Compton, Bishop of London, was youngest son of the late, and brother to the then Earl of Northampton. He had been a soldier until he was thirty and upwards, when he exchanged the sword for the gown. He is said by Burnet to have been a great hater of Popery, and exact in performing the duties of his diocese; but unlearned, weak, and wilful. He was a high-church man, and held some reputation in the party, from his personal rank, and the dignity of his situation. In other respects, the bishop seems to have been good-tempered and hospitable, but much at the devotion of the Earl of Danby, who had early assisted him with his patronage. Although the Duke of York hated Compton, yet the charge of the education of the Princesses Mary and Anne devolved upon him. In the reign of James II., he distinguished himself in the House of Peers, by a severe rebuff to the insolence of Jefferies, the Chancellor. Soon after, the Bishop was cited before the illegal court, called the Ecclesiastical Commission, to answer for having refused to obey the king's command, by suspending Sharpe, a clergyman, who had preached a sermon against Popery. He requested a copy of their commission; but Jefferies, with his usual violence, told him, he might have it for a penny in any coffeehouse, and he might believe, in the mean while, that they were not such fools as to sit there without an effectual one. After some delay, he was suspended from his function, until the news of the Prince of Orange's intended expedition, when his suspension was removed. The credit which the bishop acquired by this persecution, amounted to what Mulgrave called a "reverential popularity, which," his lordship adds, "he of all the bishops would have found it most difficult to have acquired otherwise." This led to the Bishop of London playing what, considering his age and situation, was rather a remarkable part in the Revolution; when Prince George of Denmark went over to the Prince of Orange, and the princess, his wife, afterwards Queen Anne, either fearing the resentment of her father, or determined by the councils of Lady Churchill, (afterwards the famous Duchess of Marlborough,) resolved to leave Whitehall, and abandon her father's party. The Bishop acted as her escort on this occasion; and, the time and circumstances reviving his military habits, he rode before her coach to Northampton, with pistols at his saddle, and a drawn sword in his hand. It may easily be believed, that Dryden did not greatly approve of this last exploit of his hospitable and noble Sagan; and he has left a pretty strong testimony of his latter opinion, if the verses called "Suum Cuique" are really written by him:
I should admit the booted prelate now,
But he is even for lampoon too low;
The scum and outcast of a royal race,
The nation's grievance, and the gown's disgrace.
None so unlearned did e'er at London sit;
This driveller does the holy chair b——.
I need not brand the spiritual parricide,
Nor draw the weapon dangling by his side;
The astonished world remembers that offence,