out a train of twelve servants.' Hurd has left us a very short memoir of his own life; but short as the memoir is, it gives us a curious insight into one side of his character. The whole account is compressed into twenty-six pages, and consists for the most part merely of a bare recital of the chief events of his life. But one day-one memorable day to be marked with the whitest of white chalk-is described at full length. Out of the twenty-six pages, no less than six are devoted to the description of a visit with which the King honoured him at Hartlebury, when no accident,' we are glad to learn, ' of any kind interrupted the mutual satisfaction which was given and received on the occasion.'

It has been already observed that the Church interest formed a most important element in the reckoning of statesmen of this century; and the extent to which the clergy were mixed up with the politics of the day must, under the circumstances, be reckoned among the Church abuses of the period. Not, of course, that this is in itself an evil. On the contrary, it would be distinctly a misfortune, both to the State and to the Church, if the clergy of a Church constituted like our own were to abstain altogether from taking any part in politics. It could hardly fail to be a loss to the State if a large and presumably intelligent class stood entirely aloof from its affairs. And the clergy themselves by so doing would be both forfeiting a right and neglecting a duty. As citizens who have an equal stake with the laity in the interests of the country, they clearly enjoy the right to have a voice in the conduct of its affairs. And as Christians they have a positive duty incumbent upon them to use the influence they possess in this, as in every other relation of life, for the cause of Christianity. But with this right and this duty there is also a danger lest those, whose chief concern ought to be with higher objects, should become overmuch entangled with the affairs of this life; and a danger also lest men whose training is, as a rule, not adapted to make them good men of business, should throw their influence into the wrong scale. In so far, but only in so far as the clergy fell into one or the other of these snares, can the political churchmanship of the eighteenth century be classed among the Church abuses of the period. The circumstances of the times increased these dangers.

During the reigns of the first two Georges political morality was at so low an ebb that it was difficult for the clergy to take a leading part in politics without injury to their spiritual character. They could hardly touch the pitch without being defiled. It is to be feared that politics at this period did more to debase the clergy than the clergy did to elevate politics. Not but that they often incurred an unpopularity for the part they took in political questions which was wholly undeserved. Nothing, for example, brought more odium upon the bishops than the share they had in throwing out the Quakers' Tithes Bill in 1736. Yet apparently without just cause; for a high legal authority of our own day, who certainly shows no prejudice in favour of the Church and her ministers, characterises this measure as a well-meant but impracticable bill. Again, in 1753, many of the bishops were exposed to unmerited abuse for supporting, as they were clearly right in doing, the Jews' Naturalisation Bill.1 Again, in 1780, the bishops had the good sense not to be led astray by the senseless 'No Popery' cry, which led to the Gordon riots; and by their moral courage on this occasion they drew down upon themselves much undeserved censure. The good sense, however, which characterised the political conduct of the clergy on these and other occasions was, unfortunately, exceptional. As a rule, the political influence of the clergy was not very wisely exercised. Notably, in two of the most critical situations during the century, the weight of clerical authority was thrown into what all but the most extreme partisans will now own to have been the wrong scale. The first was that series of events which led to and which attended the Peace of Utrecht. It would be very

unfair to suppose that the clergy were fully aware of the extreme danger in which the nation was all but involved during the administration of Harley and Bolingbroke. But the fact remains that it was a most perilous crisis, and that the clergy as a body had no small share in bringing it about. The second was, if not more perilous in its tendency, yet far more disastrous in its results. There are few who do not now deplore the conduct of King George the Third and his

1 See Lord Mahon's History, vol. vi. where a passage is quoted from the • London Courant' of June 3, 1780.

Ministry in reference to the unhappy disputes with our American colonies. The vast majority of the clergy shared the King's most unfortunate prejudices, and contributed in no slight degree to the carrying out of his policy. Again were heard from the pulpits arguments and declamations which belonged to a past generation. The duty of passive obedience and the guilt of resisting the Lord's anointed were inculcated and applied to the case of the revolting colonists. The Americans were assailed on scriptural grounds; their rebellion was compared with the sin of witchcraft. Franklin was likened to Achitophel, Washington to Jeroboam. The result of the elections in 1774, which gave an immense majority for Lord North, was greatly owing to the exertions of the clergy. Every measure for war was supported by the Bench. Twenty-four bishops,' wrote Franklin bitterly, 'with all the lords in possession or expectation of places, make a dead majority which renders all debating ridiculous.'

It would be wrong to attribute solely or even chiefly to clerical influence the various instances of an intolerant spirit which displayed itself in the legislation of the period; such, for instance, as was shown in the iniquitous Schism Bill of 1714, and in the abortiveness of the various attempts to get rid of the Test and Corporation Acts; but it is to be feared that the clergy (with many honourable exceptions, especially among the bishops) fomented this spirit. Swift expressed the sentiments of many, if not the majority, of his order, when he wrote in 1714: There are two points of the highest importance wherein a very great majority of the kingdom appear perfectly hearty and unanimous: (1) that the Church of England should be preserved entire in all her rights, powers, and privileges; all doctrines relating to government discouraged which she condemns; all schisms, sects, and heresies discountenanced and kept under due subjection, as far as consists with the lenity of our constitution; her open enemies (among whom I include, at least, Dissenters of all denominations) not trusted with the smallest degree of civil or military power; and her secret adversaries, under the names of Whigs, Low Church republicans, moderation men, and the like, receive no marks of favour from the Crown but what

2

they should deserve by a sincere repentance.'1 A year or two after the period here described, Addison, in his admirable sketch of the landlord of the inn who had swelled his body to a prodigious size, and worked up his complexion to a standing crimson by his zeal for the prosperity of the Church,' and who had not time to go to church himself, but had headed a mob at the pulling down of two or three meetinghouses,' adds, 'I found he had learned a great deal of politics, but not one word of religion from the parson of his parish; and had scarce any other notion of religion but that it consisted in hating Presbyterians. He enlarged on the happiness of the neighbouring shire, for there is scarce a Presbyterian in the whole county except the bishop.' Addison is here writing avowedly as a strong political partisan, and his description must therefore not be taken quite literally; but he undoubtedly points to a real evil which the political vehemence of many of the clergy was encouraging. The keen interest which the clergy took in politics, especially such as were supposed to affect the Church, sometimes led them to forget their sacred characters and to connive at, if not sanction, the immoralities of men who atoned for their irregularities by defending the temporalities of the Church. 'The sanctity of the Sabbath,' writes a foreigner, ' and the dogmas of the Anglican Church, were most zealously defended by the Duke of Grafton, the Earls of Bradford and Sandwich, Lords Thurlow, Barrington, and Weymouth, who yet did not refrain from celebrating orgies at which even the most holy things were ridiculed in the most scandalous manner.' 4

It would have been well if the clergy had, as a rule, been as active and earnest in their proper work as many of them were in political business. But, with many honourable exceptions, they showed a sad apathy in the performance of their clerical functions. Except in the closing years of the century, when the evangelical revival had made itself felt even in quarters where it was most bitterly opposed, the 1 Free Thoughts on the Present State of Affairs (1714).

2 Freeholder, No. 22 for March 5, 1716-17.

See also Bishop of Oxford's Fifth Charge, 1753.

4 Schlosser's History of the Eighteenth Century, translated by D. Davison, vol. ii. § 4. See also Jesse's Memoirs of the Life and Reign of King George III., vol. ii. p. 239.

descriptions of Bishop Burnet and of Horace Walpole seem to have been generally applicable. 'Above all things,' writes Burnet to the clergy in the conclusion to the History of His Own Times,' 'raise within yourselves a zeal for doing good and for saving souls; indeed, I have lamented, during my whole life, that I saw so little true zeal among our clergy. I saw much of it among the clergy of the Church of Rome, though it is both ill-directed and ill-conducted. I saw much zeal likewise throughout the foreign churches. The Dissenters have a great deal among them; but I must own that the main body of our clergy has always appeared dead and lifeless to me; and instead of animating one another they seem rather to lay one another to sleep. Without a visible alteration in this,' he adds, forecasting what was, alas! only too faithfully fulfilled, 'you will fall under an universal contempt, and lose both the credit and fruits of your ministry.' And still more strongly, 'I say it with regret, I have observed the clergy in all the places through which I have travelled, Papists, Lutherans, Calvinists, and Dissenters; but of them all our clergy is much the most remiss in their labours in private and the least severe in their lives.'

Matters grew worse rather than better in the generation which succeeded Burnet. In his summary of the period which closed with the death of George II., Horace Walpole writes: The Church was moderate and, when the Ministry required it, yielding.' From the point of view of this writer, whose sentiments on religious matters exactly corrresponded with those of his father, nothing could have been more satisfactory than this state of things. To those who look upon the Church merely as a State Establishment, 'moderate, and, when the Ministry require it, yielding,' would represent its ideal condition. But to those who believe in it as part of a great divine Institution, the picture will convey a different impression. They will see in it a worldly man's description of the spiritual lethargy which had overtaken English Christendom. The expression will not be deemed too strong when it is remembered what was, as a matter of fact, the real state of affairs so far as the practical work of the Church was concerned. Under the very different conditions under which we live, it is difficult to realise what existed or rather what