When the Orator’s funds grew low, his audacity and impudence rose to their climax. He once filled his chapel with shoemakers, whom he had attracted by advertising that he could teach a method of making shoes with wonderful celerity. His secret consisted in cutting the tops off old boots. His motto to this advertisement was “Omne majus continet in se minus” (“The greater includes the less”).
In 1745 Henley was cited before the Privy Council for having used seditious expressions in one of his lectures. Herring, then Archbishop of York, had been arming his clergy, and urging every one to volunteer against the Pretender. The Earl of Chesterfield, then Secretary of State, urged on Henley the impropriety of ridiculing such honest exertions at a time when rebellion actually raged in the very heart of the kingdom. “I thought, my lord,” said Henley, “that there was no harm in cracking a joke on a red herring.”
During his examination, the restorer of ancient eloquence requested permission to sit, on account of a rheumatism that was generally supposed to be imaginary. The earl tried to turn the outlaw divine into ridicule; but Henley’s eccentric answers, odd gestures, hearty laughs, strong voice, magisterial air, and self-possessed face were a match for his somewhat heartless lordship.
Being cautioned about his disrespectful remarks on certain ministers, Henley answered gravely, “My lords, I must live.” Lord Chesterfield replied, “I don’t see the necessity,” and the council laughed. Upon this Henley, remembering that the joke was Voltaire’s, was somewhat irritated. “That is a good thing, my lord,” he exclaimed, “but it has been said before.” A few days after the Orator, being reprimanded and cautioned, was dismissed as an impudent but entertaining fellow.[604]
Dr. Herring whom the rogue ridiculed was a worthy man, who in 1747, on the death of Potter, became Archbishop of Canterbury, and died in 1757. Swift hated Herring for condemning the “Beggars’ Opera” in a sermon at Lincoln’s Inn, and wrote accordingly: “The ‘Beggars’ Opera’ will probably do more good than a thousand sermons of so stupid, so injudicious, and so prostitute a divine.”[605]
In 1748 Dr. Cobden, the Court chaplain, an odd but worthy man, incurred the resentment of King George II. by preaching before him a sermon entitled “A Persuasive to Chastity”—a virtue not popular then at St. James’s. He resigned his post in 1752. The text of this obnoxious sermon was, “Take away the wicked from before the king.” Henley’s next Saturday’s motto was—
“Away with the wicked before the king,
Away with the wicked behind him;
His throne it will bless
With righteousness,
And we shall know where to find him.”
If any of the Orator’s old Bloomsbury friends ever caught his eye among the audience, he would gratify his vanity and rankling resentment by a pause. He would then say, “You see, sir, all mankind are not exactly of your opinion; there are, you perceive, a few sensible persons in the world who consider me as not totally unqualified for the office I have undertaken.” His abashed adversaries, hot and confused, and with all eyes turned on them, would retreat precipitately, and sometimes were pushed out of the room by Henley’s violent butchers.
The Orator figures in two caricatures, attributed, as Mr. Steevens thinks, wrongly to Hogarth. In one he is christening a child; in another he is on a scaffold with a monkey by his side. A parson takes the money at the door, while a butcher is porter. Modesty is in a cloud, Folly in a coach, and there is a gibbet prepared for poor Merit.
Henley, who latterly grew coarse, brutal, and drunken, died October 14, 1756. The Gentleman’s Magazine merely announces his death thus:—“Rev. Orator Henley, aged 64.” “Nollekens” Smith says that he died mad.