A History of the Four Georges and of William IV Volume I Part 10

Other poets had not as much prudence and sound sense as Swift. Pope put some of his money, a good deal of it, into South Sea stock, contrary to the earnest advice of Atterbury, and lost it. Swift reflected faithfully the temper of the time in savage verses, which call out for the punishment by death of the fraudulent directors of the Company. Antaeus, Swift tells us, was always restored to fresh strength as often as he touched the earth; Hercules subdued him at last by holding him up in the air and strangling him there. Suspended a while in the air, according to the same principle, our directors, he admonishes the country, will be properly tamed and dealt with. Many public enemies of the directors gave themselves credit for moderation and humanity on the ground that they would not have the culprits tortured to death, but merely executed in the ordinary way.

Walpole set himself first of all to restore public credit. {203} His object was not so much the punishment of fraudulent directors as the tranquillizing of the public mind and the subsidence of national panic.

He proposed one measure in the first instance to accomplish this end; but that not being sufficiently comprehensive, he introduced another bill, which was finally adopted by both Houses of Parliament. Briefly described, this scheme so adjusted the financial affairs of the South Sea Company that five millions of the seven which the directors had agreed to pay the public were remitted; the enc.u.mbrances to the Company were cleared off to a certain extent by the confiscation of the estates of the fraudulent directors; the credit of the Company's bonds was maintained; thirty-three pounds six s.h.i.+llings and eightpence per cent.

were divided among the proprietors, and two millions were reserved towards the liquidation of the national debt. The Company was therefore put into a position to carry out its various public engagements, and the panic was soon over. Many of the proprietors of the Company complained bitterly of the manner in which they had been treated by Walpole. The lobbies of the House of Commons and all the adjacent places were crowded by proprietors of the short annuities and other redeemable popular deeds; men and women who, as the contemporary accounts tell us, "in a rude and insolent manner demanded justice of the members as they went into the House," and put into their hands a paper with the words written on it, "Pray do justice to the annuitants who lent their money on Parliamentary security." "The noisy mult.i.tude," we are told, "were particularly rude to Mr. Comptroller, tearing part of his coat as he pa.s.sed by." The Speaker of the House was informed that a crowd of people had got together in a riotous and tumultuous manner in the lobbies and pa.s.sages, and he ordered "that the Justices of the Peace for the City of Westminster do immediately attend this House and bring the constables with them." While the justices and the constables were being sent for, Sir John Ward was {204} presenting to the House a pet.i.tion from the proprietors of the redeemable funds, setting forth that they had lent their money to the South Sea Company on Parliamentary security; that they had been unwarily drawn into subscribing for the shares in the Company by the artifices of the directors; and they prayed that they might be heard by themselves or their counsel against Walpole's measure--the bill "for making several provisions to restore the public credit, which suffers by the frauds and mismanagement of the late South Sea directors and others." Walpole opposed the pet.i.tion, and said he did not see how the pet.i.tioners could be relieved, seeing that the resolutions, in pursuance of which his bill was brought in, had been approved by the King and council, and by a great majority of the House. Walpole, therefore, moved that the debate be adjourned, in order to get rid of the matter. The motion was carried by seventy-eight voices against twenty-nine. By this time four Justices for the City of Westminster had arrived, and were brought to the bar of the House. The Speaker informed them that there was a great crowd of riotous people in the lobbies and pa.s.sages, and that he was commanded by the House to direct them to go and disperse the crowd, and take care to prevent similar riots in the future. The four justices, attended by five or six constables, desired the pet.i.tioners to clear the lobbies, and when they refused to do so, caused a proclamation against rioters to be twice read, warning them at the same time that if they remained until the third reading, they would have to incur the penalties of the Act. What the penalties of the Act were, and what the four justices and five or six constables could have done with the pet.i.tioners if the pet.i.tioners had refused to listen to reason, do not seem very clear. The pet.i.tioners, however, did listen to reason, and dispersed before the fatal third reading of the proclamation. But they did not disperse without giving the House of Commons and the justices a piece of their mind. Many exclaimed that they had come as peaceable citizens and {205} subjects to represent their grievances, and had not expected to be used like a mob and scoundrels; and others, as they went out, shouted to the members of Parliament, "You first pick our pockets, and then send us to jail for complaining."

[Sidenote: 1721--Relief measures]

The Bill went up to the House of Lords on Monday, August 7th, and the Lords agreed to it without an amendment. On Thursday, August 10th, Parliament was prorogued. The Lord Chancellor read the King's speech.

"The common calamity," said his Majesty, "occasioned by the wicked execution of the South Sea scheme, was become so very great before your meeting that the providing proper remedies for it was very difficult.

But it is a great comfort to me to observe that public credit now begins to recover, which gives me the greatest hopes that it will be entirely restored when all the provisions you have made for that end shall be duly put in execution." The speech went on to tell of his Majesty's "great compa.s.sion for the sufferings of the innocent, and a just indignation against the guilty;" and added that the King had readily given his a.s.sent "to such bills as you have presented to me for punis.h.i.+ng the authors of our late misfortunes, and for obtaining the rest.i.tution and satisfaction due to those who have been injured by them in such manner as you judged proper." Certainly there was no lack of severity in the punishment inflicted on the fraudulent directors.

Their estates were confiscated with such rigor that some of them were reduced to miserable poverty. They were disqualified from ever holding any public place or office whatever, and from ever having a seat in Parliament. Yet, severely as they were punished, the outcry of the public at the time was that they had been let off far too easily.

Walpole was denounced because he did not carry their punishment much farther. There was even a ridiculous report spread abroad that he had defended Sunderland and screened the directors from the most ign.o.ble and sordid motives, and that he had been handsomely paid for his compromise with crime. {206} Nothing would have satisfied some of the sufferers by the South Sea scheme short of the execution of its princ.i.p.al directors. Even the scaffold, however, could hardly have dealt more stern and summary justice on the criminals--as some of them undoubtedly were--than did the actual course of events. When the storm cleared away, Aislabie was ruined; Craggs, the Postmaster-general, was dead; Craggs, the Secretary of State, was dead; Lord Stanhope, who was really innocent--was really unsuspected of any share in the crimes of the fraudulent directors--was dead also; Sunderland was no longer a Minister of State, and the shadow of death was already on him. It was not merely the bursting of a bubble, it was the bursting of a sh.e.l.l--it mutilated or killed those who stood around and near.

[Sidenote: 1722--Sunderland's antipathy to Walpole]

By the time of the new elections--for Parliament had now nearly run its course--public tranquillity was entirely restored. Parliament was dissolved in March, 1722, and the new elections left Walpole and his friends in power, with an immense majority at their back. Long before the new Parliament had time to a.s.semble, Lord Sunderland suddenly died of heart disease. On April 19, 1722, his death took place, and it was so unexpected that a wild outcry was raised by some of his friends, who insisted that his enemies had poisoned him. The medical examination proved, however, that Sunderland's disease was one which might at any moment of excitement have brought on his death. Nearly all the leading public men who, innocent or guilty, had been mixed up with the evil schemes of the South Sea Company were now in the grave.

The field seemed now clear and open to Walpole. The death of Sunderland, following so soon on that of Stanhope, had left him apparently without a rival. Sunderland had been to the last a political, and even a personal, enemy of Walpole. Although Walpole had gone so far to protect Sunderland against the House of Commons and against public opinion, with regard to his share in {207} the South Sea Company's transactions, Sunderland could not forgive Walpole because Walpole was rising higher in the State--because he was, in fact, the greater man. Though Sunderland was compelled by public opinion to resign office, he had contrived, up to the hour of his death, to maintain his influence over the mind of King George. Fortunately for George, the King had too much clear, robust good-sense not to recognize the priceless worth of Walpole's advice and Walpole's services.

Sunderland tried one ingenious artifice to get rid of Walpole. He suggested to George that Walpole's merits required some special and permanent recognition, and he recommended that the King should create Walpole Postmaster-general for life. Such an office, indeed, would have brought Walpole an ample revenue, supposing he stood in need of money, which he did not, but it would have disqualified him forever for a seat in Parliament. Perhaps no better ill.u.s.tration of Sunderland's narrow intellect and utter lack of judgment could be found than the supposition that this shallow trick could succeed, and that the greatest administrator of his time could be thus quietly withdrawn from Parliamentary life and from the higher work of the State, and shelved in perpetuity as a Postmaster-general. King George was not to be taken in after this fas.h.i.+on. He asked Sunderland whether Walpole wished for such an office, or was acquainted with Sunderland's intention to make the suggestion. Sunderland had to answer both questions in the negative. "Then," said the King, "pray do not make him any such offer, or say anything about it to him. I had to part with him once, much against my will, and so long as he is willing to serve me I will never part with him again." This incident shows that, if Sunderland had lived, he would have plotted against Walpole to the end, and would have stood in Walpole's way to the best of his power, and with all the unforgiving hostility of the narrow-minded and selfish man who has had services rendered him for which he ought to feel grateful but cannot.

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[Sidenote: 1721-1722--Marlborough's closing days]

A far greater man than Sunderland was soon to pa.s.s away.

"From Marlborough's eyes the streams of dotage flow."

These are the famous words in which Johnson depicts the miserable decay of a great spirit, and points anew the melancholy moral of the vanity of human wishes. Hardly a line in the poetry of our language is better known or more often quoted. Where did Johnson get the idea that Marlborough had sunk into dotage before his death? There is not the slightest foundation for such a belief. All that we know of Marlborough's closing days tells us the contrary. Nothing in Marlborough's life, not even his serene disregard of dangers and difficulties, not even his victories, became him like to the leaving of it. No great man ever sank more gracefully, more gently, with a calmer spirit, down to his rest. We get some charming pictures of Marlborough's closing days. Death had given him warning by repeated paralytic strokes. On November 27, 1721, he was seen for the last time in the House of Lords. He was not, however, quite near his death even then. He used to spend his time at Blenheim, or at his lodge in Windsor. To the last he was fond of riding and driving and the fresh country air. In-doors he loved to be surrounded by his granddaughters and their young friends, and to join in games of cards and other amus.e.m.e.nts with them. They used to get up private theatricals to gratify the gentle old warrior. We hear of a version of Dryden's "All for Love" being thus performed. The d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough had cut out of the play its unseemly pa.s.sages, and even its too amorous expressions--the reader will probably think there was not much left of the piece when this work of purification had been accomplished--and she would not allow any embracing to be performed. The gentleman who played Mark Antony wore a sword which had been presented to Marlborough by the Emperor. The part of the high-priest was played by a pretty girl, a friend of Marlborough's granddaughters, and she wore as {209} high-priest's robe what seems to have been a lady's night-dress, gorgeously embroidered with special devices for the occasion. A prologue, written by Dr. Hoadly, was read, in which the glories of the great Duke's career were glowingly recounted. Some painter, it seems to us, might make a pretty picture of this: the great hall in Blenheim turned into a theatre, the handsome young men and pretty girls enacting their chastened parts, the fading old hero looking at the scene with pleased and kindly eyes, and the imperious, loving old d.u.c.h.ess turning her devoted gaze on him.

So fades, so languishes, grows dim, and dies the conqueror of Blenheim, the greatest soldier England ever had since the days when kings ceased to be as a matter of right her chiefs in command. In the early days of June, 1722, Marlborough was stricken by another paralytic seizure, and this was his last. He was in full possession of his senses to the end, perfectly conscious and calm. He knew that he was dying; he had prayers read to him; he conveyed in many tender ways his feelings of affection for his wife, and of hope for his own future. At four in the morning of June 16th his life ebbed quietly away. He was in his seventy-second year when he died. None of the great deeds of his life belong to this history; none of that life's worst offences have much to do with it. Marlborough's career seems to us absolutely faultless in two of its aspects; as a commander and as a husband we can only give him praise. He was probably a greater commander than even the Duke of Wellington. If he never had to encounter a Napoleon, he had to meet and triumph over difficulties which never came in Wellington's way. It was not Wellington's fate to have to strive against political treachery of the basest kind on the part of English Ministers of State.

Wellington's enemies were all in the field arrayed against him; Marlborough had to fight the foreign enemy on the battle-field, and to struggle meanwhile against the persistent treachery of the still more formidable enemy {210} at home in the council-chamber of his own sovereign. Perhaps, indeed, Wellington's nature would not have permitted him to succeed under such difficulties. Wellington could hardly have met craft with craft, and, it must be added, falsehood with falsehood, as Marlborough did. We have said in this book already that even for that age of double-dealing Marlborough was a surprising double-dealer, and there were many pa.s.sages in his career which are evidences of an astounding capacity for deceit. "He was a great man,"

said his enemy, Lord Peterborough, "and I have forgotten his faults."

Historians would gladly do the same if they could; would surely dwell with much more delight on the virtues and the greatness than on the defects. The English people were generous to Marlborough, and in the way which, it has to be confessed, was most welcome to him. But if a very treasure-house of gold could not have satisfied his love of money, let it be added that the national treasure-house itself, were it poured out at his feet, could not have overpaid the services which he had rendered to his country.

Marlborough left no son to inherit his honors and his fortune. His t.i.tles and estates descended to his eldest daughter, the Countess of G.o.dolphin. She died without leaving a son, and the t.i.tles and estates pa.s.sed over to the Earl of Sunderland, the son and heir of Marlborough's second daughter, at that time long dead. From the day when the victor of Blenheim died, there has been no Duke of Marlborough distinguished in anything but the name. Not one of the world's great soldiers, it would seem, was destined to have a great soldier for a son. From great statesman fathers sometimes spring great statesman sons; but Alexander, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, Charles the Twelfth, Alexander Farnese, Clive, Marlborough, Frederick, Napoleon, Wellington, Was.h.i.+ngton, left to the world no heir of their greatness.

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CHAPTER XIII.

THE BANISHMENT OF ATTERBURY.

[Sidenote: 1722--Funeral of Marlborough]

On Thursday, August 9, 1722, the "pompous solemnity" of Marlborough's funeral took place. The great procession went from the Duke's house in St. James's Park, through St. James's and the Upper Park to Hyde Park Corner, and thence through Piccadilly, St. James's Street, Pall Mall, Charing Cross, and King Street to Westminster Abbey. A small army of soldiers guarded the remains of the greatest warrior of his age; a whole heralds' college cl.u.s.tered about the lofty funeral banner on which all the arms of the Churchills were quartered. Marlborough's friends and admirers, his old brothers-in-arms, the companions of his victories, followed his coffin, and listened while Garter King-at-Arms, bending over the open grave, said: "Thus it hath pleased Almighty G.o.d to take out of this transitory life unto His mercy the most high, most mighty, and most n.o.ble prince, John Churchill, Duke and Earl of Marlborough."

In Applebee's _Weekly Journal_ for Sat.u.r.day, August 11th, two days after the funeral, we are told that the d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough, in honor of the memory of her life-long lover, had offered a prize of five hundred pounds for a Latin epitaph to be inscribed upon his tomb, and that "several poets have already taken to their lofty studies to contend for the prize."

At Marlborough's funeral we see for the last time in high public estate one of the few Englishmen of the day who could properly be named in the same breath with Marlborough. This was Francis Atterbury, the eloquent and daring Bishop of Rochester. Atterbury came up to {212} town for the purpose of officiating at the funeral of the great Duke. On July 30, 1722, he wrote from the country to his friend Pope, announcing his visit to London. "I go to-morrow," Atterbury writes, "to the Deanery, and I believe I shall stay there till I have said dust to dust, and shut up this last scene of pompous vanity." Atterbury does not seem to have been profoundly impressed with the religious solemnity of the occasion. His was not a very reverential spirit. There was as little of the temper of pious sanct.i.ty in Atterbury as in Swift himself. The allusion to the last scene of pompous vanity might have had another significance, as well as that which Atterbury meant to give to it. Amid the pomp in which Marlborough's career went out, the career of Atterbury went out as well, although in a different way, and not closed sublimely by death. After the funeral, Atterbury went to the Deanery at Westminster--he was Dean of Westminster as well as Bishop of Rochester--and there, on August 24th, the day but one after the scene of pompous vanity, he was arrested by the Under-Secretary of State, accompanied by two officers of justice, and was brought, along with all papers of his which the officers could seize, before the Privy Council. He underwent an examination, as the result of which he was committed to the Tower, on a charge of having been concerned in a treasonable conspiracy to dethrone the King, and to bring back the House of Stuart. In the Tower he was left to languish for many a long day before it was found convenient to bring him to trial.

[Sidenote: 1722--The King's speech]

England was startled by the disclosures which followed Atterbury's arrest. On Tuesday, October 9, 1722, the sixth Parliament of Great Britain--the sixth, that is to say, since the union with Scotland--met at Westminster. The House of Commons, on the motion of Mr. Pulteney, elected Mr. Spencer Compton their Speaker, and on the next day but one, October 11th, the Royal speech was read. The King was present in person, but the speech was read by the Lord Chancellor, for the good reason which we {213} have already mentioned that his Majesty the King of England could not speak the English language. The speech opened with a startling announcement. "My Lords and Gentlemen"--so ran the words of the Sovereign--"I am concerned to find myself obliged, at the opening of this Parliament, to acquaint you that a dangerous conspiracy has been for some time formed, and is still carrying on, against my person and government, in favor of a Popish pretender." "Some of the conspirators," the speech went on to say, "have been taken up and secured, and endeavors are used for the apprehending others." When the speech was read, and the King had left the House, the Duke of Grafton, then Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, brought in a bill for suspending the Habeas Corpus Act, and empowering the Government to secure and detain "such persons as his Majesty shall suspect are conspiring against his person and government, for the s.p.a.ce of one year." The motion to read the Bill a second time in the same sitting was strenuously resisted by a considerable minority of the Peers.

A warm debate took place, and in the end the second reading was carried by a majority of sixty-seven against twenty-four. The debate was renewed upon the other stages of the Bill, which were taken in rapid succession.

The proposal of the Government was, of course, carried in the end, but it met with a resistance in the House of Lords which certainly would not have been offered to such a proposal by any member of the hereditary chamber in our day. Some of the recorded protests of dissentient peers read more like the utterances of modern Radicals than those of influential members of the House of Lords. The strongest objection made to the proposal was that the utmost term for which the Const.i.tution had previously been suspended was six months, and that the measure to suspend it for a year would become an authority for suspending it at some future time for two years, or three years, or any term which might please the ministers in power. On Monday, October 15th, the Bill was brought down to the Commons, and was read {214} a first time on the motion of Walpole.

The Bill was pa.s.sed in the Commons, not, indeed, without opposition, but with an opposition much less strenuous and influential than that which had been offered to it in the House of Lords. On October 17th it was announced to Parliament that Dr. Atterbury, the Bishop of Rochester, the Lord North and Grey, and the Earl of Orrery, had been committed to the Tower on a charge of high-treason. A few days after, a similar announcement was made about the arrest and committal of the Duke of Norfolk.

[Sidenote: 1722--Proclamation of James]

By far the most important of the persons committed for trial was the Bishop of Rochester. Francis Atterbury may rank among the most conspicuous public men of his time. He stands only just beneath Marlborough and Bolingbroke and Walpole. Steele, in his sixty-sixth _Tatler_, pays a high tribute to Atterbury: "He has so much regard to his congregation that he commits to memory what he has to say to them, and has so soft and graceful a behavior that it must attract your attention.

His person, it is to be confessed, is no slight recommendation; but he is to be highly commended for not losing that advantage, and adding to a propriety of speech which might pa.s.s the criticism of Longinus, an action which would have been approved by Demosthenes. He has a peculiar force in his way, and has many of his audience who could not be intelligent hearers of his discourse were there not explanation as well as grace in his action. This art of his is used with the most exact and honest skill; he never attempts your pa.s.sions until he has convinced your reason; all the objections which he can form are laid open and dispersed before he uses the least vehemence in his sermon; but when he thinks he has your head he very soon wins your heart, and never pretends to show the beauty of holiness until he hath convinced you of the truth of it."

Atterbury had, however, among his many gifts a dangerous gift of political intrigue. Like Swift and Dubois and Alberoni, he was at least as much statesman as churchman. {215} He had mixed himself up in various intrigues--some of them could hardly be called conspiracies--for the restoration of the Stuarts, and when at last something like a new conspiracy was planned, it was not likely that he would be left out of it. He had courage enough for any such scheme. There was no great difficulty in finding out the new plot which King George mentioned in his speech to Parliament; for James Stuart had revealed it himself by a proclamation which he caused to be circulated among his supposed adherents in England, renewing in the boldest terms his claim to the crown of England. A sort of junto of Jacobites appears to have been established in England to make arrangements for a new attempt on the part of James; the n.o.blemen whom King George had arrested were understood to be among its leading members. Atterbury was charged with having taken a prominent if not, indeed, a foremost part in the conspiracy. The Duke of Norfolk, Lord North and Grey, and Lord Orrery were afterwards discharged for want of evidence to convict them. The arrest of a number of humbler conspirators led to the discovery of a correspondence a.s.serted to have been carried on between Atterbury and the adherents of James Stuart in France and Italy.

Both Houses of Parliament began by voting addresses of loyalty and grat.i.tude to the King, and by resolving that the proclamation ent.i.tled "Declaration of James the Third, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, to all his loving subjects of the three nations," and signed "James Rex,"

was "a false, insolent, and traitorous libel," and should be burned by the hands of the common hangman, under the direction of the sheriffs of London. This important ceremonial was duly carried out at the Royal Exchange. Then the House of Commons voted, "that towards raising the supply, and reimbursing to the public the great expenses occasioned by the late rebellions and disorders, the sum of one hundred thousand pounds be raised and levied upon the real and personal estates of {216} all Papists, Popish recusants, or persons educated in the Popish religion, or whose parents are Papists, or who shall profess the Popish religion, in lieu of all forfeitures already incurred for or upon account of their recusancy." This singular method of infusing loyalty into the Roman Catholics of England was not allowed to be adopted without serious and powerful resistance in the House of Commons. The idea was not to devise a new penalty for the Catholics, but to put in actual operation the terms of a former penalty p.r.o.nounced against them in Elizabeth's time, and not then pressed into execution. This fact was dwelt upon with much emphasis by the advocates of the penal motion. Why talk of religious persecution?

they asked. This is not religious persecution; it is only putting in force an edict pa.s.sed in a former reign to punish Roman Catholics for political rebellion. This way of putting the case seems only to make the character of the policy more clear and less justifiable. The Catholics of King George's time were to be mulcted indiscriminately because the Catholics of Queen Elizabeth's time had been declared liable to such a penalty. The Master of the Rolls, to his great credit, strongly opposed the resolution. Walpole supported it with all the weight of his argument and his influence. The plot was evidently a Popish plot, he contended, and although he was not prepared to accuse any English Catholic in particular of taking part in it, yet there could be no doubt that Papists in general were well-wishers to it, and that some of them had contributed large sums towards it. Why, then, should they not be made to reimburse some part of the expense to which they and the friends of the Pretender had put the nation? The resolution, after it had been reported from committee, was only carried in the whole House by 188 votes against 172.

[Sidenote: 1723--Lord Cowper's opposition] The resolution was embodied in a bill, and the Bill, when it went up to the House of Lords, was opposed there by several of the Peers, and especially by Lord Cowper, the "silver-tongued Cowper," who had {217} been so distinguished a Lord Chancellor under Anne, and under George himself. Lord Cowper's was an eloquent and a powerful speech. It tore to pieces the wretched web of flimsy sophistry by which the supporters of the Bill endeavored to make out that it was not a measure of religious persecution. Indeed, there were some of these who insisted that, so far from being a measure of persecution, it was a measure of relief. Our readers will, no doubt, be curious to know how this bold position was sustained. In this wise: the penalties prescribed for the Catholics in Elizabeth's reign were much greater in amount than those which the Bill proposed to inflict on the Catholics of King George's time; therefore the Bill was an indulgence and not a persecution--a mitigation of penalty, not a punishment. Let us reduce the argument to plain figures. A Catholic in the reign of Elizabeth is declared liable to a penalty of twenty pounds, but out of considerations of humanity or justice the penalty is not enforced. The descendant and heir of that same Catholic in the reign of George the First is fined fifteen pounds, and the fine is exacted. He complains, and he is told, "You have no right to complain; you ought to be grateful; the original fine ordained was twenty pounds; you have been let off five pounds--you have been favored by an act of indulgence, not victimized by an act of persecution." Lord Cowper had not much trouble in disposing of arguments of this kind, but his speech took a wider range, and is indeed a masterly exposure of the whole principle on which the measure was founded. On May 22, 1723, sixty-nine peers voted for the third reading of the Bill, and fifty-five opposed it. Lord Cowper, with twenty other peers, entered a protest against the decision of the House, according to a practice then common in the House of Lords, and which has lately fallen into complete disuse. The recorded protests of dissentient peers form, we may observe, very important historical doc.u.ments, and deserve, some of them, {218} a careful study. Lord Cowper's protest was the last public act of his useful and honorable career. He died on the 10th of October in the same year, 1723. Some of his enemies explained his action on the anti-Papist Bill by the a.s.sertion that he was a Jacobite at heart. Even if he had been, the fact would hardly have made his conduct less creditable and spirited. Many a man who was a Jacobite at heart would have supported a measure for the punishment of Roman Catholics if only to save himself from the suspicion of sympathy with the lost cause.

[Sidenote: 1723--Charges against Atterbury]

This, however, was but an episode in the story of the Jacobite plot and the measures taken to punish those who were engaged in it. Committees of secrecy were appointed by Parliament to inquire into the evidence and examine witnesses.

Meantime both Houses of Parliament kept voting address after address to the Crown at each new stage of the proceedings, and as each fresh evidence of the conspiracy was laid before them. The King must have grown rather weary of finding new words of grat.i.tude, and the Houses of Parliament, one would think, must have grown tired of inventing new phrases of loyalty and fresh expressions of horror at the wickedness of the Jacobites. The horror was not quite genuine on the part of some who thus proclaimed it. Many of those who voted the addresses would gladly have welcomed a restoration of the Stuarts. Not the most devoted adherent of King George could really have felt any surprise at the persistent efforts of the Jacobite partisans. Eight years before this it was a mere toss-up whether Stuart or Hanover should succeed, and even still it was not quite certain whether, if the machinery of the modern _plebiscite_ could have been put into operation in England, the majority would not have been found in sympathy with Atterbury. It is almost certain that if the _plebiscite_ could have been taken in Ireland and Scotland also, a majority of voices would have voted James Stuart to the throne.

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It was resolved to proceed against Atterbury by a Bill of Pains and Penalties to be brought into Parliament. The evidence against him was certainly not such as any criminal court would have held to justify a conviction. A young barrister named Christopher Layer was arrested and examined, so were a nonjuring minister named Kelly, an Irish Catholic priest called Neynoe, and a man named Plunkett, also from Ireland. The charge against Atterbury was founded on the statements obtained or extorted from these men. It should be said that Layer gave evidence which actually seemed to impugn Lord Cowper himself as a member of a club of disaffected persons; and when Lord Cowper indignantly repudiated the charge and demanded an inquiry, the Government declared inquiry absolutely unnecessary, as everybody was well a.s.sured of his innocence.

The Government, however, declined to follow Lord Cowper in his not unreasonable a.s.sumption that the whole story was unworthy of explicit credence when it included such a false statement. The case against Atterbury rested on the declaration of some of the arrested men that the bishop had carried on a correspondence with James Stuart, Lord Mar, and General Dillon (an Irish Catholic soldier, who after the capitulation of Limerick, had entered the French service), through the instrumentality of Kelly, who acted as his secretary and amanuensis for that purpose. It was a case of circ.u.mstantial evidence altogether. The impartial reader of history now will feel well satisfied on two points: first, that Atterbury was engaged in the plot; and second, that the evidence brought against him was not nearly strong enough to sustain a conviction. It was the case of Bolingbroke and Harley over again. We know now that the men had done the things charged against them, but the evidence then relied upon was utterly inadequate to sustain the charge.

A "Dialogue in Verse between a Whig and a Tory" was written by Swift in the year 1723, "concerning the horrid plot discovered by Harlequin, the Bishop of {220} Rochester's French Dog." The Whig tells the Tory that the dog--

"His name is Harlequin, I wot, And that's a name in every plot"--

was generously

"Resolved to save the British nation, Though French by birth and education; His correspondence plainly dated Was all deciphered and translated; His answers were exceeding pretty, Before the secret wise committee; Confessed as plain as he could bark, Then with his fore-foot set his mark."

[Sidenote: 1723-1731--Atterbury's sentence]

There was more than mere fooling in the lines. The dog Harlequin was made to bear important evidence against the Bishop of Rochester.

Atterbury had never resigned himself to the Hanoverian dynasty. He did not believe it would last, and he openly declaimed against it. He did more than this, however: he engaged in conspiracies for the restoration of James Stuart. Horace Walpole says of him that he was simply a Jacobite priest. He was a Jacobite priest who would gladly, if he could, have been a Jacobite soldier, and had given ample evidence of courage equal to such a part. He had been engaged in a long correspondence with Jacobite conspirators at home and abroad. The correspondence was carried on in cipher, and of course under feigned names. Atterbury appears to have been described now as Mr. Illington, and now as Mr. Jones.

Atterbury refused to make any defence before the House of Commons, but he appeared before the House of Lords on May 6, 1723, and defended himself, and made strong and eloquent protestation of his innocence. One of the witnesses whom he called in his defence was his friend Pope, who could only give evidence as to the manner in which the bishop had pa.s.sed his time when staying in the poet's house. Christopher Layer, Atterbury's a.s.sociate in the general charge of conspiracy, was a young barrister of good family, a remarkably handsome, {221} graceful, and accomplished man.

One charge against him was that he had formed a plan to murder the King and carry off the Prince of Wales; but the statements made against Layer must be taken with liberal allowance for the extravagance of loyal pa.s.sion, panic, and exaggeration. Layer had escaped and was recaptured, was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He was hanged at Tyburn on March 15, 1723; he met his death with calm courage. His body was quartered and his head was set on Temple Bar, from which it was presently blown down by the wind. Some one picked up the head and sold it to a surgeon. Neynoe, another of the accused men, contrived to escape from custody, got to the river, endeavored to swim across it, and was drowned in the attempt.