CAROLINE AND THE CHURCH.
In no sphere was Caroline’s influence more marked than in Church
affairs; she held the reins of ecclesiastical patronage in her hands,
and during her ten years’ reign as Queen Consort or Queen-Regent no
important appointment was made in the Church without her consent and
approval. George the Second was a Protestant of the Lutheran type,
not so much from conviction, for he never troubled to inquire into
religious matters, as from education and environment. He had no liking
for the Church of England, but as his office compelled him to conform
to it, he did so without difficulty. The established Church was to him
merely a department of the civil service of which he was the head.
He always accepted the Queen’s recommendations, and was as a rule
indifferent about ecclesiastical appointments.
Walpole was quite as Erastian as the King and even less orthodox.
He had no religious convictions, and did not make pretence to any;
provided the bishops were his political supporters, he cared nothing
for their Church views; they might disbelieve in the Trinity, but
they must believe in him; they might reject the Athanasian Creed
(or the Apostles’ Creed too for that matter), but they must profess
the articles of the Whig faith. In those days the High Church clergy
were Tory, and the Low Church were Whig; therefore Walpole appointed
Low Church bishops, but he had as little liking for the one school
of thought as the other. A thorough-going sceptic himself, he had a
contempt for the latitudinarian clergy, regarding them as men who
sought to reconcile the irreconcilable. But he cared nothing about
their views; all he asked was that they should keep their heterodox
opinions to themselves and not write pamphlets or preach sermons which
stirred up strife in the Church, and made trouble for the Government.
Early in his political career the Sacheverel disturbance had given
him a wholesome dread of arousing the _odium theologicum_, and he
determined never to repeat the mistake he made then, but to let the
Church severely alone. In his ecclesiastical patronage he was guided
chiefly by Dr. Gibson, Bishop of London, and he preferred to appoint
safe men, not particularly distinguished in any way, except when he
deferred to the wishes of the Queen, who kept an eye on all Church
appointments.
Caroline might be described as an unorthodox Protestant. Theology
interested her greatly, but her inquiries carried her into the shadowy
regions of universalism, and the refined Arianism of her favourite
chaplain, Dr. Samuel Clarke. She no more believed in an infallible
Bible than in an infallible Pope. The Protestant Dissenters, whom
she favoured with her patronage, would have recoiled in horror from
her broad views had they known them, and would have denounced her
with little less fervour than they denounced popery and prelacy. But
Caroline took care that they should not know her views, and however
freely she might express herself to Dr. Clarke and Mrs. Clayton, and at
her metaphysical discussions, she kept a seal upon her lips in public.
By law it was necessary that she should be a member of the established
Church, and she was careful always to scrupulously conform to its
worship. She had prayers read to her every morning by her chaplains;
on Sundays and holy days she regularly attended the services in one
of the Chapels Royal. So particular was she that, one Sunday when the
King and Queen were too ill to go to church and had to keep their
beds, the chaplain came and read the service to them in their bedroom.
The Queen made a point of receiving the Holy Communion on the great
festivals of the Church’s year, such as Easter and Christmas; and Lady
Cowper comments on the devoutness of her behaviour on these occasions.
Paragraphs like the following figured at regular intervals in the
_Gazette_: “On Christmas Day the King and Queen, the Prince of Wales,
the Princess Royal, the Princesses Amelia and Caroline, with several of
the nobility and other persons of distinction, received the sacrament
in the Chapel Royal of St. James’s”.[97]
Nor were the lesser festivals of the Church overlooked: “On the Feast
of the Epiphany their Majesties, the King and Queen, the Prince of
Wales, and the three eldest Princesses, went to the Chapel Royal,
preceded by the King’s Heralds and Pursuivants-at-Arms, and heard
divine service. His Grace the Duke of Manchester carried the sword
of state to and from chapel for their Majesties, and his Majesty
and the Prince of Wales made their offerings at the altar, of gold,
frankincense, and myrrh, according to annual custom.” The ending of
the day was of a more secular nature. “At night their Majesties played
at hazard with the nobility for the benefit of the groom porter; and
’twas said the King won six hundred guineas, the Queen three hundred
and sixty, Princess Amelia twenty, Princess Caroline ten, the Duke of
Grafton and the Earl of Portmore several thousand.” Even King Charles
the Martyr, the latest addition to the prayer-book kalendar, was not
forgotten by the family who were keeping his grandson from the throne,
for we read: “Yesterday being the anniversary of the martyrdom of King
Charles the First, their Majesties and the Royal Family attended divine
service, and appeared in mourning, as is usual on that day”.[98]
Thus it will be seen that in the matter of outward conformity to
the rites of the established Church the Queen gave no occasion for
cavil. She gave large sums to Church charities, such as £500 at a time
to the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy; she endowed livings
and restored churches, such as Richmond, Greenwich and Kensington,
presenting to Greenwich a fine peal of bells, and to Kensington a
new steeple. She even feigned an interest in missionary work, and
listened patiently to Berkeley when he expounded to her his scheme for
establishing a missionary college in Bermuda in connection with the
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. She did little to forward
it, and he somewhat ungratefully declared that his visits to her
had been so much waste of time, and called her discussions “useless
debates”. Yet, though the Queen did little to convert his heathens, she
remembered Berkeley later, and obtained for him the deanery of Down.
But, with all her outward conformity, Caroline never understood the
peculiar position of the Church of England, nor did she trouble to
understand it. Once, soon after she came to England, Dr. Robinson, then
Bishop of London, who was opposed to Dr. Samuel Clarke’s views, waited
upon her to endeavour to explain the Church’s teaching, but he met with
a repulse. Lady Cowper says: “This day the Bishop of London waited on
my mistress, and desired Mrs. Howard to go into the Princess and say
that he thought it was his duty to wait upon her, as he was Dean of
the Chapel, to satisfy her on any doubts and scruples she might have
in regard to our religion, and explain anything to her which she did
not comprehend. She was a little nettled when Mrs. Howard delivered
this message, and said: ‘Send him away civilly; though he is very
impertinent to suppose that I, who refused to be Empress for the sake
of the Protestant religion, do not understand it fully’.” Caroline’s
words show how little she realised, or sympathised with, the position
of the Church of England; it was to her a Protestant sect--that and
nothing more. The Church of Laud, Juxon, Andrewes, Sancroft and Ken,
the _via media_ between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, did not
appeal to her; in fact she viewed it with dislike. She made no pretence
to impartiality in her patronage, or to holding the balance even
between the different parties in the Church; all her bishops were more
or less of her way of thinking. She would have made Dr. Samuel Clarke
Archbishop of Canterbury when Archbishop Wake died, had it not been for
Bishop Gibson’s temperate remonstrance. He told her that though Clarke
was “the most learned and honest man in her dominions, yet he had one
difficulty--he was not a Christian”. To do Clarke justice, he never
desired a bishopric, and he had doubts about the propriety of accepting
one. Moreover, he preferred his unique position at the court, where he
was, unofficially, the keeper of the Queen’s conscience.
It must be admitted that the Queen in her distribution of
ecclesiastical patronage always recognised the claims of scholarship
and learning, and she took infinite pains to discover the most
deserving men. Among the divines to whom she gave high preferment,
besides Berkeley, were the learned Butler and the judicious Secker,
many years later Archbishop of Canterbury. Secker, when he was Queen’s
chaplain, mentioned to Caroline one day the name of Butler, the famous
author of _The Analogy between Natural and Revealed Religion_. The
Queen said she had thought that he was dead; Secker said: “No, madam,
not dead but buried”. The Queen took the hint, and soon after appointed
Butler Clerk of the Closet. He was thus brought into contact with her,
and she delighted exceedingly in his psychological bent, and would
command him to come to her, on her free evenings, from seven to nine,
to talk philosophy and metaphysics. She caused his name to be put down
for the next vacant bishopric, and on her death-bed she commended
Butler particularly to the King, who carried out his wife’s wishes and
made him Bishop of Durham.
Dr. Thomas Sherlock, a man eminent for his talents and learning, was
much liked by the Queen. She appointed him to the see of Bangor, and
later translated him to Salisbury in succession to his rival Hoadley.
For some time Sherlock filled much the same position with the Queen
that Gibson, Bishop of London, did with Walpole. He was the Queen’s
favourite bishop, and she intended to translate him to London when
Archbishop Wake should die, and Gibson, whom Whiston used to call “the
heir apparent to Canterbury,” should be advanced to the primacy by
Walpole. Between these two eminent prelates, Sherlock and Gibson, there
existed a most unchristian spirit of jealousy, and Gibson besought
Walpole not to allow Sherlock to succeed him in the bishopric of
London. Alas! for the mutability of temporal things: when at last Wake
died, it was not Gibson, but a comparatively unknown bishop, Potter
of Oxford, who succeeded him in the primacy. Before that time arrived
Gibson fell out of favour with Walpole, and Sherlock with the Queen,
for the part they played in securing the rejection of the Quakers’
Relief Bill. Walpole had yielded to the clamour of the Church party so
far as to refuse to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts, but by way
of compensation to the dissenters he wished to carry a bill for the
relief of Quakers. It was a point of conscience with the Quakers to
refuse to pay tithes unless compelled to do so by legal force. This
force was always applied, and they paid. All they asked for now was
that the legal proceedings against them should be made less costly.
Walpole was willing to give them this relief and the Queen supported
him, but the bishops, headed by Gibson and seconded by Sherlock, elated
by their recent victory over the Nonconformists, rose against it to a
man, and though the Bill was carried in the Commons it was rejected
by the Lords. The King was highly indignant and denounced the whole
bench of bishops as “a parcel of black, canting, hypocritical rascals”.
Walpole’s resentment was especially levelled against Gibson, and the
Queen’s against Sherlock. The Queen sent for the latter bishop and
trounced him in terms which recall those which Queen Elizabeth was
said to address to her recalcitrant prelates: “How is it possible,”
said Caroline to Sherlock, “you could be so blind and so silly as to
be running a race of popularity with the Bishop of London among the
clergy, and hope you would rise upon the Bishop of London’s ruins (whom
you hate and wish ruined) when you were going hand in hand with him
in these very paths which you hoped would ruin him?... Are you not
ashamed not to have seen this, and to have been at once in this whole
matter, the Bishop of London’s assistant and enemy--tool and dupe?” She
told the crestfallen prelate that in the present temper of the King
and Prime Minister he could hope for neither London nor Canterbury,
and advised him to go to his diocese and try to live it down. As their
dioceses were the last places where Queen Caroline’s bishops were
generally to be found, this was equivalent to a sentence of banishment.
Many years later Sherlock succeeded Gibson as Bishop of London.
The Queen’s chief adviser in Church matters was her favourite, Mrs.
Clayton. Mrs. Clayton had no pretence to learning, and was ignorant
of the rudiments of theology--though, like many women of her type,
she loved to pose as an authority on theological questions. She had
imbibed the Arian principles then fashionable at court, and could
repeat parrot-wise the shibboleth of her party. As she held much the
same views as the Queen (though without her saving graces of learning
and common sense), they often settled between them who should succeed
to the vacant deaneries and bishoprics. Walpole came often in conflict
with Mrs. Clayton over Church appointments, for she was always urging
the Queen to prefer extreme men of heterodox views who gave much
trouble to the Government by their indiscreet utterances. At last,
after several experiences of the vagaries of these bellicose divines,
Walpole remonstrated so strongly that Mrs. Clayton’s recommendations
were chiefly confined to the Irish Church. Here for years she appointed
practically whom she would. The influence of the Queen’s woman of the
bedchamber was well known to aspiring divines, and she was overwhelmed
with letters from parsons and prelates pining for preferment. Many of
these letters (preserved in the Sundon correspondence) are couched in
the most cringing tone, and are full of the grossest flattery. The
deans and bishops _in esse_ or _in posse_ generally followed up their
letters by making her little presents; for instance, we find the Bishop
of Cork sending her a dozen bottles of “green usquebaugh, sealed with
the figure of St. Patrick on black wax,” and another prelate a suit of
fine Irish linen.
Among Mrs. Clayton’s Irish _protégés_ was Dr. Clayton, a kinsman of her
husband, for whom she procured, despite the protest of the Primate of
Ireland, the bishopric of Clogher. Bishop Clayton made several attacks
on the doctrine of the Trinity, and once proposed in the Irish House
of Lords to abolish from the prayer-book the Nicene and Athanasian
Creeds, in a speech of which one of his colleagues remarked, “it made
his ears tingle”. Dr. Clayton was not much of a scholar, and less of
a theologian, and he adapted his views to meet the approval of his
patroness. The letters of this spiritual pastor to Queen Caroline’s
woman of the bedchamber are models of subserviency. Once Mrs. Clayton
rebuked him for a sermon he had preached on the death of Charles the
First, which seemed to her to praise the King overmuch. He at once
wrote to express his regret, and said he would tone it down by adding
“bred up with notions of despotic government under the pernicious
influence of his father”. He placed his patronage, like his opinions,
at her disposal, and kept her informed of everything that went on in
Ireland--acting, in fact, as a sort of spy in the court interest.
His complaisance was rewarded by his patroness, who caused him to be
successively advanced to the wealthier sees of Killala and Cork. Most
effusive was his gratitude: “Mrs. Clayton cannot command what I will
not perform,” he writes, and again: “Could you but form to yourself the
image of another person endued with the same steadiness of friendship,
liveliness of conversation, soundness of judgment, and a desire of
making everybody happy that is about her, which all the world can see
in you, but yourself, you would then pardon my forwardness in desiring
to keep up a correspondence.... If I am free from any vice, I think it
is that of ingratitude.”[99]
Bishop Clayton’s view of the rules that should govern ecclesiastical
preferment are worth quoting. The particular candidate he was
recommending was a son of the Earl of Abercorn, who had taken holy
orders. “What occurs to me at present,” he writes to Mrs. Clayton, “is
the consideration of ecclesiastical preferments in a political view.
It has not been customary for persons either of birth or fortune, to
breed up their children to the Church, by which means, when preferment
in the Church is given by their Majesties, there is seldom any one
obliged but the very person to whom it is given, having no relatives
either in the House of Lords or Commons that are gratified or are
kept in dependence thereby. The only way to remedy which is by giving
extraordinary encouragements to persons of birth and interest whenever
they seek for ecclesiastical preferment, which will encourage others
of the same quality to come into the Church, and may thereby render
ecclesiastical preferments of the same use to their Majesties as
civil employments.”[100] Of the higher interests of the Church or of
religion, it will be noted, this servile prelate makes no mention; but
the fear of the world and the bedchamber woman was always before his
eyes.
Mrs. Clayton had a large number of poor and obscure relatives, many of
whom benefited at the expense of the Church. One of her nieces, Dorothy
Dyves, whom she had made a maid of honour to the Princess Royal, fell
in love with the Princess’s young chaplain, the Reverend Charles
Chevenix, who was not unmindful of the avenues to preferment thus
opened to him. Mrs. Clayton at first refused her consent: she did not
consider a poor chaplain good enough for her niece, but Chevenix made
the following appeal to her:--
“My salary as chaplain to her Royal Highness will, I hope, be thought
a reasonable earnest of some future preferment, and, could I ever be
happy enough to obtain your protection, I might flatter myself that
I should one day owe to your goodness what I can never expect from
my own merit--such a competency of fortune as may make Miss Dyves’s
choice a little less unequal. My birth, I may venture to add, is that
of a gentleman. My father long served, and at last was killed, in a
post where he was very well known--a post that is oftener an annual
subsistence than a large provision for a family, and that small
provision was unfortunately lost in the year ’20. One of my brothers
is now in the army, a profession not thought below people of the first
rank; another, indeed, keeps a shop, but I hope that circumstance
rather deserves compassion than contempt.”[101]
Mrs. Clayton was touched by the frankness of this appeal, but the shop
remained an obstacle for some time. At last she gave her consent.
Chevenix married Dorothy Dyves, and then it was only a question of a
little time for the chaplain to blossom into a bishop. He was in due
course advanced to the see of Killaloe, and afterwards to the richer
one of Waterford. Truly Mrs. Clayton was, as her niece describes
her, one of the most “worthy and generous of aunts”. No one could
be more mindful of family claims. Her patronage was not entirely
ecclesiastical, though she made the Church her speciality; she found
for her brother-in-law a comfortable post in the civil service; she
obtained for her nephews good military and civil appointments, and her
nieces were all made maids of honour. Lord Pembroke sent her a valuable
present--a marble table--and obtained something for a poor relative.
Lord Pomfret gave her a pair of diamond ear-rings, worth £1,400; a
very good investment, for he got in return the lucrative appointment
of Master of the Horse. Mrs. Clayton, or Lady Sundon as she had then
become, was very proud of these diamond ear-rings, and appeared with
them at one of the Queen’s drawing-rooms. This roused the ire of old
Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who had once filled a similar position
with Queen Anne. “How can that woman,” said Duchess Sarah in a loud
voice, so that all around might hear, “how can that woman have the
impudence to go about with that bribe in her ear?” “Madam,” replied
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who was standing by, “how can people know
where there is wine to be sold, unless there is a sign hung out?”
It can well be imagined that a system of ecclesiastical patronage
conducted on these lines did not result in advantage to the Church.
Walpole appointed bishops for purely political reasons, Mrs. Clayton
for monetary and family consideration, the Queen because their views
coincided with her own. Yet the Queen, though sometimes misled by her
favourites, who traded on her ignorance of the English Church, honestly
tried to appoint the best men according to her lights. The learning
and ability of her bishops were undeniable; their only drawback was
that they did not believe in the doctrines of the Church of which they
were appointed the chief pastors. Without entering into theological
controversy, it may be safely laid down that those who direct an
institution ought to believe in the institution itself. This is
precisely what most of Caroline’s bishops did not do; their energies
were directed into other channels, and their enthusiasms reserved for
other pursuits. Some of her bishops, notably those who were appointed
to sees in Ireland and Wales, never went near their dioceses at all,
while others treated the cardinal doctrines of Christianity with
tacit contempt, if not open unbelief. The indifference of the bishops
filtered down through the lower ranks of the clergy, and gradually
influenced the whole tone of the established Church; if the bishops
would not do their duty they could hardly blame their clergy for
failing in theirs. Moreover, the policy of the Whig Government, in
packing the Episcopal Bench solely with its own partisans, resulted in
the bishops being out of touch with their clergy, for the majority of
the parsons, especially in the country districts, were Tory, and clung
to their political faith as firmly as to their religious convictions.
[Illustration: BENJAMIN HOADLEY, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER.
_From a Painting by Mrs. Hoadly in the National Portrait Gallery._]
At no period of her history has the Church of England been in greater
danger than she was from her own bishops and clergy in the reign of
George the Second. On the one hand was a party embittered by defeat,
shut out from all hope of preferment, and inflamed by a spirit of
intolerance in things political and ecclesiastical; on the other was
a party just as intolerant in reality, but hiding its intolerance
under the cloak of broad and liberal views, and with leaders using
the intellect and learning they undoubtedly possessed, to subvert, or
at least to set aside, the doctrines of the Church they had sworn to
believe. Indifference in practice quickly succeeded indifference in
belief, and herefrom may be traced most of the ills which afflicted
the Church of England during the eighteenth century. It was no wonder,
when the established Church was spiritually dead, that earnest-minded
men, disgusted at this condition of things, and hopeless of remedying
it, set up religious bodies of their own. The growth of Methodism
in the eighteenth century was directly due to the shortcomings of
the Church, which had lost its hold on the masses of the people. The
year after Queen Caroline’s death, in 1738, John Wesley returned from
Georgia, and, aided by his brother Charles, began the mission which was
attended with such marvellous results. True, the Wesleys, in words at
least, never wavered in their adherence to the Church of England,
but the discouragement they met with from the bishops and the often
ill-directed zeal of their followers led in time to the inevitable
separation, which was followed later by schisms among the Methodists
themselves.
One of the most typical of the Georgian bishops was Hoadley, who became
successively Bishop of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury and Winchester,
“cringing from bishopric to bishopric”. Hoadley’s career was a striking
illustration of the superiority of mind over body. When he was an
undergraduate at Cambridge he had an illness which crippled him for
life; he was obliged to walk with a crutch, and had to preach in a
kneeling posture. His appearance was exceedingly unprepossessing,
but he completely overcame these natural disadvantages by the sheer
force of his will. He had taken up the Church as a profession, and
from the professional point of view he certainly succeeded in it;
but he does not seem to have believed in the teaching of the Church
whose principles he had nominally accepted. He was a conformist simply
because it paid him to conform. Even a favourable biographer writes:
“So far indeed was Hoadley from adhering strictly to the doctrines of
the Church that it is a little to be wondered at on what principles he
continued throughout life to profess conformity”.
Hoadley early threw in his lot with the Whig party, and in Queen
Anne’s reign was looked upon as the leader of the Low Church divines,
and a staunch upholder of Whig principles. He did not obtain any
considerable preferment until George the First came to the throne, when
he was made a royal chaplain, and soon after advanced to the bishopric
of Bangor. He did not once visit his bishopric during the whole of his
six years tenure of the see, but remained in London, as the leader
of the extreme latitudinarian party, which, since the Princess of
Wales’s patronage, had become the fashionable one, and offered the best
prospects of promotion. He therefore broke with the orthodox section of
the Low Church party, who came to regard him with little less dislike
than High Churchmen. Hoadley’s love of polemics soon brought him into
conflict with Convocation, and led to what was known as the “Bangorian
controversy”. The bishop had preached a sermon before King George the
First on “The nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ,” in which he
denied that there was any such thing as a visible Church of Christ,
or Church authority. Convocation censured the sermon, and would have
proceeded to further measures against the recalcitrant bishop had
not the Government, by an arbitrary exercise of power, suspended it
altogether. Convocation thus prorogued was not summoned again until the
middle of the reign of Queen Victoria. It would weary and not edify to
enter into the details of this dreary Bangorian controversy; the tracts
and pamphlets written upon it numbered nearly two hundred, and the heat
and bitterness were such as only a religious dispute could engender.
Hoadley did not heed his ecclesiastical enemies, for he had staunch
friends at court; he enjoyed not only the favour of the King and the
Princess of Wales, but had the ear of Mrs. Clayton, soon to become a
dispenser of patronage. His letters to her are some of the most fulsome
preserved in her correspondence. “I compare you in my thoughts,” he
writes, “with others of the same kind, and I see with pleasure, so
great a superiority to the many, that I think I can hardly express my
sense of it strongly enough. Compared with them therefore, I may justly
speak of you as one of the superior species, and you will supply the
comparison if I do not always express it, and not think me capable of
offering incense, which I know you are not capable of receiving.”[102]
In 1721 Hoadley was translated from Bangor to the richer see of
Hereford, and two years later to Salisbury, which was wealthier still.
At Salisbury he so far remembered his episcopal duties as to deliver a
primary charge to his clergy, a poor composition. He was not content
with Salisbury, and cast envious eyes upon the rich see of Durham,
which then maintained a prince-bishop. Walpole, who disliked him as
being a _protégé_ of Mrs. Clayton’s, passed him over in favour of Dr.
Talbot, Bishop of Oxford.
Hoadley owed much of his influence with the Whig party to the fact
that he had always shown himself very friendly to Dissenters, and was
in favour of abolishing the iniquitous Test and Corporation Acts and
other disabilities under which they laboured; the animosity of his
enemies arose quite as much from this fact as from their dislike of
his opinions. The Protestant Nonconformists were the backbone of the
Whig party, and the staunchest supporters of the House of Hanover;
they therefore, not unnaturally, expected, in return for their great
political services, that the disabilities which pressed upon them
should be removed. From time to time they gained certain points, and
the Acts were rendered practically innocuous by annual indemnities;
but still they disfigured the Statute Book, and to this the Dissenters
rightly objected. In 1730 a determined attempt was made by the
Dissenters throughout England to secure the repeal of the Corporation
and Test Acts, and they resolved to present a monster petition to
Parliament praying that the matter should be proceeded with forthwith.
This action put the Government into a position of considerable
difficulty, and it was entirely opposed to Walpole’s policy of letting
sleeping dogs lie. Though both he and the Queen (we will leave the King
out of the question, as he does not count) had the fullest sympathy
with the aspirations of Dissenters; yet they saw that to raise this
question at the present time would be to fan the smouldering embers
of religious controversy, and would put new heart and strength into
the Opposition. The clergy of the established Church, almost to a
man, would be against them, and, with a general election impending,
that would mean that the Government would have an active enemy in
every parish and hamlet in the kingdom. Such a reform, though just and
reasonable in itself, would have the effect of alienating a number of
the Government’s lukewarm supporters, and would give an opportunity for
the Roman Catholics to assert themselves and claim relief also, for
they were far more cruelly oppressed than the Protestant Dissenters.
Walpole knew that Hoadley had influence with the Dissenters, and he
and the Queen talked it over, and resolved to ask Hoadley to see the
heads of the dissenting party and endeavour to persuade them not to
bring forward their petition. As Walpole had given offence to Hoadley
by refusing him Durham, the Queen undertook this delicate mission. She
sent for the bishop, and used all her eloquence to bring him round to
her way of thinking. She dwelt on her admiration of his principles
and writings; she said it was in his power to be of great use to the
Government, and to place her, the Queen, under a personal debt of
gratitude, which she would be slow to forget. She pointed out the
danger that would arise from the religious question being raised at the
present time, and she therefore desired him to ask the Dissenters to
postpone their request. Hoadley demurred a good deal, possibly because
the hint of promotion was not definite enough, and pointed out that as
he had always urged the repeal of the offending Acts, he could hardly
turn round now and eat his words. But he said he would feel the popular
pulse, and if it appeared that the present was an inopportune moment
for raising the question, he would endeavour to persuade the Dissenters
to postpone it to a more convenient season.
Soon after this interview a report was promulgated by Walpole to
the effect that “the Queen had sent for the Bishop of Salisbury and
convinced him that this request of the Dissenters was so unreasonable
that he had promised her not to support it”. This report had the very
opposite effect to what was intended. It caused the Dissenters to be
suspicious of their friend, and consequently tended to nullify any
advice he might give them. The bishop went to Walpole in a rage and
said he could be of no service in the matter whatever, and that so far
from persuading the Dissenters from bringing forward their petition, he
should now encourage them to do so. Walpole tried to soothe Hoadley by
fair words, but finding him not amenable to them, he gave him a strong
hint that if he persisted in his intention, he would ruin any chances
of promotion he might have from the Government or the Queen. This
brought the bishop to his bearings; he had more conferences with the
Queen on the subject, and was ultimately bought over to complaisance
by the promise of the next reversion of the see of Winchester. The
Dissenters fell into a trap. From all over England they sent delegates
to London, who on their part entrusted the negotiations with the
Government to a committee of London Nonconformists. As this committee
was composed of tradesmen in the City, or lawyers eager for promotion,
Walpole was able to buy them over singly and collectively, and so,
betrayed by the bishop and their delegates, the Dissenters went to the
wall.
Hoadley had the misfortune to please neither the Government nor the
Dissenters, for neither trusted him; but he probably did not mind, as
he received what he worked for--the see of Winchester. Soon after his
translation to Winchester he proceeded, after the approved fashion of
Mrs. Clayton’s favourites, to show his independence and disburden his
soul, by publishing a pamphlet called _A Plain Account of the Nature
and End of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper_. This set the clergy
by the ears, and they promptly started a heresy hunt, to the great
discomfiture of the Government responsible for Hoadley’s promotion.
An answer was written to the pamphlet by Dr. Brett, in which Hoadley
was attacked with violence and bitterness. The King, who objected to
Hoadley, asked the Queen what she thought of Brett’s answer, which he
had much enjoyed reading, not because of the nature of the controversy,
for which he cared little, but because of the personal abuse of a
prelate whom he disliked. The Queen, who was very much annoyed at
Hoadley’s indiscretion, however much she might agree with his opinions,
began to explain her views on the subject of the controversy. But the
King cut her short testily, and told her, “She always loved talking
of such nonsense and things she knew nothing of;” adding, that “if
it were not for such foolish persons loving to talk of those things
when they were written, the fools who wrote upon them would never
think of publishing their nonsense, and disturbing the Government with
impertinent disputes that nobody of any sense ever troubled himself
about.” Walpole had evidently entered his protest too, aimed not only
at Hoadley but at Mrs. Clayton. The Queen, who made it a rule never to
oppose her liege in anything, bowed assent and said: “Sir, I only did
it to let Lord Hervey know that his friend’s book had not met with that
general approbation he had pretended”.
“A pretty fellow for a friend,” said the King, turning to Hervey, who
was standing by. “Pray, what is it that charms you in him? His pretty
limping gait?” (and then he acted the bishop’s lameness) “or his nasty,
stinking breath?--phaugh!--or his silly laugh, when he grins in your
face for nothing, and shows his nasty rotten teeth? Or is it his great
honesty that charms your lordship--his asking a thing of me for one
man, and, when he came to have it in his own power to bestow, refusing
the Queen to give it to the very man for whom he had asked it? Or do
you admire his conscience that makes him now put out a book that, till
he was Bishop of Winchester, for fear his conscience might hurt his
preferment, he kept locked up in his chest? Is his conscience so much
improved beyond what it was when he was Bishop of Bangor, or Hereford,
or Salisbury (for this book, I hear, was written so long ago)? Or was
it that he would risk losing a shilling a-year more whilst there was
nothing better to be got than what he had? My lord, I am very sorry you
choose your friends so ill; but I cannot help saying, if the Bishop
of Winchester is your friend, you have a great puppy and a very dull
fellow, and a great rascal for your friend. It is a very pretty thing
for such scoundrels, when they are raised by favour so much above their
desert, to be talking and writing their stuff, to give trouble to the
Government that has shown them that favour; and very modest, and a
canting hypocritical knave to be crying, ‘_The Kingdom of Christ is
not of this world_,’ at the same time that he, as Christ’s ambassador
receives £6,000 or £7,000 a year. But he is just the same thing in the
Church that he is in the Government, and as ready to receive the best
pay for preaching the Bible, though he does not believe a word of it,
as he is to take favours from the Crown, though, by his republican
spirit and doctrine, he would be glad to abolish its power.”[103]
Having delivered himself of this lengthy exordium, the King stopped and
looked at the Queen, as much as to say who dare gainsay him. She had
not been able to get a word in edgeways, but by smiling and nodding she
tried to signify her approval of everything her lord and master said.
This is the only instance on record we have of the King’s direct
interest in ecclesiastical affairs, for, during the Queen’s lifetime,
Church patronage remained in her hands, and even after her death her
expressed wishes were carried out. But when all these were fulfilled,
many aspiring divines, since the Queen and Lady Sundon were no longer
available, paid their court to the King’s mistress, Madame de Walmoden,
afterwards Countess of Yarmouth, and, for the rest of George the
Second’s reign, the royal road to bishoprics ran through the apartments
of the mistress.
FOOTNOTES TO BOOK III, CHAPTER X:
[97] _London Gazette_, 27th December, 1729.
[98] _Daily Courant_, 31st January, 1733.
[99] _Sundon Correspondence._ The Bishop of Killala to Mrs. Clayton,
Dublin, 17th April, 1731.
[100] _Ibid._, 19th March, 1730.
[101] _Sundon Correspondence._ The Rev. Charles Chevenix to Lady
Sundon, London, 24th November, 1734.
[102] _Sundon Correspondence._ Bishop Hoadley to Mrs. Clayton [undated].
[103] Hervey’s _Memoirs_.