eir lives." A large number of prelates were mere Whig
partizans with no higher aim than that of promotion. The levees of the
Ministers were crowded with lawn sleeves. A Welsh bishop avowed that he
had seen his diocese but once, and habitually resided at the lakes of
Westmoreland. The system of pluralities which enabled a single clergyman
to hold at the same time a number of livings turned the wealthier and
more learned of the clergy into absentees, while the bulk of them were
indolent, poor, and without social consideration.

[Sidenote: The clergy lose political power.]

Their religious inactivity told necessarily on their political
influence; but what most weakened their influence was the severance
between the bulk of the priesthood and its natural leaders. The bishops,
who were now chosen exclusively from among the small number of Whig
ecclesiastics, were left politically powerless by the estrangement and
hatred of their clergy; while the clergy themselves, drawn by their
secret tendencies to Jacobitism, stood sulkily apart from any active
interference with public affairs. The prudence of the Whig statesmen
aided to maintain this ecclesiastical immobility. The Sacheverell riots
had taught them what terrible forces of bigotry and fanaticism lay
slumbering under this thin crust of inaction, and they were careful to
avoid all that could rouse these forces into life. When the Dissenters
pressed for a repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Walpole openly
avowed his dread of awaking the passions of religious hate by such a
measure, and satisfied them by an annual act of indemnity for any breach
of these penal statutes. By a complete abstinence from all
ecclesiastical questions no outlet was left for the bigotry of the
people at large, while a suspension of the meetings of Convocation
deprived the clergy of their natural centre of agitation and opposition.

[Sidenote: The Whigs and the Crown.]

And while the Church thus ceased to be a formidable enemy, the Crown
became a friend. Under Anne the throne had regained much of the older
influence which it lost through William's unpopularity; but under the
two sovereigns who followed Anne the power of the Crown lay absolutely
dormant. They were strangers, to whom loyalty in its personal sense was
impossible; and their character as nearly approached insignificance as
it is possible for human character to approach it. Both were honest and
straightforward men, who frankly accepte