the Church of England would
be strangely out of place at the Vatican, and declined
the invitation. During some months, however, he might
flatter himself that he stood high in the good graces
of James. The correspondence between the. master
and the servant was constant. Atterbury’s merits were
warmly acknowledged, his advice was respectfully re¬
ceived, and he was, as Bolingbroke had been before
him, the prime minister of a king without a kingdom.