(93) William Stanhope, first Earl of Harrington of that family.

(94) Coxe states, that such was the indignation which the perusal of this paper excited, that, when Sir Robert espoused Charles Stanhope’s interest, the King rejected the application with some expressions of resentment, and declared that no consideration should induce him to assign to him any place of trust or honour.- E.

(95) Thomas Holles Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, lord chamberlain, then secretary of state, and lastly, first lord of the treasury under George ii.; the same King to whom he had been so obnoxious in the preceding reign.  He was obliged by George iii. to resign his post.

(96) “Notice was also formally given that no persons who paid their respects to the Prince and Princess of Wales would be received at court; and they were deprived of their guard, and of all other marks of distinction.”  Coxe, vol. i. p. 132.-E.

CHAPTER IV.

Bill of Pains and Penalties against Bishop Atterbury-Projected
Assassination of Sir Robert Walpole-Revival of the Order of the
Bath-Instance of George the First’s good-humoured Presence of
Mind.

As this trifling work is a miscellany of detached recollections, I will, ere I quit the article of George I., mention two subjects of very unequal import, which belong peculiarly to his reign.  The first was the deprivation of Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester.  Nothing more offensive to men of priestly principles could easily have happened:  yet, as in a country of which the constitution was founded on rational and liberal grounds, and where thinking men had so recently exerted themselves to explode the prejudices attached to the persons of Kings and churchmen, it was impossible to defend the Bishop’s treason but by denying it; or to condemn his condemnation, but by supposing illegalities in the process:  both were vehemently urged by his faction, as his innocence was pleaded by himself.  That punishment and expulsion from his country may stagger the virtue even of a good man, and exasperate him against his country, is perhaps natural, and humanity ought to Pity it.  But whatever were the prepossessions of his friends in his favour, charity must now believe that Atterbury was always an ambitious, turbulent priest, attached to the House of Stuart, and consequently no friend to the civil and religious liberties of his country; or it must be acknowledged, that the disappointment of his ambition by the Queen’s death, and the proscription of his ministerial associates, had driven on attempts to restore the expelled family in hopes of realizing his aspiring views.  His letters published by Nichols breathe the impetuous spirit of his youth.  His exclamation on the Queen’s death, when he offered to proclaim the Pretender at Charing Cross in pontificalibus, and swore, on not being supported, that there was the best cause in