thoroughly borne in mind in estimating the value to be attached to contemporary complaints of clerical misdoings. The evils resulting from pluralities and non-residence would have been mischievous under any circumstances; but their mischief was still further enhanced by the false principles upon which ecclesiastical patronage was too often distributed. Statesmen who valued religion chiefly as a State engine had an eye merely to political ends in the distribution of Church preferment. This is of course a danger to which an Established Church is peculiarly liable at all times; but the critical circumstances of the eighteenth century rendered the temptation of using the Church simply for State purposes especially strong. The memorable results of the Sacheverell impeachment, which contributed so largely to bring about the downfall of the Whig Ministry in 1710, showed how dangerous it was for statesmen to set themselves against the strong feeling of the majority of the clergy. The life-long effects A sad illustration of the sort of motives which were supposed to influence the clergy and their patrons is found in the life of Charles Churchill the poet. Speaking of the time when Churchill had written many of his satires, and when he was known to be the intimate friend of Wilkes, and to have taken part in the Medmenham orgies, Dr. Kippis writes, His most intimate friends thought his laying aside the external decorums of his profession, a blameable opposition to the decencies of life, and likely to be hurtful to his interests; since the abilities he was possessed of, and the figure he made in political contests, would perhaps have recommended him to some noble patron, from whom he might have received a valuable benefice.' Churchill, however, knew himself better. Perhaps the saddest verses that ever were written were those in which he describes his false position as a clergyman. 'Much did I wish, e'en whilst I kept those sheep Which, for my curse, I was ordain'd to keep, Ordain'd, alas! to keep thro' need, not choice, Those sheep which never heard their shepherd's voice, Which did not know, yet would not learn their way, Which stray'd themselves, yet griev'd that I should stray. Whilst, sacred dulness ever in my view, Sleep at my bidding crept from pew to pew.' What Churchill's friends suggested seriously, his enemies suggested ironically. 'Thy sacred brethren too (for they no less Than laymen bring their offerings to success) See Foster's Historical and Biographical Essays, Charles Churchill. 1 which this famous trial produced upon Sir R. Walpole have already been noticed. Both he and his timid successor prided themselves upon being friends of the Church, and expected the Church to be friends to them in return. Neither of them made any secret of the fact that they regarded Church preferment as a useful means of strengthening their own power. Nor were these isolated cases. 'Lord Hardwicke' (his biographer tells us) 'thought it his duty to dispose of the ecclesiastical preferments in his gift [as Chancellor] with a view to increase his own political influence, without any scrupulous regard for the interests of religion and without the slightest respect for scientific or literary merit.' Lord Shelburne gave the bishopric of Llandaff to Dr. Watson, 'hoping,' the Bishop tells us, 'I was a warm, and might become a useful partisan, and he told the Duke of Grafton he hoped I might occasionally write a pamphlet for their administration.'2 Warburton complains with characteristic roughness of the Church being bestrid by some lumpish minister.' Even Dr. Johnson, that stout defender of the Established Church, and of everything connected with the administration of its affairs, was obliged to own that 'no man can now be made a bishop for his learning and piety; his only chance of promotion is his being connected with some one who has parliamentary interest.' He seems, however, to think the system inevitable and justifiable, owing to the weakness of the Government, for he prefaces his admission by remarking that all that Government, which has now too little power, has to bestow, must be given to support itself; it cannot reward merit.' Mr. Grenville's well-known remark to Bishop Newton,5 that he considered bishoprics of two sorts, either as bishoprics of business or bishoprics of ease, is another instance of the low views which statesmen took, and were not ashamed to avow, of their responsibilities as dispensers of Church preferment. 3 1 Lives of the Chancellors, by Lord Campbell, vol. v. chap. xxxviii. p. 186. 2 Anecdotes of the Life of R. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, published by his son, vol. i., p. 157. 3 Letters from Warburton to Hurd, second ed. 1809, Letter xlvii. July, 1752. Boswell's Life of Johnson, in ten vols., 1835, Murray, vol. v. p. 298. See also vol. iv. p. 92. Few bishops are now made for their learning. To be a bishop, a man must be learned in a learned age, factious in a factious age, but always of eminence,' &c. See Bishop Newton's Autobiography, and Lord Mahon's History. Such a system naturally tended to foster a false estimate of their duties on the part of those who were promoted. If the dispenser of Church preferment was too apt to regard merely political ends, the recipient or expectant was on his part too often ready to play the courtier or to become the mere political partisan. Whiston complains that 'the bishops of his day were too well known to be tools of the Court to merit better bishoprics by voting as directed.'1 Warburton owns that 'the general body of the clergy have been and (he is afraid) always will be very intent upon pushing their temporal fortunes.'2 Watson considered 'the acquisition of a bishopric as no proof of personal merit, inasmuch as they are often given to the flattering dependants and unlearned younger branches of noble families.' Nay, further, he considered 'the possession of a bishopric as a frequent occasion of personal demerit.' 'For,' he writes, I saw the generality of bishops bartering their independence and dignity of their order for the chance of a translation, and polluting Gospel humility by the pride of prelacy.'' Lord Campbell informs us that 'in spite of Lord Thurlow's living openly with a mistress, his house was not only frequented by his brother the bishop, but by ecclesiastics of all degrees, who celebrated the orthodoxy of the head of the law and his love of the Established Church.' If one might trust two memoir writers who had better opportunities of acquiring correct information than almost any of their contemporaries, inasmuch as one was the son of the all-powerful minister, and the other was the intimate friend and confidential adviser of the chief dispenser of 4 1 Memoirs of William Whiston, by himself, p. 275. See also pp. 119 and 155, 156. A fact,' he adds, 'so apparent to government, both civil and ecclesiastical, that they have found it necessary to provide rewards and honours for such advances in learning and piety as may best enable the clergy to serve the interests of the Church of Christ,' a remark which we might have thought ironical did we not know the temper of the times.—See Watson's Life of Warburton, 488. 3 Anecdotes of the Life of Bishop Watson, i. 116. He quotes also a remark of D'Alembert: 'The highest offices in Church and State resemble a pyramid, whose top is accessible to only two sorts of animals, eagles and reptiles.' Lives of the Chancellors, vol. v. chap. clxi. p. 656. Lord Chesterfield makes some bitter remarks on the higher clergy with the most indefatigable industry and insatiable greediness, darkening in clouds the levees of kings and ministers,' &c., quoted in Phillimore's History of England, during the reign of ecclesiastical patronage, the sycophancy and worldliness of the clergy about the Court in the middle of the eighteenth century must have been flagrant indeed. The writers referred to are, of course, Horace Walpole and John, Lord Hervey. Both of them, however, are so evidently actuated by a bitter animus against the Church that their statements can by no means be relied upon as authentic history. Horace Walpole's aspersions of the clergy bear upon the face of them the marks of prejudice, and confute themselves. In more instances than one, his facts have been fully disproved,' and the deductions which he draws from other facts which are not denied are so obviously unfair that they deprive his evidence on this point of all value. Lord Hervey (Pope's 'Sporus' and Lord Fanny') writes on every subject in the spirit of a man who had a morbid view of mankind, and little of the milk of human kindness in his temper;' but on no subject does he show himself so warped by his sour and cynical spirit as on those connected with the Church. As Mr. Croker remarks in his biographical notice, 'he had a peculiar antipathy to the Church and Churchmen,' 2 Even as caricatures, the portraits drawn by these clever and amusing but unscrupulous men are, from an artistic point of view, overdrawn ; those who form their estimate of the dignitaries of the Church of England from their memoirs will be grievously misled. There was no need of exaggeration or misrepresentation. The real state of the case was quite bad enough. We need not have recourse to seceders like Whiston, or disappointed men like Watson, or cynical courtiers like Hervey and Chesterfield, or reckless retailers of gossip like Walpole; we have but George III. Phillimore himself makes some very severe strictures on the sycophancy and greed of the higher clergy.--See his History, passim. 'His accounts of Secker, Blackburne, Gilbert, &c., are, on the face of them, outrageous.-See H. Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of King George II., vol. i. chap. 3, &c. 'I can never forget,' says the biographer of Bishop Beilby Porteus, the surprise and indignation excited in Porteus' mind on reading two passages in the late Lord Orford's works, in one of which the point of an epigram is made to turn upon the supposition that Archbishop Secker was a hypocrite, and in the other he is expressly charged with having been president of an Atheistical Club.'-Life of Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London, by Hodgson, appended to vol. i. of Porteus' Works. 2 See Lord Hervey's Memoirs of the Reign of George II., Croker's edition, vol. i. Biog. Notice, xxv. to turn to the confessions of the men themselves to find only too many indications of an inordinate love of preferment and of subserviency to a corrupt Court prevalent among the higher clergy. Take, for example, Lady Sundon's correspondence. During the reign of George II., Queen Caroline was, up to the time of her death, the chief distributor of ecclesiastical patronage. In the courtly language of the Duchess of Somerset, she made all the clergy of England happy by taking them under her immediate protection.' Access to the Queen could only be had, as a rule, through the medium of the mistress of her robes, Mrs. Clayton, afterwards Lady Sundon. The publication of this lady's correspondence reveals a sad spirit of subserviency and worldliness on the part of many of her clerical correspondents. Of course, too much weight must not be given to revelations made under such circumstances. In any time or country, the publication of the secret records of applications for patronage would exhibit a more than just proportion of the meanest part of human nature. The letters published in this correspondence were not intended to meet the public eye, and cannot fairly be expected to sustain so severe a scrutiny; but still, after making full allowance for this consideration, the impartial reader will admit that they confirm, by the evidence of the aspirants after preferment themselves, the impression which is derived from many other sources, that an inordinate yearning for advancement and undue obsequiousness to those who had the power of conferring it, were conspicuous among the Church abuses of the eighteenth century. Or take another kind of evidence. Several of the Church. dignitaries of the eighteenth century have been obliging enough to leave autobiographies to posterity, so that we can judge of their characters as drawn, not by the prejudiced or imperfect information of others, but by those who ought to know them best--themselves. One of the most popular of these autobiographies is that of Bishop Newton. A great part of his amusing memoirs is taken up with descriptions of the methods which he and his friends adopted to secure preferment. There is very little, if anything, in them of the duties and responsibilities of the episcopal office. Where will they be most comfortable? What are their chances of further |