Misc Writings and Speeches, vol 3 | Page 9

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 subject 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, but 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 Laputa,"
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 lamenting 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 Atterbury 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 received; and he was, as Bolingbroke had been before him,
the prime minister of a king without a kingdom. But the new favourite
found, as Bolingbroke had found before him, that it was quite as hard
to keep the shadow of power under a vagrant and mendicant prince as
to keep the reality of power at Westminster. Though James had neither
territories nor revenues, neither army nor navy,