Pope turned Bishop Atterbury to very good account, pleasurable alike to the Jacobites who admired the prelate for his politics, if for nothing besides, and to himself, for another reason. The poet possessed an original portrait of the Bishop of Rochester, the work of Sir Godfrey Kneller. There was a contemporary painter, named Worsdale, who had also been an actor, who had moreover been satirised on the stage, and who had kept, loved, lived on, and kicked the once celebrated and ever unfortunate Lætitia Pilkington. Pope got Worsdale to make copies of Kneller’s portrait of Atterbury, for three or four guineas. ‘And when,’ says Sir James Prior, in his ‘Life of Malone,’ ‘he wished to pay a particular compliment to one of his friends, he gave him an original picture of Atterbury.’ Of these original Knellers, Worsdale painted several.
LAYER’S HEAD.
Atterbury having passed away from the public gaze, there was nothing more attractive to look at than Layer’s head, which was spiked on Temple Bar. Whig caricaturists loved to show the hideous sight in a ridiculous point of view. Jacobites went to the Bar as to a sanctified shrine of martyrs. There never was a head there that did not seem to them holy. That of Layer was blown down as Mr. Pearce, of Took’s Court, a well-known nonjuring attorney and an agent for the nonjuring party, was passing. He bought the head of him who had picked it up. Dr Rawlinson, the learned Jacobite antiquary, bought it, at a high price, from Pearce, kept the skull in his study, and was buried with it in his hand. But there is a tradition that after the relic had been exhibited in a tavern, it was buried beneath the kitchen of the house, and the head of some other person was sold to Rawlinson, as that of Layer!’ Imagine,’ says a note in Nichol’s ‘Literary Anecdotes,’ ‘the venerable antiquary and his companion waking out of their slumber! How would the former be amazed and mortified on his perceiving he had been taking to his bosom, not the head of the counsellor, but the worthless pate of some strolling mendicant, some footpad, or some superannuated harlot!’
THE CO-CONSPIRATORS.
For some time, Atterbury’s speech in the Lords was cried and sold in the public streets; whereupon, the faithful magistracy had the rejoinders made by the counsel for the Crown printed and sold to counteract the effect. Atterbury’s convicted confederates, Kelly and Plunkett, were despatched, the first to Hurst Castle; the second, to Sandown Fort, Isle of Wight. The peers who had been arrested were now admitted to bail, in 20,000l. each, themselves; and four sureties in 10,000l.! For Lord North and Grey, the Marquis of Caermarthen, the Earls of Lichfield and Scarsdale, and Lord Gower answered. The sureties of the Duke of Norfolk were, first, one of the king’s ministers, the Duke of Kingston, the Earls of Carlisle and Cardigan, and Lord Howard. There were two gentlemen in the Tower involved in the plot, Thomas Cochran and Captain Dennis Kelly. Bail was taken for them, the personal at 4,000l., and four sureties in 2,000l. The Duke of Montrose, the Marquis of Caermarthen, Earl Kinnoul, and Mr. Stewart, of Hanover Square, became responsible for Cochran; and Earl Strafford, Lords Arundel and Bathurst, with ‘downright Shippen,’ for the Captain, rank Jacobites, the most of them. Dr. Mead entered into recognisances for Dr. Freind. It was a noble feeling that prompted the Prince of Wales to appoint Freind one of his physicians immediately after his liberation. That the doctor accepted the appointment was bitterly commented on by the Jacobites, who might have taken some comfort from Prince Prettyman’s life being now in the Jacobite doctor’s hands!
ATTERBURY SERVING THE CHEVALIER.
Quietly-minded people now looked for quiet times, and hoped that plots and projects of war and invasion had come to an end. But the Stuart papers show that Atterbury hoped yet to bring his king to London. In Brussels, by aid of the Papal Nuncio and one of the Ladies Howard, then at the head of an English nunnery in Belgium, the Jacobite ex-prelate secretly kept up a correspondence with James.
LETTER FROM ATTERBURY.
On October 12th, 1723, Atterbury wrote a letter to that prince, in which was the following passage:—‘I despair not of being in some degree useful to your service here, and shall be ready to change my station upon any great contingency that requires it. And I hope the present counsels and interests of foreign courts may soon produce such a juncture as may render the activity and efforts of your friends reasonable and successful.’ Again, in December, the ex-bishop thus coolly writes of an invasion of England in the Jacobite interest:—‘Providence, I hope, is now disposing everything towards it; and, when that happens, let the alarm be given, and, taken as loudly as it will, it will have nothing frightful in it,—nothing that can in any way balance the advantages with which such a step will plainly be attended.’
[7] The above has no date nor printer’s name. That it is inserted here is owing to the kindness of a gentleman who has contributed it from his valuable Collection of old Ballads,—Frederic Ouvry, Esq., President of the Society of Antiquaries.