THE BISHOP IN THE TOWER.
n the 24th of August the storm burst on the prelate’s head. Of this event the public were aware long before the press reported it. When the report was made, it described the following scenes of this Jacobite time:—‘On St. Bartholomew’s day last, in the afternoon, the Right Reverend Dr. Francis Atterbury, Lord Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster, was committed to the Tower, on an accusation of High Treason. His Lordship was at his Deanery of Westminster, when two Officers of the Guards and two Messengers came to his House and carried him and his papers to a Committee of Council. At the same time two other Officers and as many Messengers were despatched to the Episcopal Palace of Bromley, in Kent, who, with the assistance of a Constable, searched his Lordship’s House and brought away what Papers they thought proper. John Morrice, Esq., the High Bailiff of Westminster, and his lady, the Bishop’s daughter, were then at his Lordship’s House at Bromley. On Monday last, they both went to the Tower to enquire after the Bishop’s health, but were not suffered to see him.’ So spoke the ‘Weekly Journal’ of Saturday, September 1st. ‘It was on Friday last,’ says another paper, the ‘Post Boy,’ of August 25th to Tuesday, August 28th, ‘in the afternoon that the Bishop of Rochester was committed to the Tower; but the Bishop was not carried to the Tower in his own coach, as some papers have mentioned.’ The ‘Post Boy’ says that his Lordship went from the Committee of Council in Whitehall ‘in his own Coach round by Holbourne, London Wall, &c., attended by a Messenger and Colonel Williamson of the Guards.’ He was again before the Committee on the following day. In the Tower, ‘his chaplain, his valet-de-chambre and a footman are allowed to attend him, but nobody else is permitted to see him. ’Tis said that several letters in his own hand-writing, but signed in fictitious names, have been intercepted, by which the Government has made some important discoveries.’ A strong military force from the camp in the Park was marched through the City to reinforce the Guard at the Tower. In September the bishop was little likely to break locks and take flight, being confined to his bed with gout in both hands and feet. The report that he would be tried by a special commission of Oyer and Terminer, at the King’s Bench Bar, gained little credit, for the feeling was very strong that even if he were guilty, the crafty leader of the Opposition against Walpole, in the Lords, was not likely to have left any traces of his guilt. The publication of the prelate’s portrait looking through a grate, with Ward’s seditious verses beneath, caused much excitement, the confiscation of the portrait, and the incarceration of the poet.
POPE AND ATTERBURY.
In the Tower the bishop was treated with unusual severity. Pope, in a letter to Gay (September 11th, 1722), ridicules the rigour observed with respect to small things: ‘Even pigeon-pies and hogs’-puddings are thought dangerous by our governors; for those that have been sent to the Bishop of Rochester are opened and profanely pried into at the Tower. It is the first time that dead pigeons have been suspected of carrying intelligence.’ In October, however, means seem to have been adopted by which the annoyance of ‘prying’ could be avoided. In a letter to Carlyle (October 26th) Pope says: ‘I very much condole with my friend whose confinement you mention, and very much applaud your obliging desire of paying him a compliment at this time of some venison, the method of which I have been bold to prescribe to Lady Mary.’
‘THE BLACKBIRD.’
John Wesley’s elder brother, ‘Sam,’ earnest in his duties as one of the masters of Westminster School, but still more earnestly hopeful, though not active, as a High Tory and Jacobite, showed his indignation at his patron’s incarceration and treatment, in a lively poem called ‘The Blackbird.’ This pleasant songster’s enemies were nailed to the general ‘barn-door’ as screech-owl, vulture, hawk, bat, and
The noisy, senseless, chattering Pie,
The mere Lord William of the sky.
The poet next disposed of Colonel Williamson:—