Decorative bannerCHAPTERXIX.(1723.)
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theyear 1723 found society variously agitated. There was real terror about the Plot; but among the gayer portion of society there was but small concern save to know whether Cuzzoni would come out at the Opera, and whether the racing season would be affected or not by the conspiracy. The above lady not only came out, but the king went, attended only by a few gentlemen, to hear the Syren. Criticism took this form of expression in the London Journals, January 19th,1723:—
‘His Majesty was at the Theatre in the Haymarket when Signora Cotzani (Cuzzoni) performed for the first Time, to the Surprise and Admiration of a numerous Audience, who are ever too fond of Foreign Performers. She has already jump’d into a handsome Carriage and an Equipage accordingly. The Gentry seem to have so high a Taste for her fine Parts, that she is likely to be a great Gainer by them.’
At this very time, the more serious drama was approaching its last act.
THE PLOT.
On the 15th of January, 1723, the House of Commons resolved that a committee, consisting of such members of the House as were also Privy Councillors, should examine Layer and his papers, in the Tower, in order to get to a deeper knowledge of the plot to dispose of the king, than they yet possessed. In the subsequent report of this committee, it was stated that the horrible and execrable design had long been entertained by ‘persons of figure and distinction’ at home as well as by traitors abroad. Of those at home were Lord Orrery, Lord North and Grey, Lord Kinoul, Lord Strafford, Sir Henry Goring, and, with these, Bishop Atterbury, Captain Kelly, KellyaliasJohnson, and one John Plunkett. Actively or passively, these were all concerned in a conspiracy for an invasion of the kingdom by a force that was to leave Spain under the Duke of Ormond, to be joined by a Jacobite force on the coast and in the capital, and by their united power to destroy the existing state of things, the royal family included.
The committee complained that Layer would give them no assistance, but that by prevarications, contradictions, and downright lying, as they called it, he threw every sort of obstacle in their way. This threw them back on such papers as they had seized; but these papers, being partly or wholly in cypher, they had first to construct a key, and they then assumed that it solved every difficulty. They were indeed not far wrong, as the Stuart papers have since proved; but all the interpretations of initial letters, fictitious names,numbers for words, things or animals for persons, whereby Atterbury, Kelly, and Plunkett were chiefly implicated, were stoutly denied as being applicable, and such circumstantial evidence was not only denounced by the accused, but at a later period was derided by the great satirist of the day.
SATIRE ON THE PLOT.
Swift, in the sixth chapter of Gulliver’s account of Laputa, gives the captain’s report, as it was delivered to him by a distinguished Laputan professor, how to detect the difference between a man who intended to murder a king, and one who only designed to burn a metropolis. The captain explained to him the method taken in Tribnia (or Britain), in matters of high treason. ‘I told him that in the kingdom of Tribnia, by the natives called Langden, where I had sojourned some time in my travels, the bulk of the people consisted in a manner wholly of discoverers, witnesses, informers, accusers, prosecutors, evidencers, swearers, together with their several subservient instruments, all under the colours, the conduct, and the pay of ministers of state and their deputies. The plots in that kingdom are usually the workmanship of those persons who desire to raise their own characters of profound politicians; to restore new vigour to a crazy administration; to stifle, or divert general discontents; to fill their pockets with forfeitures, and raise or sink the opinion of public credit as either shall best answer their private advantage. It is first agreed and settled among them what suspected persons shall be accused of a plot; then effectual care is takento secure all their letters and papers, and put the owners in chains.DECYPHERING.These papers are delivered to a set of artists very dexterous in finding out the mysterious meanings of words, syllables, and letters; for instance, they can discover … a flock of geese to signify a senate; a lame dog, an invader; the plague, a standing army; a buzzard, the prime minister; the gout, a high priest; a gibbet, a secretary of state; … a sieve, a court lady; a broom, a revolution; a mouse-trap, an employment; a bottomless pit, a treasury; a sink, a court; a cap and bells, a favourite; a broken reed, a court of justice; an empty ton, a general; a running sore, the administration. When this method fails, they have two others more effectual, which the learned among them call crotchets and anagrams. First, they can decipher all initial letters into political meanings; thus N shall signify a plot; B, a regiment of horse; I, a fleet at sea; or, secondly, by transposing the letters of the alphabet in any suspected paper, they can lay open the deepest designs of a discontented party. So, for example, if I should say, ‘Our brother Tom has got the piles,’ a skilful decipherer would discover that the same letters which compose that sentence may be analysed into the following words:—“Resist—a plot—is brought home—the tour;” and that is the anagrammatic method.’
Under this rich satire there is a world of truth. But, as already said, the committee were not far wrong in interpreting at least some of the papers in cypher; and the legislature was not unjustified in bringing inseparate Bills of Pains and Penalties against Plunkett, Kelly (Nonjuror, Jesuit, perhaps both), and Atterbury.
PROCEEDINGS AGAINST ATTERBURY.
When the proceedings against Plunkett, Kelly, and Atterbury were preliminarily begun in the Commons by motions to the effect that a devilish conspiracy existed, the Jacobite members were boldly outspoken. Shippen and Dr. Freind were especially so. They had, indeed, no shadow of doubt as to the existence of the conspiracy, seeing there had been one ‘carrying on against the present Settlement ever since the Revolution;’ but they did not believe in any particular Plot, such as the alleged one on which the Ministry hoped to obtain Bills of Pains and Penalties against the above three persons. Against the first two, the object of the Ministry was attained; and then came the stormy day, on which the attack was opened against the Bishop of Rochester.
On March 11th, Mr. Yonge, on moving a resolution which laid the crime of high treason on Atterbury, concluded a violently rabid speech with a text from Acts i. 20, ‘Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein: and his bishoprick let another take.’ After Sir John Cope had seconded the motion, all the Jacobites in the House, one after the other, led by Wyndham, denounced the proceeding. Bromley, Shippen, Hutcheson, Hungerford, Strangeways, Lutwyche, and Dr. Freind, ridiculed the idea of prosecuting a man against whom there was no evidence that was legal or trustworthy. The motion was carried; but the opposition officered by the Jacobite physicianwas so fierce and outspoken, that hardly unexpected consequences speedily followed.
DEBATE IN THE COMMONS.
On March 13th, Sir Robert Walpole informed the House that the king (empowered by the suspension ofHabeas Corpus) had ordered Dr. Freind to be arrested and detained on a charge of high treason, and the minister asked the House to sanction the act. Shippen and Bromley opposed this request and the act also, on the ground that nothing was specified, and that Dr. Freind was committed on accusation unsupported by oath.
Walpole, Jekyll, and others, maintained the king’s right to arrest whom he pleased, and under any circumstances; but the former assured many members near him, in conversation, that the information against the Doctor was supported by oath. ‘Doctor Freind,’ said Shippen, ‘is a prisoner for nothing more than what he has said in this House; and the members, therefore, were deprived of the freedom of speech.’ Walpole, of course, expressed himself amazed that anyone should for a moment suppose that any ministry could be capable of so base a thing as to take up any gentleman for what he said in that House, without any other reason. Pulteney described the speeches of Freind, in defence of Kelly and Atterbury, as excuses which one traitor made for another. To which Shippen with great warmth declared that it was past bearing for a member to be called a ‘traitor,’ before he was proved to be one. At the end of it all, a majority of the House justified the king in sending Freind to the Tower, and expressed a hope that he would keep him there.
DEBATE IN THE LORDS.
The Doctor quietly turned his imprisonment to good purpose, by producing his ‘De quibusdam Variolarum generibus,’ and laying down the plan, subsequently carried out, of his famous ‘History of Physic, from the time of Galen to the beginning of the Sixteenth Century.’
Lords Strafford, Kinnoul, North and Grey, with Atterbury, were compromised so far as the evidence of the Captain-Lieutenant Pancier of Cobham’s Dragoons went. He deposed that he had been told by one Skene that the above peers were concerned in the plot. This took place when a Committee of the House of Commons visited Layer, under sentence of death, in the Tower. Plunkett deposed that he had heard Layer say the same of the Earls Scarsdale, Strafford, and Cowper, Lords Craven, Gower, Bathurst, and Bingley, all of whom were said to belong to a seditious company called Barford’s Club. Motions to get Pancier, Skene, and Plunkett before the House of Peers were made and lost. Lord Cowper was the only peer who denied the alleged facts by a formal declaration; he shocked Lord Townshend, moreover, by his ridiculing as a fiction ‘a horrible and execrable conspiracy.’ Townshend, however, acknowledged that the peers named were blameless as to the allegations. It was on this occasion that the Earl of Strafford declared his feelings in a very lofty manner. ‘I have the honour,’ he said, ‘to have more ancient noble blood running in my veins than some others; so, I hope I may be allowed to expressmore than ordinary resentments against insults offered to the peerage.’ This vain boast was founded on the fact that the Wentworths held land in Yorkshire in the Saxon times. But the Barony, Viscountcy, and Earldom dated only from the reign of CharlesI., in the person of Thomas Wentworth, who was born in Chancery Lane, in 1593. The later earl, who boasted of the antiquity and the nobility of his blood, was once rebuked in the House of Lords by Earl Cowper. Lord Strafford had referred to Marlborough as a general who ‘fomented war.’ In reply, Earl Cowper remarked, ‘The noble lord does not express himself in all the purity of the English tongue; but he has been so long abroad, he has forgotten both the constitution and the language of his country.’
The jokers had their fun out of this serious matter. Pasquin, in March, sarcastically congratulated the Ministry on their vigilance and success in detecting the horrid conspiracy; adding, ‘A great Patriot was heard last Tuesday night to declare in a public Coffee House, that after hearing the Report of the Commons, “no man in his senses would doubt there had been aPLOT. N.B.—He said this without any grimace!”’
CONDEMNATION OF PLUNKETT.
Several weeks elapsed before the first of the three accused persons was disposed of. It was not till April that the Bill against Plunkett went through all its legal stages, whereby he was condemned to perpetual imprisonment, with forfeiture of all his possessions, and in case of breaking prison, followed by recapture, death, for himself and any who might aid him.
KELLY’S TRIAL.
Kelly was next brought from the Tower, before the Lords. Like Plunkett he was so rigorously watched in his prison that two warders were at his side night and day, and even the use of a knife was prohibited. There were certain fees to be paid to the Governor for severe duties, with which the captive would willingly have dispensed; and a rent was required for his room, the tenancy of which was imposed on him against his will. For these matters, however, the Government that prosecuted him furnished him with means.
The Jacobite lawyer, Sir Constantine Phipps, fought his client’s battle with aggravating pertinacity. He denied the legality of evidence which consisted, as in Plunkett’s case, of copies of letters, the alleged originals of which no one but the reporting committee had seen; and also did he deny the validity of testimony founded on mere hearsay. Sir Constantine, however, was sharply pulled up by the Lord Chancellor, who informed him that their Lordships had had full satisfaction of the truth of the extracts copied from letters, and of the hearsay evidence on other occasions. Kelly’s friends among the peers attempted to attach a rider to the Bill, providing that, on his giving good security he should be permitted to reside abroad. The attempt failed. An extract from one of the letters addressed to Kelly, and seized when in his possession, relating to a dog brought from Paris, was supposed to have reference to Atterbury, and to be very redolent of treason. Phipps ridiculed this, but Lord Cartaret rose and said: ‘I have received letters from his Majesty’sMinister in Paris, relating to Kelly’s procuring a dog in Paris, for some person here.’
KELLY’S DEFENCE.
Kelly delivered a remarkably able speech in his own defence. Its chief points were a general denial of every charge—a denial that he had ever employed one Neynoe in treasonable matters. This fellow had himself been arrested, but was drowned in the Thames in an attempt to escape. Kelly called on Heaven to witness that he had never been employed by Atterbury to write letters of any sort; that he had never visited the bishop privately, nor had ever conversed with him but in company with other persons. As for the treasonable-looking dog, ‘He was given to me,’ said Kelly, ‘by a surgeon in Paris;’ he added that the surgeon’s affidavit could be procured, and, that it was trustworthy was warranted by the surgeon being the medical attendant of the Minister himself. ‘The dog,’ said the prisoner, ‘was never intended for anybody but who I gave him to,’ which was true enough. Kelly then complained, but contemptuously, that creatures of the vilest condition had been hired as witnesses, and that partly on their testimony, heard in private, this Bill was founded. Newgate had been swept for evidence-men. A servant of his own, discharged for grave offence, was sought out and heard against his master. A man in Government employment, on being tampered with, had honestly declared that he knew nothing whatever against the prisoner, Kelly. He was, in consequence, dismissed from his employment, but was reinstated on dishonestly offering to bear witnessagainst him. ‘All which,’ said the candid Jesuit in conclusion, ‘is of a piece with an infamous offer made to myself by one of the under-secretaries of State, who, the morning after I was first examined, came to me with a message (as he said) from one of his superiors, to let me know “That I had now a very good opportunity of serving myself, and that he was sent to offer me my own conditions.” And when I declared myself an entire stranger to the conspiracy, and was sorry to find that noble Lord have so base an opinion of me, he seemed to wonder that I would neglect so good an occasion of serving myself; “especially when I might have anything I pleased to ask for.” What authority that person had for his message, or the rest of his after-proceedings, I will not pretend to say; but as I have been ruined and utterly undone by them, I hope your Lordships will take my sufferings as well as circumstances into consideration, and instead of inflicting any further pains and penalties on me (as I really am) a person highly injured, and not a criminal concerned in any transactions against the government.’
SENTENCE ON KELLY.
Of course the defence availed the speaker nothing. Like Plunkett, Kelly was condemned to perpetual imprisonment, with forfeiture of all property. Since their offence was precisely of the same nature as Councillor Layer’s, it is incomprehensible that their sentences and fates were not similar.
THE KING AT KENSINGTON.
Among the public, a sensation was kept up. The ‘Plot’ was as much talked of as Titus Oates’s. Arrests were made, especially of Nonjurors, ministers, or laymen.Even young ladies could not arrive in London from France without being subject to a summons to explain the wherefore to some sapient Justice of the Peace. Judges were furiously anti-Jacobite. One of these—finding a jury resolute in returning a verdict ofnot guiltyagainst a respectable Pall Mall tradesman, whom two rascally soldiers, unsuccessful in trying to extort money from him, charged with uttering treasonable words—loaded the jurors with obloquy, then attempted to cajole them into a loyal verdict, and failing, ordered their names and addresses to be taken down, and declared them too infamous to ever have the honour of serving on a jury again. Persons who had a proper sense of allegiance quite pitied the king, whom the temper of the times drove into taking care of himself. Every day he walked in Kensington Gardens, alone, but before beginning that wholesome exercise, the gardens were thoroughly gone over by soldiers, and during the promenade, every outlet was strictly guarded. This done, the king went alone, as he loved to do, and had the gardens all to himself.
ARRESTS.
Throughout the early part of the year there was an incessant persecution of Tory printers, pamphlet-writers, and of noisy and conspicuous Nonjurors. Thus the ‘British Journal’ tells its readers: ‘The late Duke of Buckingham’s Works, in two vols. in quarto, lately printed by Alderman Barber, were on Sunday last seized by some of his Majesty’s Messengers, as it is said, because in some parts of these volumes great Reflections are cast upon the late happy Revolution.’Later, may be gathered from the ‘Weekly Journal,’ the following intelligence, likely to painfully stir all Tory hearts:—‘Mr. Matthias Earbery, a Nonjuring Parson, appeared upon his recognizances, having lately been taken up for a seditious libel; but he having in the year 1717 been outlaw’d upon an indictment found against him for a most virulent and traitorous Libel, entitled “The History of the Clemency of our English Monarchs,” Mr. Attorney-General moved that he might thereupon be committed, which was order’d by the Court accordingly. Thus, this Gentleman, regardless of the Mercy and Forbearance of the Government to him, hath by a base Ingratitude, common to a certain set of people, brought this upon himself, which one might think should be a Caution to others not to abuse the great Clemency they daily meet with.’ The same paper announces the conviction of Redmayne, the printer, for a ‘scurrilous pamphlet,’ ‘The Advantages accruing to England from the Hanover Succession.’ Phillips was also convicted for printing ‘A Second Part of the “Advantages.”’ On the other hand, persons with too much zeal for the House of Hanover, which they demonstrated by accusing innocent persons of high treason, and broke down in endeavouring to substantiate their accusation, were flung into Newgate by Lord Cartaret with an alacrity which did that Secretary great credit. One of these was Middleton, a fellow who was so steeped in perjury that he was set in the pillory, where a mob of both Whigs and Jacobites killed him. The inquest jury, equally united, broughtin a verdict of ‘accidental strangulation.’ This fate did not deter others, for the remainder of the year. ‘It is reckoned,’ writes Swift, ‘that the best trade in London this winter will be that of an evidence.’PATTEN IN PERIL.It is curious to find drawn to town by the atmosphere of treachery and perjury, no less a person than that Rev. Mr. Patten, who turned King’s evidence in 1716, against the Preston prisoners. He was taken up in Fleet Street for disorderly conduct, in pretty disreputable company; and he came to temporary grief through beating the constable, hectoring the justice, and maintaining, with a modern ritualistic minister’s contempt for the law, that his offence was cognizable only in an Ecclesiastical Court!
Previous to Atterbury’s appearance before his Judges, the papers on the Whig side reported petty details of his life in the Tower, and of the doings of his chaplains outside of it. In March, the ‘British Journal’ understood that ‘the Rev. Mr. Thomas Moore, Chaplain to the Bishop of Rochester, now in custody, is charged with secreting a Duty-Bond of Accounts, kept by William Ward, the bishop’s coachman (who is likewise in custody), in which book the Times of the said Bishop’s coming in and going out of Town were set down.’ In another column was given this exquisite specimen of sermon-reporting in the first quarter of the lastcentury:—
A STRANGE SERMON.
‘We hear that on Monday last, a certain Bishop’s Chaplain preach’d a wonderful sermon not far from Somerset House. The subject was,Honour the King——. The words,Fear God, in the same verse, he hadno mind to trouble his Hearers with, and therefore disjoin’d what the Holy Writer had put together. What was most remarkable in the odd Composition of the Discourse was the Flow of uncouth Similies and Comparisons; particularly he compar’d his Majesty’s subjects to Monkeys pricking and playing with their Tails in China-shops, and by their Gambols throwing down the Wares. His Majesty himself escap’d not a Strook of his queer Wit, for he was compar’d to a Surgeon who first gives Physick before he probes the Wound. He considered, by the By, the wise Ends of proroguing the Convocation which, he said, are not proper to be known at present, but would appear to be all very good, in their Time. We hear the Congregation have desired the favour of him not to preach there any more.’
Atterbury’s probable doom was made a subject of coarse humour after a manner which was uproariously approved in Whig coteries. For example, the ‘British Journal,’ March 23rd, says:—‘What will be the fate of a certain Prelate is not yet known, but if his fears are of the same complexion with those that influenced his Sire, he will not be hang’d, for as ’tis story’d ofhim—he was drown’d as he resolutely cross’d at a Ferry on Horseback, when Two Pence might have sav’d him. This he thought a fare too much for Charon.’ At the same time, a tender treatment was adopted towards some of the other accused persons. Lord Orrery was said to be ill. A conference of physicians was accordingly held (by command of the Secretary of State) atthe Cockpit, on Lord Orrery’s health; a result was come to which is indicated in the following paragraph: ‘On Thursday evening, the Earl of Orrery was carried privately from the Tower to Whitehall, and admitted to Bail in a Recognizance of 200,000l.;—himself in 100,000l., and his Sureties, the Earl of Burlington and the Lord Carlton, in the rest. His Lordship lay that night at his House in Glass-House Street, near Piccadilly, and will, as we hear, remove, in a day or two, to his Seat of Brittall in Buckinghamshire.’
TREATMENT OF ATTERBURY.
On the 4th of April, Atterbury being then at dinner, in the Tower, the room was suddenly and unceremoniously entered by Col. Williamson (the Deputy-Lieutenant of the Tower), Mr. Serjeant (the Gentleman Porter), and two Warders. The Colonel abruptly intimated to Atterbury that he had come to search him. ‘Show your warrant,’ said the prelate. ‘I have warrant by word of mouth,’ was the reply; but when the Colonel was asked from whom he held it, he only declared, on his salvation, that he had a verbal order from the Ministry, and would name no other authority. The bishop appears to have been harshly treated, and he was deprived of everything he possessed. Atterbury immediately petitioned the House of Lords, and a motion was consequently made, that the above-named officials should be brought to answer for their conduct before the House. The motion was lost by fifty-six against thirty-four; but fifteen of the minority entered a strong protest, on the ground that the House by its decision seemed to justify the depriving an accusedperson of his papers and other means of defence, and the violence by which the illegal deprivation had been carried out.
OGLETHORPE AND ATTERBURY.
A fair sample of the spirit of that part of the Opposition which could not be said to be anti-Hanoverian, was afforded by Oglethorpe, a member of the House of Commons, when, on April 6th, it was proposed that the Bill against Atterbury should be read a third time, and passed. ‘It is plain,’ said this gentleman, ‘the Pretender has none but a company of silly fellows about him, and it was to be feared that if the Bishop, who was allowed to be a man of great parts, should be banished, he might be tempted and solicited to go to Rome, and there be in a capacity to do more mischief by his advice than if he was suffered to stay in England under the watchful eye of those in power.’ The Bill passed, nevertheless.
Some days later, Atterbury addressed an earnest letter to Viscount Townshend. He was thankful (he said) for being allowed to see his daughter ‘any way;’ but the boon was marred by official circumstance;—namely, the presence of an officer during the interview. Father and child had been separated for eight months. By the passing of the Bill against him, they might be separated for ever. The Jacobite prelate implored for permission to talk in strict privacy, with one who was so near and so dear to him.
A little before that letter was written, Sir John Shaw wrote to his wife some account of what was being done in London against the Jacobites. He tells, joyfully,how the Whigs carried a bill of Pains and Penalties in the House against John Plunkett, and how ‘the Torryes lay by.’ That against Kelly,aliasJohnston, had like success. ‘So, he is like to be a jayl bird for the rest of his days.’ Then comes a Whig fling at Atterbury. ‘We shall be on the Bishop on Thursday, who probably will be banyshed.’ While the process was going on in the Commons, Sir John wrote: ‘I count we shall be done with him to-morrow, for we sit down sometimes at nine o’clock in the morning, and do not raise until ten o’clock.’
IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
The bishop’s trial before the Lords, if it may be so called, began on the 9th of April. This was the day on which the Bill of Pains and Penalties (framed against him on letters which had fallen into the hands of ministers, or on hearsay and circumstantial evidence) was read for the first time. The proceedings were of an extraordinary character.
The counsel for the Bill began by proposing to read extracts from Sir Luke Schaub’s letter to Lord Cartaret (20th April, 1722), which referred to the ‘plot in general.’ Sir Constantine Phipps, with characteristic Jacobite energy, opposed the reading of extracts, on the ground that the name of the informer was not given, and that the peers ought not to be kept in the dark, on this point. The bishop and his counsel were removed while this objection was being discussed (as they were on every similar occasion). The House resolved that it was proper that such extracts should be read in evidence of the plot, generally. Thirty-onepeers protested against the injustice of such a proceeding.
After Atterbury and his counsel resumed their respective places (the former at the bar), decyphered renderings of letters in cypher, which had been opened at the Post Office, and then sent on, were put forward for reading. Mr. Willes, the decypherer, swore he had interpreted them by a key. Atterbury insisted that the key should be produced. On a division, the House decided that it was not expedient to do so; and against the unfairness of the decision, thirty-three peers entered a protest. The bill was read a first time, and the House adjourned.
THE WHIG PRESS AND THE BISHOP.
STREET INCIDENTS.
Meanwhile, the Whig press abused the bishop, discussed his guilt in an affirmative sense, and speculated upon his being hanged or exiled. The ‘British Journal,’ of April 13th, ridiculed Atterbury’s complaints against the Deputy Governor of the Tower: ‘At a late rencounter between a certain Colonel and a certain Prelate, the latter eat up his words; had there been any harm in what he eat, he would not have run the Hazard.’ At this same time, certain Jacobite wags had dared, like my Lord Cowper, to intimate that there had never been any serious plot at all. ‘A scandalous copy of verses,’ says the ‘London Journal,’ ‘burlesquing the discovery of the wicked conspiracy, is being printed and handed about Town. Strict search is being made after the contrivers and dispersers of the same.’ Search too was being made for other offenders. Two or three supposed Dukes of Ormond were captured in out-of-the-wayinns; and not less than three representatives of Mr. Carte, the Nonjuror, allowed themselves to be taken on the same day by two eager messengers; only to be dismissed by disappointed Magistrates. A brace of these officials noisily entered the library of the learned Royal Society, in search of the grave, but Jacobite librarian, Mr. Thomas. The nest was warm, but the bird had flown. These were of the smaller episodes while the bishop’s trial was in progress. Some were serious enough. The temper of the people altered with the progress of the day. On successive mornings, the crowd was silent as Atterbury passed through it in his chariot, strongly guarded, from the Tower to Westminster Hall. Generally, his friends, close packed, awaited him at the entrance of the Hall, where, being lame with gout, he was carried in an easy chair through the Court of Requests and the Painted Chamber, into the House of Lords. In the evening, on the return to the Tower, the Jacobite spirit took a rough turn, especially in Fleet Street. That of the guards there took a rougher, which generally manifested itself in bayonetting some over-zealous fool. But Mr. Ridout, the great surgeon, lived in Salisbury Court, close at hand, and he profited by such accidents.
As soon as Atterbury had taken his place at the bar of the House, on the day for the second reading of the Bill—in support of the latter, the examination of one Neynoe before the Privy Council was about to be read aloud. Here, the prelate at once interfered.Neynoe had been drowned in the Thames, in attempting to escape from the custody of a messenger. Atterbury was ignorant as to whether Neynoe was a Jacobite or an enemy; and he urged his right to ask (what seems a dangerous question for himself) namely, if Neynoe had ever declared that the Earl Marischal, under the name of Watson, was in England in the spring of 1722, and had slept several nights at the Deanery in Westminster. The House resolved that the bishop had no right to put such a question.
OPENING OF LETTERS.
Next, Thouvois, a post-office clerk, deposed as to the letters he had opened and copied, before forwarding them (with no sign of violation) to the persons to whom they were addressed. The bishop, who was often more ready to interfere than his more wary and less impatient counsel, here pertinaciously claimed to know if the clerk had opened these letters, by superior authority, and if so, from whom he held the warrant, and where was that document at the present moment. The wisdom of a majority of the House declared itself to the effect, that to accord the bishop’s demand would be highly inconvenient for the public safety, and was altogether unnecessary for the prelate’s defence. Thirty-one lords energetically protested against this conclusion.
SIR CONSTANTINE PHIPPS.
At the re-appearance of Willes, the next witness, Atterbury showed more than ordinary eagerness to grapple with him. Willes quietly asserted that he had properly decyphered the arrested letters, given to him for that purpose. ‘Pray, sir,’ said the bishop (who hadfailed to obtain the production of the key), ‘will you explain to me your process of decyphering?’ ‘No, my lord,’ was the reply, ‘I will not. It would tend to the discovery of my art, and to instruct ill-designing men to contrive more difficult cyphers.’ The usual majority of the House was of the same opinion, and their lordships passed on to other matter—the production of copies of letters written by Kelly (the Nonjuror and sometime acting secretary to Atterbury), according to, it was said, the bishop’s dictation or instructions. Sir Constantine Phipps here saw his chance. He denounced altogether this course, at least till it could be proved that the prelate had any part whatever in them. The counsel for the Crown replied that they offered the letters written by Kelly, not in proof of special particular action, but of a conspiracy in general. They promised to make special and particular application of them to the detriment of the bishop, by evidence, at a future stage of the proceedings. Sir Constantine Phipps demonstrated that such a course would be one of rank injustice, unless he, on the part of the ‘unfortunate prisoner at the bar,’ was allowed to rebut the application by both evidence and argument.
On the return to the Tower in the evening, the Jacobite spirit of the mob was adopted by some of the guard. Four of them, after Atterbury entered his room, went and drank the ‘Pretender’s health at the canteen, and smarted for it before the week was out.’
THE DEFENCE.
On the 9th of May, Sir Constantine repeated his protest, whereupon he was rather summarily bidden togo on with what he had to advance in his ‘unhappy client’s’ behalf.
Sir Constantine remarked that his task would be all the easier, since the counsel for the Bill allowed that they had no better reliance than circumstantial testimony. But the liberty and property of Englishmen were not to be, and never had been, confiscated by circumstance; and accused men could be legally tried only by the laws that were in force when the alleged offence was committed, and not byex post factolegislation taking form in Bills of Pains and Penalties. Moreover, Bills of Attainder had never yet been brought against any persons but those who had hid from, or fled from, justice. The bishop since he had fallen under vain suspicion, had lived openly, had received company in his own house, had gone into society, had passed to and fro in the streets of London, and had followed a course which only the guiltless and guileless followed. If the Bill by which Sir John Fenwick was attainted was legal, that very circumstance proved the illegality of this Bill against the Bishop of Rochester, for this prelate had never been indicted, nor had ever dallied with the Government, nor promised to make discoveries which were ever to be, but never were, made; nor had he bribed the deponents of fatal testimony to withdraw beyond the kingdom: all which incidents distinguished the Fenwick case. Sir Constantine was persuaded that the truth of what he advanced would reach their Lordships’ hearts, and thatthe majesty of the court would not allow a blot to fall on the majesty of justice.
SPECIAL PLEADING.
EVIDENCE FOR ATTERBURY.
The punishment sought to be inflicted on his client was in severity only next to death itself. The bishop’s generous and hospitable way of life had eminently fitted him for the next world, but had left him nothing for this. If he were to be driven into a foreign land, he must, said Sir Constantine, ‘beg upon his crutches or starve.’ The evidence against him was not good in law, and was therefore inadmissible here. Copies of letters, but no production of originals; decyphered extracts, but no proof of correct decyphering; much allegation, but nothing corroborated—such was the quality of the testimony produced on the other side, and it was simply worthless. To correspond with attainted traitors, with treason for a subject, was a capital offence, but to write to even guilty men on common innocent topics, as it might be allowed the bishop had done, once or twice, addressing unfortunate friends, was surely not an evil in a Christian prelate, and it afforded no evidence that ‘Atterbury had any knowledge of their guilty designs—invasion of England by foreign troops, occupation of London and the ports, the seizure of the king and royal family, and the bringing in the Pretender!’ As Willes had acknowledged his inability to interpret some of the cyphers, might he not have misinterpreted those which were supposed to attach guilt to his blameless client? To strike down and fling to reproach and ruin a man against whom no guilt can be proved, appeared to Sir Constantine a most grievouscircumstance. After pursuing this line of defence for many hours, the wary counsellor concluded by saying: ‘If there be a difference between your legislative and judicial capacity, I submit it—whether your lordships will be pleased to give that judgment in your legislative capacity, which the counsel for the Bill do, in my apprehension, admit you could not do in your judicial. And, therefore, I hope your lordships will be pleased to reject this Bill (sic).’
Mr. Wynne succeeded Sir Constantine; where the latter spoke for one minute, Mr. Wynne spoke for ten. His speech was, what Serjeant Woolrych has called it, ‘a bold and elaborate display of the criticism of evidence,’ with an obstinate insistance on the supposed fact that harmless terms could not possibly mean hurtful things. The speech was altogether so able that his envious learned friends asserted he had stolen all the ideas from the bishop when conversing with him in the Tower; but this weak invention of the enemy has been effectually trampled out, and will not rise again.
POPE, AS A WITNESS.
The evidence on the bishop’s side went very briefly to show that there was iniquity in Government offices in the concocting of testimonies; that not only handwriting could be, and in fact was, imitated, but that seals and impressions could be forged, and that the prelate himself (according to the evidence of his servants) neither received traitors in his house nor visited them at their own. The most remarkable witness was ‘Mr. Pope,’ but there was nothing remarkable in the poet’s testimony. He was nervous, embarrassed, and heblundered in his phrases. Atterbury had warned Pope, in a letter from the Tower, April 10th, to this effect: ‘I know not but I may call upon you at my hearing, to say somewhat about the way of spending my time at the Dean’ry, which did not seem calculated towards managing plots and conspiracies. But of that I shall consider.’ Pope replied the same day: his letter is warm, tender, and full of assurances of a love for his friend which he can only show in a way which ‘needs no open warrant to authorise it, or secret conveyance to secure it; which no bills can preclude, and no king prevent.… You prove yourself, my lord, to know me for the friend I am; in judging that the manner of your defence and your reputation by it is a point of the highest concern to me.’ Pope thus described to Spence how he played his part in this Jacobite episode: ‘Though I had but ten words to say and that on a plain point, how the Bishop spent his time while I was with him at Bromley, I made two or three blunders in it, and that notwithstanding the first row of lords, which was all I could see, were mostly of my acquaintance.’
An attempt was made, through Mr. Erasmus Lewis, of the Secretary of State’s office (a witness for the bishop), to get at one secret, the unveiling of which would have served Atterbury materially. Mr. Lewis was asked what he knew of the ability or habit of one Brocket, a clerk in that office, in counterfeiting the handwriting of other people? Two-thirds of the judicial assembly seem to have started with terror at theaudacity of the question; and they speedily resolved that ‘it was not proper that Mr. Lewis should be examined on any thing relating to government, which came to his knowledge by being employed in the Secretary of State’s office.’ Notwithstanding this rebuke, Mr. Lewis did contrive to let it be known that Brocket was a clever imitator of handwriting; and it was proved that even from a broken seal of an opened letter an impression could be taken, from which a new seal could be engraved. Phipps, in his rejoinder to the prosecuting counsel, dwelt upon these points. Wynne then took up the theme, and pursued it for hours, ending his speech with this singular peroration: ‘I hope I may venture to affirm that there does not now remain the least suspicion of the charge brought against the bishop; not even the least suspicion of a suspicion of high treason; not the probability of a probability, nor the presumption of a presumption.’
ATTERBURY’S DEFENCE.
Undoubtedly the most sensational incident of the whole proceeding was when Atterbury rose on the 11th of May to speak in his own behalf. He kept his judges gravely intent for two hours. He introduced much matter that was little to the purpose, and all the rest was special pleading. He dared not—at least he did not—boldly assert, ‘I am guiltless!’ but he urged to this effect, ‘You cannot prove me guilty!’ One sample will be as good as the whole measure.—‘As to that part of the accusation where it is said the letter to “Jackson” was a letter to the Pretender, I have nothing to do with it. (!) He that writ that letter, whenknown, will best be able, and most concerned, to disprove it.’ The bishop added, and well might he add, ‘This objection carries a very odd sound,’ but he maintained that it rested on reasonable grounds. His reasoning often wandered from the mark, which does not surprise a reader who is now aware of the bishop’s guilt. At one moment he asserted there was no proof at all. At another, that there was only very weak proof—nothing but the hearsay of a hearsay. He alluded to his bodily infirmities; the insults he had received in the Tower; his Protestant orthodoxy; the calm, unplotting tenour of his life; and the probable ruin that revolution would bring down upon him as an ecclesiastic and a peer of Parliament. If his judges proved severe in their conclusions, he hoped mercy would be extended to him; but still, naked he came into the world, and so would go out of it; and whether the Lord gave or took away, blessed be the name of the Lord!’
REJOINDER FOR THE CROWN.
On the 12th, Reeves and Wreag tore all the bishop’s special pleading to tatters. The former insisted that every charge had been proved, and that the bishop’s exalted character and holy function only aggravated his detestable crime. As to the penalty named in the Bill, of the intolerable pressure of which Atterbury had complained, almost in tears, Wreag took up the complaint, and said, ‘I venture to affirm this is the mildest punishment that ever was inflicted for such an offence. His life is not touched, his liberty not properly affected. He is only expelled the society, whose government hedisapproved, and has endeavoured to subvert; and is deprived of the public employment which that government had entrusted him with. The enjoyment of his life, his private estate, and his liberty, under any government that may be more agreeable, is allowed him.’
WIT OF LORD BATHURST.
The debate on the question whether the Bill should then be read a third time and passed took place on the 15th. Willis, Bishop of Salisbury, and Gastrell, Bishop of Chester, pressed hardly against their brother prelate. The Duke of Argyle, the Earls of Peterborough and Cholmondely, and Lord Findlater, were as hostile as those bishops. On the other side, Gibson, Bishop of London, spoke in behalf of Atterbury. Earl Poulett commented upon the extraordinary character of the proceedings, and the Duke of Wharton, Lords Bathurst, Cowper, Strafford, Trevor, and Gower, spoke vigorously against the Bill,—the first two especially distinguished themselves in this way. Lord Bathurst, with vigour equal to Wharton’s, put forth a vigorous wit of his own. In allusion to the hostility of some of the bishops to Atterbury, Lord Bathurst remarked, ‘I can hardly account for the inveterate hatred and malice which some persons bear the learned and ingenious Bishop of Rochester, unless it was that they were intoxicated with the infatuation of some of the wild Indians, who fondly believe that they inherit not only the spoils, but even the abilities of the great enemy whom they kill,’ Nevertheless, the Bill, by which the bishop was deprived of his estate and function, andwas doomed to perpetual banishment, withdeathas the penalty of returning without leave, passed the House. Forty peers in all (nearly the whole of the minority) protested on various grounds,—irregularity, illegality, and of conclusions unwarranted by evidence.