leading divines actively supported the clergyman, however much they might despise the man-fêted by the London citizens-presented with 3,000 guineas by one munificent devotee, Dr. Sacheverell found himself suddenly famous, a martyr without the pangs of martyrdom, a hero without heroism.

An exemplary punishment had indeed been con'Ministers,' "" templated for the scurrilous polemic. says Lockhart, "designed nothing less than the pillory, and his being whipt at a cart from the Royal Exchange to Charing Cross; besides a severe fine, long imprisonment, and deprivation of his livings, with an incapacity of any preferment in the church for the future." The real sentence could scarcely be said to hurt his vanity; for he was still to be gazed at in the desk and on the platform, was still the mould of fashionable coteries, and drew his income at leisure. It became a popular fancy with people of distinction to invite the handsome confessor to christen their children, and to call them by his name. He made a circuit of the London churches to read prayers, and scarcely standing room could be found for the pious multitude who thronged to make their responses. He published a collection of prayers called Sacheverell's Thanksgiving, with an allusive text, to which he made a profane application, "My soul is escaped even as a bird from the snare of the fowler: the snare is broken, and I am delivered !"

As a royal progress had often been attempted with success to propitiate popularity, Dr. Sacheverell was advised to commence a triumphant tour through the country. On his route to take possession of a small living in Wales, he was received by the orthodox

'Lockhart's Memoirs.

counties of Oxford, Hereford, and Salop, and by the high tory Welshmen, with honours greater than were ever paid to priest since the days of Thomas à Beckett. Presents of wine, chaplets of flowers, thanks by mayors, speeches of recorders, the firing of cannon, ringing of bells, processions headed by 3,000 gentlemen on horseback, bonfires, and illuminations, attested the gratitude of the country to their clerical deliverer.

However unworthy the object whom these fervid rejoicings encircled, they proved, even when mistaken, the enthusiasm of the nation, and the sincerity of its attachment to the Church of England. It was a blind superstition which made, in this instance, like some idol of Egypt, a monkey their god. The loyal exultation elicited by his presence, influenced favourably for government the approaching elections. On the first public opportunity, soon after his suspension was ended, he preached before the grateful House of Commons, by their desire, at St. Margaret's, Westminster, and was thanked for his loyal effusion. Better than their empty praise' was the solid pudding' that followed-the rich rectory of St. Andrew's, Holborn, with which he was amply requited for past persecutions.

It is highly to the credit of good Queen Anne, a right-minded though not a strong-minded woman, that she would not yield to the Lord Keeper Harcourt's importunity the further gift of a bishopric to this busy ecclesiastic. However convenient a tool, he was held in no higher regard than as a useful instrument and no more, by the warmest partisans of the ministry. The personal dislike of Swift, founded on his thorough contempt for the doctor's talents and tenets, peeps forth in his journal: "Did I tell you,"

he writes to Stella, "that Sacheverell has desired mightily to come and see me; but I have put it off: he has heard that I have spoken to the secretary on behalf of a brother whom he maintains. Last night I desired the lord treasurer to do something for that brother of Sacheverell's, and he immediately put his name in the table book. I will let Sacheverell know this, that he may take his measures accordingly, but he shall be none of my acquaintances." With the same splenetic feeling, the scornful dean chuckled over the disappointment of a bookseller, who had printed 10,000 copies of the first sermon preached by the restored preacher, after the three years' silence, intituled, "The Christian Triumph, or the duty of praying for our enemies," on a text most improperly selected and applied, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Swift predicted truly, in his nervous vernacular language, that the fellow would be confoundedly bit. "I have been reading," he adds, "Sacheverell's long dull sermon, which he sent me. Not a word in it upon the occasion, except two or three remote hints." The contempt of Swift for the intermeddling churchman was fully shared by Lord Bolingbroke, who terms him "a vain, froward, turbulent preacher of tawdry declamation!"

The secret of his temporary inflation having escaped, he subsided for the remaining sixteen years of his life into comparative obscurity. On the accession of George I., he trooped with the London clergy to present loyal addresses, and preached on coronation day an appropriate sermon at Sutton near Birmingham, where 200 of the populace assembled at night to shout the old war-cry of "Down with the whigs, and Sacheverell for ever!" But the fire was burnt out.

It would have been difficult to foretell the extent of the conflagration, had Bishop Atterbury's daring offer of proclaiming the Pretender at Charing Cross been accepted. The prelate's inflexible zeal would have braved the ordeal; but we doubt whether Sacheverell would have acted up to his professions, and stood in that hour of instant peril by his side. True to his genius for railing, the doctor contented himself with inveighing against the procession of the Duke of Marlborough, who made a triumphant entry into London, as "an unparalelled insolence, a vile trampling upon royal ashes."* Harmless invectives like this the doctor would freely scatter from his pulpit, and brave the danger. We read no more of the divine except in some parish vestry brawls. Certain repairs being wanted for St. Andrew's, to the extent of £1500, an opposition was threatened, but the veteran tactician put the question of finance as a question of orthodoxy to the vote, "You that are for the church, hold up your hands: you that are against the church, hold up yours," and carried his point. For the effect of his vituperation Dr. Sacheverell could never be forgiven by the whigs. He died soon after the banishment of Atterbury, to whom, with a natural feeling of gratitude, he had left a legacy of £500, in 1724, "a scandal,” says Oldmixon, "to his name, his function, and his country.'

He had risen like a rocket, and fell as the stick. He had been used as a torch or firebrand, the means of sudden brilliancy, and, when the conflagration was over, men cast him aside with no more regard than a piece of blackened wood.

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CHAPTER X.

THE principles which Sacheverell had proclaimed from the pulpit, and which his fruitless prosecution but partially denounced, were acted upon to their own discomfiture by several conscientious jacobites on the accession of George I. The rebellion of 1715 was soon put down, and the law proceeded to glean from the first rank of traitors what the sword had left. We find the solemn pomp of a trial before the peers in Westminster Hall again revived, and this time the sharp edge of the axe turned towards, and not away from, the unhappy state-prisoners.

The Earl of Derwentwater, and five other rebel lords were impeached, without the production of any document or vouchers, on the notoriety of the fact that they had been taken in arms, and severally pleaded guilty. George, Earl of Wintoun, alone, a peer of weak intellect, had the cunning to plead not guilty, and, on the pretext of absence of witnesses, to gain a respite of two months for his trial. Several portions of this trial are full of interest, from the strong light which they throw on the hardships to which the accused were still subject, from their not being permitted a full defence by counsel. The mental imbecility