Misc Writings and Speeches, vol 3 | Page 7

pamphleteers who inflamed the nation against the
Whig ministry and the Whig parliament. When the ministry had been
changed and the parliament dissolved, rewards were showered upon
him. The Lower House of Convocation elected him prolocutor. The
Queen appointed him Dean of Christchurch on the death of his old
friend and patron Aldrich. The college would have preferred a gentler
ruler. Nevertheless, the new head was received with every mark of
honour. A congratulatory oration in Latin was addressed to him in the
magnificent vestibule of the hall; and he in reply professed the warmest
attachment to the venerable house in which he had been educated, and
paid many gracious compliments to those over whom he was to preside.
But it was not in his nature to be a mild or an equitable governor. He

had left the chapter of Carlisle distracted by quarrels. He found
Christchurch at peace; but in three months his despotic and contentious
temper did at Christchurch what it had done at Carlisle. He was
succeeded in both his deaneries by the humane and accomplished
Smalridge, who gently complained of the state in which both had been
left. "Atterbury goes before, and sets everything on fire. I come after
him with a bucket of water." It was said by Atterbury's enemies that he
was made a bishop because he was so bad a dean. Under his
administration Christchurch was in confusion, scandalous altercations
took place, opprobrious words were exchanged; and there was reason to
fear that the great Tory college would be ruined by the tyranny of the
great Tory doctor. He was soon removed to the bishopric of Rochester,
which was then always united with the deanery of Westminster. Still
higher dignities seemed to be before him. For, though there were many
able men on the episcopal bench, there was none who equalled or
approached him in parliamentary talents. Had his party continued in
power, it is not improbable that he would have been raised to the
archbishopric of Canterbury. The more splendid his prospects, the more
reason he had to dread the accession of a family which was well-known
to be partial to the Whigs. There is every reason to believe that he was
one of those politicians who hoped that they might be able, during the
life of Anne, to prepare matters in such a way that at her decease there
might be little difficulty in setting aside the Act of Settlement and
placing the Pretender on the throne. Her sudden death confounded the
projects of these conspirators. Atterbury, who wanted no kind of
courage, implored his confederates to proclaim James III., and offered
to accompany the heralds in lawn sleeves. But he found even the
bravest soldiers of his party irresolute, and exclaimed, not, it is said,
without interjections which ill became the mouth of a father of the
church, that the best of all causes and the most precious of all moments
had been pusillanimously thrown away. He acquiesced in what he
could not prevent, took the oaths to the House of Hanover, and at the
coronation officiated with the outward show of zeal, and did his best to
ingratiate himself with the royal family. But his servility was requited
with cold contempt. No creature is so revengeful as a proud man who
has humbled himself in vain. Atterbury became the most factious and
pertinacious of all the opponents of the government. In the House of

Lords his oratory, lucid, pointed, lively, and set off with every grace of
pronunciation and of gesture, extorted the attention and admiration
even of a hostile majority. Some of the most remarkable protests which
appear in the journals of the peers were drawn up by him; and in some
of the bitterest of those pamphlets which called on the English to stand
up for their country against the aliens who had come from beyond the
seas to oppress and plunder her, critics easily detected his style. When
the rebellion of 1715 broke out, he refused to sign the paper in which
the bishops of the province of Canterbury declared their attachment to
the Protestant succession. He busied himself in electioneering,
especially at Westminster, where, as dean, he possessed great influence;
and was, indeed, strongly suspected of having once set on a riotous
mob to prevent his Whig fellow- citizens from polling.
After having been long in indirect communication with the exiled
family, he, in 1717, began to correspond directly with the Pretender.
The first letter of the correspondence is extant. In that letter Atterbury
boasts of having, during many years past, neglected no opportunity of
serving the Jacobite cause. "My daily prayer," he says, "is that you may
have success. May I live to see that day, and live no longer than I do
what is in