s so bad a dean.
Under his administration Christchurch was in confusion, scandalous
altercations took place, opprobrious words were exchanged; and there
was reason to fear that the great Tory college would be ruined by the
tyranny of the great Tory doctor. He was soon removed to the bishopric
of Rochester, which was then always united with the deanery of
Westminster. Still higher dignities seemed to be before him. For, though
there were many able men on the episcopal bench, there was none who
equalled or approached him in parliamentary talents. Had his party
continued in power, it is not improbable that he would have been raised
to the archbishopric of Canterbury. The more splendid his prospects,
the more reason he had to dread the accession of a family which was
well-known to be partial to the Whigs. There is every reason to believe
that he was one of those politicians who hoped that they might be able,
during the life of Anne, to prepare matters in such a way that at her
decease there might be little difficulty in setting aside the Act of
Settlement and placing the Pretender on the throne. Her sudden death
confounded the projects of these conspirators. Atterbury, who wanted no
kind of courage, implored his confederates to proclaim James III., and
offered to accompany the heralds in lawn sleeves. But he found even
the bravest soldiers of his party irresolute, and exclaimed, not, it is
said, without interjections which ill became the mouth of a father of
the church, that the best of all causes and the most precious of all
moments had been pusillanimously thrown away. He acquiesced in what he
could not prevent, took the oaths to the House of Hanover, and at the
coronation officiated with the outward show of zeal, and did his best to
ingratiate himself with the royal family. But his servility was requited
with cold contempt. No creature is so revengeful as a proud man who
has humbled himself in vain. Atterbury became the most factious and
pertinacious of all the opponents of the government. In the House of
Lords his oratory, lucid, pointed, lively, and set off with every grace
of pronunciation and of gesture, extorted the attention and admiration
even of a hostile majority. Some of the most remarkable protests which
appear in the journals of the peers were drawn up by him; and in some of
the bitterest of those pamphlets which called on the English to stand up
for their country against the aliens who had come from beyond the