expected. His abuse of church-men is so over charged that it does not the mischief he intended. I do not hear of one High-Church clergyman that is about answering his calumnies, except you reckon Warburton in that number. This great genius is lately made a Doctor, at Lambeth, & Chaplain to the King, in order to his being made Dean of Bristol. The chaplainship, all the world knows to be a waiting job, & (by what I can hear of the Dean of Bristol's health) t'other thing is likely to be of the same sort. He has printed some sermons that are much in the stile of South, and has answered Bolingbroke in the same sort of rant as that divine would have done. He is likely to lose credit by this latter performance, & not to get it by the first.

"Sir W. Browne received last week a very great mortification by being voted out of the office of Treasurer of the College of Physicians. That body has been for a good while in the same state the town of Lynn was lately, viz. the heels where the head should be. And the Knight has played much the same game in both cases. Some of the top physicians resolving to attend the affairs of the College, which they had shamefully neglected, & knowing Sir William's aim to be at the Presidentship, they privately settled that point for Dr. Reeve, a physician of the first practice in the city, & a man who will do more honour to the post than he will receive from it. When he was elected, the elections of other officers came on. The votes for and against Sir William's being continued Treasurer were II & II; by ballot. On which the new President refused to decide the case by a casting vote, & desired a second ballot; in which the balls against Sir William were 12, & for him II. In the progress of balloting for other officers, it was found in one case that the balls were dropt into wrong boxes, viz. the black into the white box, and vice versâ. Upon this Sir William stood up and said, 'how did he know but there might be the same mistake

This was

in his case?' And demanded a third ballot. consented to, and then he had 13 balls against him & 9 for him. He is treated with great contempt by the Faculty, & has no manner of business.

"I am amazed to see what a heap of stuff I have thrown together, & so-good night to you. "I am, with proper respects, "Dear Sir,

(Addressed)

To The Revd Dr. Kerrich,

"Yrs &c.,

"E. PYLE."

at Dersingham, near Lynn, in Norfolk.

B. Free Winchester..

Twenty years had passed since anything had appeared from the Bishop of Winchester's pen. Many, perhaps, who now read Hoadly's "Old Cocks" of two centuries ago will be disposed to exclaim with the most memorable martyr of the great Revolution-Madame Roland, born in this very year as she looked upon the statue of Liberty from the scaffold in 1793, "O Liberté, comme on t'a jouée."

The dignitaries who were in the untoward plight described by Pyle were Thomas Sherlock, Bishop of London, who nevertheless lived until 1761, and Thomas Herring, Archbishop of Canterbury, who died in 1757. The Duke of Newcastle succeeded his brother, Henry Pelham, as First Lord of the Treasury in 1754. He had been appointed High Steward of Cambridge in 1737, and Chancellor of the University in 1748. He resigned office as First Lord of the Treasury in 1756, and was created Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyme.

Writing to Kerrich, August 14, 1754, with reference to preferment, Archbishop Herring says: "But one way is quite shut up to me, for I find my great Friends so prodigiously embarrass'd that out of a point of honour, &

in truth a sort of compassion, I never yet asked anything of them for my nearest relation, & I think I never shall." A better proof of the accuracy of Pyle's information there could not be.

In further testimony we have the following extract from a letter to Kerrich from his first cousin John Kerrich, M.D., of Bury St. Edmunds, dated November 24, 1752, showing how long and persistently "the Minister" had plagued the bishops: "When the Duke of Newcastle is satisfy'd other Folks may have some Chance, he made the Master of Jesus, and the Master of Bennet, and will make the Master of Peterhouse. . . . The Archbishop and Bishop of Ely have, undoubtedly, great Obligations to the Duke, but sure the Time will come when they will think they have sufficiently repaid him."

Owing to the manipulations of Bishop Gooch, Bishop Mawson had hardly the prospect of the presentation to a single stall in his church, or of a good living in his diocese "matters have been so managed" (see Letter of March 2, 1754). So Ely's "bargain" with "the Minister" must have been rather one-sided.

The Lord Chancellor here spoken of was Philip Hardwicke, first Earl of Hardwicke. On the death of Henry Pelham, Hardwicke managed the negotiations which placed Newcastle at the Treasury, he himself retaining the Great Seal, He was rewarded for his long and eminent services by the titles of Viscount Royston and Earl of Hardwicke. He was chiefly responsible for the harsh measures dealt out to Scotland after "the '45"; for the annexing of the forfeited estates in perpetuity to the Crown; the invalidation of the order of Scottish non-juring episcopalian clergy, and the introduction into Scotland of regular impartial administration of justice. To him also was due the reform of the Marriage Law in 1753. He considered Admiral Byng guilty, and held No. 45 of the North Briton, the organ of the notorious John Wilkes, to be