1722. CONSPIRACY DETECTED. 119 by government, several individuals were seized by the king's messenger. Carte, a non-juring clergyman, Neynoe, an Irish priest, Layer, a counsellor in the Temple, and several other persons, were arrested on a charge of high treason; and Atterbury, bishop of Rochester and dean of Westminster, was apprehended in his house, and carried before the privy council, who, having examined him, and secured his papers, committed him to the Tower. This event produced so much excitement through the country, that it was considered advisable to open the session of Parliament at once on the 9th of October, instead of proroguing it as had been usual on former occasions. In the speech from the throne, his majesty announced the discovery of a conspiracy against his person and government in favour of the Pretender, and urgently called upon the Parliament for assistance, referring to the equity and liberality of his past conduct, as affording the strongest claim upon their support. The demand was ardently responded to by both houses; a large augmentation of the military force was voted, and the habeas corpus act was suspended for the unprecedented term of twelve months. Walpole stated that the plot had been formed so far back as Christmas; that the conspirators had applied to foreign powers for aid; and, failing in that hope, they resolved to take advantage of the confusion arising from the South Sea project; that their plan was to seize upon the Tower, the Bank, and the Exchange, and to secure the persons of the king and the prince; and he concluded by promising to lay a full account of all the particulars before the House in due season. But this account was never satisfactorily rendered, and it may be inferred that the plot was exaggerated in its details by the apprehensions of the government. In the mean time the proceedings against suspected persons were prosecuted with vigour. The duke of Norfolk, and the lords Orrery, North, and Grey were apprehended on presumption; Layer was convicted of high treason, for enlisting men for the service of the Pretender, and executed; several imputed conspirators were punished by pains and penalties; and Atterbury. after a solemn trial, chiefly remarkable for the asperity and unrelenting hostility of his accusers*, was deprived of his episcopal dignity, and sentenced to banishment for life. The evidence against the bishop of Rochester was sufficiently clear to establish his participation in the frantic design of the Pretender, who, unfortunately for all his adherents, issued a ridiculous proclamation at Lucca, proposing with singular modesty, that if king George would relinquish to him the throne of England, he would in return consent to his retaining the title of king in his native dominions, graciously engaging to leave his succession to Great Britain secure. This absurd manifesto, instead of assisting his cause in England, rendered it more desperate than ever, by inducing the two houses of parliament to address his majesty with fresh assurances of their support against the "impotent efforts of an attainted fugitive, bred up in the maxims of tyranny and superstition." The banishment of Atterbury,- a man distinguished for his learning and his wit, and obnoxious only by his religious bigotry and false ambition,- was followed by the reversal of the act of attainder against Bolingbroke. The exiles met at Calais the one going into banishment for life, the other returning to resume his estates in his native land. Hearing that Bolingbroke was looking for a passage to England, Atterbury, in the bitterness of the contrast, exclaimed, "Then we are exchanged!" But, although Bolingbroke was restored to *Yonge, the mover of the bill, declared that Atterbury was a dishonour to a church conspicuous for its loyalty, and concluded a ferocious harangue, by a denunciation from Holy Writ:"Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein, and his bishoprick let another take." † Atterbury is celebrated in English literature as the intimate friend of Pope and Swift, who continued to correspond with him during his exile. But they appear to have been ignorant of his real character, which was not fully developed until his private papers were seized and published after his death. Although he was a strict protestant, having even attempted the conversion of Pope, he favoured the interests of the pretender, not only by 1722. RETURN OF BOLINGBROKE. 121 his title and his estates, he was excluded from his seat in the house of peers, and doomed on his return to see Walpole, whom of all men he hated most, at the head of the administration, and his ancient coadjutors, Oxford and Harcourt, holding high offices, for which his superior talents better qualified him, and for which his restless ambition pined in vain. Stung by the mortification of exclusion, and resenting the obligation of pardon from the hands of his political antagonists, he joined the tories, and devoted himself to the ungrateful labour of opposing the government to whom he owed his liberty.* The cabinet, however, was too strong to be easily shaken. Its foundations were deeply laid in parliamentary power, and the genius of Walpole had effectually succeeded in infusing a close and systematic unanimity into the whole secret measures before his banishment, but by joining the cabals afterwards in France. He conspired with Hay and Murray to undermine the influence of Mar and Dillon, and no sooner succeeded in compassing that object than, becoming jealous of his former confederates, and failing to obtain the first place in the management of the pretender's affairs, he abandoned the cause for a time, and then returned to embark in fresh schemes for the restoration of the Stuarts. After a few years of restless intrigues, he died in Paris on the 15th of February, 1731, in the seventieth year of his age. His body was conveyed to England, and buried in Westminster Abbey. * "Here I am," he observed in a letter to Swift, "two thirds restored, my person safe (unless I meet hereafter with harder treatment than even that of sir Walter Raleigh) and my estate, with all the other property I have acquired, or may acquire secured to me. But the attainder is kept carefully and prudently in force, lest so corrupt a member should come again into the house of lords, and his bad leaven should sour that sweet untainted mass." See Swift's Works, vol. xix. This was the point that galled Bolingbroke's spirit. He never forgave Horace Walpole for declining his interference in the French negotiations, which Bolingbroke, being then a resident at Paris, and intimate with the duke of Bourbon, and his mistress, madame de Prie, proffered, in the expectation of becoming a confidential channel of communication between the two governments; and to Robert Walpole he attributed, in a letter to the king, his exclusion from the house of peers, accusing him, at the same time, of meanness and treachery under the mask of good will.- See Coxe's Walpole, vol. ii., Correspondence, Period 3., Art. Bolingbroke. To the duchess of Kendal he was mainly indebted for the act of grace which permitted him to return to England. Walpole, in a conversation with Etough, charges him with having bribed her through her niece. "He informed me," says Etough," that the bill in favour of St. John is wholly to be ascribed to the influence of the duchess. Either the present viscount Chetwind, or his brother William, conveyed 11,000l. from St. John's lady to lady Walsingham, the duchess's niece." To Walpole his hatred was as open as it was unmitigable. He frankly declared himself his enemy, and not long after his return, published in the "Craftsman," a political paper, a series of violent attacks upon the administration, in which he assailed Walpole with the bitterest hostility. 1723. party over which his influence was now universally admitted. The principal business of the session was a bill for levying a sum of 100,000l. on the estates of all Roman catholics, on the shallow pretext that it was the constant endeavour of the papists to subvert the establishment. The ministers acquitted them of any concern in the recent conspiracy, but observed, that it was well known that many of them were implicated in the late rebellion. And this most illiberal measure (afterwards extended to all non-jurors) was carried by a large majority, in open violation of justice, and against the loud remonstrances of some of the most enlightened supporters of the administration. The charge against the catholics was general, vague, and unsubstantiated, and the penalty levied upon them for crimes, which it was only presumed they might have a disposition to commit, was specific, odious, and oppressive. Even the protestants complained of the severity of this enactment, as it affected themselves; for it required all persons to take certain oaths to ensure their exemption from its penalties, which put them to great personal inconvenience, and produced considerable discontent. People in general," says a contemporary writer, "was so terrified with the apprehensions of not only forfeiting their estates in possession if they did not take the oaths, but also what they had in reversion, limitation, ever so remote, or the least relation to or expectation of any,— nay, with regard to their money or effects of any sort 66 that the whole nation, almost men, women, and children, capable of taking an oath, flocked to the places where the quarter sessions were holden, that they might, by swearing to the government, free themselves and their families from the danger, as they thought, of losing their fortunes to it. I saw a great deal of it; and it was a strange, as well as a ridiculous sight, to see people crowding to give a testimony of their allegiance to a government, and cursing it at the same time for giving them the trouble of so doing, and for the fright they 1723. THE WALPOLE PEERAGE. 123 were put into by it; and I am satisfied more real disaffection to the king and his family arose from it than from any thing which happened in that time.” * It required all the popularity arising from his majesty's repeated demonstrations of religious toleration towards the dissenters (for it does not appear that his creed was sufficiently comprehensive to embrace the catholics, whom, perhaps, being naturally a weak and timid man, he was afraid of encouraging) to counterbalance this single act of violent aggression upon his catholic subjects. This was the moment chosen by his majesty for rewarding the services of Walpole: to mark, perhaps, the more emphatically his approbation of a measure which struck so boldly at the resources of his domestic enemies. The principal ministers had hitherto been members of the House of Lords, and Walpole was offered a peerage. He declined it on several grounds, partly because he felt that his peculiar talents for finance pointed to the Commons as the legitimate arena of his labours, and partly because his individual influence, and consequently his utility, would be diminished in the upper house. It may be presumed also, that he considered it more consonant with the spirit of the British constitution, that the head of the administration should discharge his parliamentary duties in the lower house; a doctrine which has been subsequently acted upon with more frequency than in former years, and which, perhaps, may be uniformly adopted when the basis of representation becomes more extended. Walpole, however, waiving the proffered dignity for himself, accepted it for his son, who was created baron Walpole of Norfolk. The patent bears a remarkable and honourable testimony to the great merits of the minister, who "having highly recommended himself to our royal favour, by his many services to us, to our house, and to his own country, we did not think him unworthy to be advanced to the rank of the peers of * Onslow. + Coxe's Memoirs of Walpole. |