Notes and Queries, Number 189, June 11, 1853 | Page 9

of Edward Fortescue of Fallapit; besides others.
W. H. LAMMIN.
Fulham.
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Replies.
BISHOP BUTLER.
(Vol. vii., p. 528.)
"Charity thinketh no evil;" but we must feel both surprise and regret that any one should, in 1853, consider it a doubtful question whether Bishop Butler died in the communion of the Church of England. The bishop has now been in his grave more than a hundred years; but Warburton says truly, "How light a matter very often subjects the best-established characters to the suspicions of posterity--how ready is a remote age to catch at a low revived slander, which the times that brought it forth saw despised and forgotten almost in its birth."
X. Y. Z. says he would be glad to have this charge (originally brought forward in 1767) sifted. He will find that it has been sifted, and in the most full and satisfactory manner, by persons of no less distinction than Archbishop Secker and Bishop Halifax. The strong language employed by the archbishop, when refuting what he terms {573} a "gross and scandalous falsehood," and when asserting the bishops "abhorrence of popery," need not here be quoted, as "N.& Q." is not the most proper channel for the discussion of theological subjects; but it is alleged that every man of sense and candour was convinced at the time that the charge should be retracted; and it must be a satisfaction to your correspondent to know, that as Bishop Butler lived so he died, in full communion with that Church, which he adorned equally by his matchless writings, sanctity of manners, and spotless life.[4]
J. H. MARKLAND.
Bath.
[Footnote 4: Your correspondent may be referred to Memoirs of the Life of Bishop Butler, by a connexion of his own, the Rev. Thomas Bartlett, A.M., published in 1839; and to a review of the same work in the Quarterly Review, vol. lxiv. p. 331.]
In reference to the Query by X. Y. Z., as to whether Bishop Butler died in the Roman Catholic communion, allow me to refer your correspondent to the contents of the letters from Dr. Forster and Bishop Benson to Secker, then Bishop of Oxford, concerning the last illness and death of the prelate in question, deposited at Lambeth amongst the private MSS. of Archbishop Seeker, "as negative arguments against the calumny of his dying a Papist."
Than the allegations that Butler died with a Roman Catholic book of devotion in his hand, and that the last person in whose company he was seen was a priest of that persuasion, nothing can be more unreasonable, if at least it be meant to deduce from these unproved statements that the bishop agreed with the one and held communion with the other. Dr. Forster, his chaplain, was with him at his death, which happened about 11 A.M., June 16; and this witness observes (in a letter to the Bishop of Oxford, June 18) that "the last four-and-twenty hours preceding which [i. e. his death] were divided between short broken slumbers, and intervals of a calm but disordered talk when awake." Again (letter to Ditto, June 17), Forster says that Bishop Butler, "when, for a day or two before his death, he had in a great measure lost the use of his faculties, was perpetually talking of writing to your lordship, though without seeming to have anything which, at least, he was at all capable of communicating to you." Bishop Benson writes to the Bishop of Oxford (June 12) that Butler's "attention to any one or anything is immediately lost and gone;" and, "my lord is incapable, not only of reading, but attending to anything read or said." And again, "his attention to anything is very little or none."
There was certainly an interval between this time (June 12) and "the last four-and-twenty hours" preceding his death, during which, writes Bishop Benson (June 17), Butler "said kind and affecting things more than I could bear." Yet, on the whole, I submit that these extracts, if fully weighed and considered with all the attending circumstances, contain enough of even positive evidence to refute conclusively the injurious suspicions alluded to by X. Y. Z., if such are still current.
J. R. C.
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MITIGATION OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENT TO FORGERS.
(Vol. iv., p. 434., &c.)
I have asked many questions, and turned over many volumes and files of newspapers, to get at the real facts of the cases of mitigation stated in "N. & Q." Having winnowed the chaff as thoroughly as I could, I send the very few grains I have found. Those only who have searched annual registers, magazines, and journals for the foundation of stories defective in names and dates, will appreciate my difficulties.
I have not found any printed account of the "Jeannie Deans" case, "N. & Q.," Vol. iv., p. 434.; Vol. v., p. 444.; Vol. vi., p. 153.