n
equally marked by love of money and neglect of honour; for his choice
was the niece of the Duchess of Kendal, the duchess being notoriously
the king's mistress, and Chesterfield obviously marrying the niece as
being a probable heiress of her aunt, and also of bringing to her
husband some share of the royal favour. He was disappointed, as he
deserved, in the legacy; and seems to have been not much happier in the
wife, who brought him no heir, and was apparently a compound of pride
and dulness. He was more fortunate, however, in earning the political
favour of the old Duchess of Marlborough, who left him L20,000 in her
will.

Still, with all the political chicanery, and all the official squabbles
of parliament, those were sportive times; and Walpole records the delay
of the debate on the bill for naturalizing the Jews, as arising from the
adjournment of the house, to attend private theatricals at Drury Lane,
where Delaval had hired the theatre to exhibit himself in Othello!
Walpole, in his pleasant exaggeration, says, that "the crowd of people
of fashion was so great, that the footman's gallery was hung with blue
ribands."

For some reason, which must now sleep with the author, he had an
inveterate aversion to Seeker, then Bishop of Oxford, and afterwards
translated to Canterbury. "The King," said he, "would not go to chapel
because the Bishop of Oxford was to preach before him. The ministers did
not insist upon his hearing the sermon, as they had lately upon his
making him Dean of St. Paul's."

Character and popularity do not always depend upon the circumstances
which alone ought to fix either. He then proceeds to hew the right
reverend lord in pieces. "This bishop," says he, "who had been bred a
Presbyterian and man-midwife, which sect and profession he had dropt for
a season, while he was President of a Free-thinking Club, had been
converted by Bishop Talbot, whose relation he married, and his faith
_settled_ in a prebend of Durham, whence he was transplanted by the
queen, and advanced by her (who had no aversion to a medley of
religions, which she always compounded into a scheme of heresy of her
own) to the living of St. James's, vacant by the death of her favourite
_Arian_, Dr. Clarke, and afterwards to the bishoprics of Bristol and
Oxford."

Then, probably for the purpose of relieving the dark hues of this
desperate portrait, he throws in a touch of praise, and tells us that
Secker grew surprisingly popular