A History of the Four Georges, Volume I

by Justin McCarthy

"Resolved to save the British nation,
Though French by birth and education;
His correspondence plainly dated
Was all deciphered and translated;
His answers were exceeding pretty,
Before the secret wise committee;
Confessed as plain as he could bark,
Then with his fore-foot set his mark."

[Sidenote: 1723-1731—Atterbury's sentence]

There was more than mere fooling in the lines. The dog Harlequin was made to bear important evidence against the Bishop of Rochester. Atterbury had never resigned himself to the Hanoverian dynasty. He did not believe it would last, and he openly declaimed against it. He did more than this, however: he engaged in conspiracies for the restoration of James Stuart. Horace Walpole says of him that he was simply a Jacobite priest. He was a Jacobite priest who would gladly, if he could, have been a Jacobite soldier, and had given ample evidence of courage equal to such a part. He had been engaged in a long correspondence with Jacobite conspirators at home and abroad. The correspondence was carried on in cipher, and of course under feigned names. Atterbury appears to have been described now as Mr. Illington, and now as Mr. Jones. Atterbury refused to make any defence before the House of Commons, but he appeared before the House of Lords on May 6, 1723, and defended himself, and made strong and eloquent protestation of his innocence. One of the witnesses whom he called in his defence was his friend Pope, who could only give evidence as to the manner in which the bishop had passed his time when staying in the poet's house. Christopher Layer, Atterbury's associate in the general charge of conspiracy, was a young barrister of good family, a remarkably handsome, {221} graceful, and accomplished man. One charge against him was that he had formed a plan to murder the King and carry off the Prince of Wales; but the statements made against Layer must be taken with liberal allowance for the extravagance of loyal passion, panic, and exaggeration. Layer had escaped and was recaptured, was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He was hanged at Tyburn on March 15, 1723; he met his death with calm courage. His body was quartered and his head was set on Temple Bar, from which it was presently blown down by the wind. Some one picked up the head and sold it to a surgeon. Neynoe, another of the accused men, contrived to escape from custody, got to the river, endeavored to swim across it, and was drowned in the attempt.

The charges made against Atterbury had therefore sometimes to rest upon inferences drawn from confessions, or portions of confessions, averred to have dropped or been drawn from men whose lips were now closed by death. Those who defended Atterbury dwelt strongly on this fact, as was but natural. It is curious to notice how often in the debates of the Lords on the Bill of Pains and Penalties one noble peer accuses another of secret sympathy with Jacobite schemes. As regards Atterbury, the whole question was whether he was really the person described in the correspondence now as Jones and now as Illington. There might have been no evidence which even a "secret, wise" committee of that day would have cared to accept but for the fact that the bishop's wife had received, or was to have received, from France a present of a dog called Harlequin, and that there was mention in the correspondence about poor Mr. Illington being in grief for the loss of his dog Harlequin. This allusion put the committee of secrecy on the track. The bishop's wife had lately died, and it would seem from the correspondence that Illington's wife had died about the same time. Clearly, if it were once assumed that Illington and Atterbury were one and the same person, there was ample ground for suspicion, and even for a general belief that the story told {222} was true in the main. The evidence was enough for Parliament at that time, and the Bill passed the House of Lords on May 16th by a majority of eighty-three votes to forty-three. Atterbury was deprived of all his offices and dignities, declared to be forever incapable of holding any place or exercising any authority within the King's dominions, and condemned to perpetual banishment. He went to France in the first instance with his daughter and her husband. It so happened that Bolingbroke had just at that time obtained a sort of conditional pardon from the King; obtained it mainly by bribing the Duchess of Kendal. The two Jacobites crossed each other on the way, one going into exile, the other returning from it. "I am exchanged," was Atterbury's remark. "The nation," said Pope afterwards, "is afraid of being overrun with genius, and cannot regain one great man but at the expense of another." So far as this history is concerned we part with Atterbury here. He lived abroad until 1731, and after his death his remains were brought back and privately laid in Westminster Abbey.

[Sidenote: 1723—Tom Tempest and Jack Sneaker]

We have directed attention to the freedom and frequency of the accusations of Jacobitism made by one peer against another during the debates on Atterbury's case. The fact is worthy of note, if only to show how uncertain, even still, was the foundation of the throne of Brunswick, and how wide-spread the sympathy with the lost cause was supposed to be. When Bolingbroke was allowed to return to England, some of Swift's friends instantly fancied that he must have purchased his permission by telling some tale against the dean himself, among others, and long after this time we find Swift defending himself against the rumored accusation of a share in Jacobite conspiracy. The condition of the public mind is well pictured in a description of two imaginary politicians in one of the successors to the Tatler. "Tom Tempest" is described as a steady friend to the House of Stuart. He can recount the prodigies that have appeared in the sky, and the calamities that have afflicted the {223} nation every year from the Revolution, and is of opinion that if the exiled family had continued to reign, there would neither have been worms in our ships nor caterpillars in our trees. He firmly believes that King William burned Whitehall that he might steal the furniture, and that Tillotson died an atheist. Of Queen Anne he speaks with more tenderness; owns that she meant well, and can tell by whom she was poisoned. Tom has always some new promise that we shall see in another month the rightful monarch on the throne. "Jack Sneaker," on the other hand, is a devoted adherent to the present establishment. He has known those who saw the bed in which the Pretender was conveyed in a warming-pan. He often rejoices that this nation was not enslaved by the Irish. He believes that King William never lost a battle, and that if he had lived one year longer he would have conquered France. Yet amid all this satisfaction he is hourly disturbed by dread of Popery; wonders that stricter laws are not made against the Papists, and is sometimes afraid that they are busy with French gold among our bishops and judges.

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CHAPTER XIV.

WALPOLE IN POWER AS WELL AS OFFICE.

[Sidenote: 1723—Walpole's Administration]