with the invading army of the Pretender, then on its march southward from Edinburgh.  The suspect, who was wholly innocent, was taken to London and kept in custody for nearly a year before being discharged, after which, by way of a slight redress, a letter of reprimand for his trop de zele was sent by direction of Lord Carteret to the militant dignitary.  But the desired end was nevertheless attained, and Dr. Sterne succeeded in crowning the edifice of his ecclesiastical honours.[1]

[Footnote 1:  A once-familiar piece of humorous verse describes the upset of a coach containing a clerical pluralist: 

  “When struggling on the ground was seen
  A Rector, Vicar, Canon, Dean;
  You might have thought the coach was full,
  But no! ’twas only Dr. Bull.”

Dr. Jacques Sterne, however, might have been thrown out of one of the more capacious vehicles of the London General Omnibus Company, with almost the same misleading effect upon those who only heard of the mishap.]

There can be little doubt that patronage extended by such an uncle to such a nephew received its full equivalent in some way or other, and indeed the Memoir gives us a clue to the mode in which payment was made.  “My uncle,” writes Sterne, describing their subsequent rupture, “quarrelled with me because I would not write paragraphs in the newspapers; though he was a party-man, I was not, and detested such dirty work, thinking it beneath me.  From that time he became my bitterest enemy.”  The date of this quarrel cannot be precisely fixed; but we gather from an autograph letter (now in the British Museum) from Sterne to Archdeacon Blackburne that by the year 1750 the two men had for some time ceased to be on friendly terms.  Probably, however, the breach occurred subsequently to the rebellion of ’45, and it may be that it arose out of the excess of partisan zeal which Dr. Sterne developed in that year, and which his nephew very likely did not, in his opinion, sufficiently share.  But this is quite consistent with the younger man’s having up to that time assisted the elder in his party polemics.  He certainly speaks in his “Letters” of his having “employed his brains for an ungrateful person,” and the remark is made in a way and in a connexion which seems to imply that the services rendered to his uncle were mainly literary.  If so, his declaration that he “would not write paragraphs in the newspapers” can only mean that he would not go on writing them.  Be this as it may, however, it is certain that the Archdeacon for some time found his account in maintaining friendly relations with his nephew, and that during that period he undoubtedly did a good deal for his advancement.  Sterne was ordained deacon by the Bishop of Lincoln in March, 1736, only three months after taking his B.A. degree, and took priest’s orders in August, 1738, whereupon his uncle immediately obtained for him the living of Sutton-on-the-Forest, into which