made use of those words of our Saviour, "If I "tell you, ye will not believe; and if I also ask

you, ye will not answer me, nor let me go;" and he was committed a prisoner to the tower for treasonable practices. There is too much reason to fear that the Bishop had been dabbling in this kind of politics, but a full and clear detection of the conspiracy was never obtained. The ministry had got some scent of his intrigues, but could not follow him through all his turnings and windings, nor with all their sagacity could trace him directly to his cover. They had little better evidence than hearsays, conjectures, and inuendoes; and could procure no sufficient legal proof to convict him by trial at law. Recourse was had therefore to a bill of pains and penalties, to deprive him of all his preferments, and to banish him the kingdom; which after long debate was carried by a considerable majority in both houses. In this debate the Duke of Wharton exerted himself greatly, summed up the evidence in a masterly manner, and made one of the best and ablest speeches against the bill, which he caused to be printed, and entered a larger and more particular protest, dissentient for the same reasons as other Lords, and for other reasons additional. Hereby he verified in some measure what his father the old Marquis had in his anger predicted of him, that he would always take wrong courses, would learn

VOL. II.

C

learn his politics of Atterbury, and be ruined. His brethren, the Bishops were almost all unani mous against him. The only one who spoke in his behalf and protested, was Gastrell Bishop of Chester, who yet had been at variance with him. Willis Bishop of Salisbury made a long and labored speech on the other side, which he published soon after, and was rewarded by the bishoprick of Winchester, as Bishop Hoadly was. by succeeding to Salisbury. Lord Bathurst, wondring at this unanimity said, that he could not possibly account for it, unless some persons were possessed with the notion of the wild Indians, that when they had killed a man, they were not only intitled to his spoils, but inherited likewise his abilities, Bishop Hoadly was no speaker in the house, but he took another course. He had all along pursued Atterbury, with unrelenting animosity, had first attacked his sermon at the funeral of Mr. Bennet, then his sermon upon charity, afterwards set forth an answer in English to his Latin sermon before the Clergy, and still continued the pursuit, and stuck in his skirts to the last, by writing in a weekly journal a refutation of his speech, and a yindication of the judgment. passed upon him: so that a gentleman of wit and learning alluding to Bishop Hoadly's lameness, applied that saying in Horace,

Raro antecedentem scelestum

Deseruit pede pœna

claudo.

The

The power of Parlament in such matters is in deed not to be questioned; it may be as unlimited and omnipotent as you please: but yet bills of attainder and of pains and penalties are not to be employed upon slight occasions, but only in cases of great and urgent necessity for the preservation of the king and kingdom. Whether this was an occasion worthy of such an extraordinary exertion of power, many doubted at that time, and many perhaps will doubt always: for the danger was then all over, the conspiracy, whatever it was, had above a year before been so far discovered, as to put the Ministry upon their guard, and to give them time to prevent the ill effects of it; and nothing strengthens the hands of government more than a plot discovered and defeated. It was said that a detestable and horrid conspiracy was formed for raising an insurrection and re bellion in the kingdom, for seizing the tower and the city of London, and for laying violent hands upon the person's of the King and the Prince of Wales. But how was all this to have been effected? It did not appear, that there were any meetings or combinations of numbers of men for this purpose: no sums of money were collected, no stands of arms provided, no officers appointed, no soldiers raised and mustered, not even a single man in arms. So that some have suspected that. there was more truth than there should have

4

been in that confession of the villain Neynoe, that he knew nothing of the plot, but he knew of two other plots, one of his own to get money from Mr. Walpole, and the other of Mr. Walpole against the protesting Lords, and particularly against the Bishop of Rochester the chief of them, to pull down the pride of that haughty prelate. But though it did not appear that the Bishop had any concern and connection with Layer and Layer's plot, yet there was a greater intimacy between him and Kelly than either of them would acknowledge; for the young gentleman, who lived at that time in the Bishop's house as his son's tutor and companion, has often said that Kelly used to come to him frequently, commonly once in a week, on a Thursday evening, and to stay shut up with him alone from seven o'clock till nine. The Earl of Sunderland too, who was strongly suspected to have been of the same way of thinking but died before the discovery, though he had no manner of acquaintance with the Bishop, or rather was at enmity with him in former times, yet in his latter days made him long and frequent visits, as even the King's Scholars observed, who walking and playing much in Dean's Yard had yet curiosity enough to re

See the Speeches of Sir Constantine Phipps and Duke Wharton.

mark

mark who and what passed. Some of his negociations also with the Pretender's agents, after his going abroad, have been published in the year 1768, with a fac-simile or exemplification of his hand-writing, which whoever knew, he cannot well entertain any doubt of their authenticity. At his trial he had produced Mr. Pope as an evidence in his favor, to speak to his manner of life and conversation: and when he took his last leave of him, he told him, he would allow him to say his sentence was just, if ever he found he had any concerns with the Pretender's family in his exile. But notwithstanding this, as * Bishop Warburton informs us, Mr. Pope was convinced, before the Bishop's death, that during his banishment he was in the intrigues of the Pretender. It was most excellent advice which Mr. Pope gave him in some of his parting letters, that he should not envy the world his studies; that it might be, Providence had appointed him to some great and useful work, and called him to it this severe way; that now he was cut off from a little society and made a citizen of the world at large, he should bend his talents not to serve a party, or a few, but all mankind; that he should think of Tully, Bacon, and Clarendon; that he should remember, the greatest lights of antiquity dazzled and blazed most in their retreat, in their exile, or in their

See Pope's Letters.

death;