'1 
 

 
 ^. ■^v^,.^^♦ 
 
 L I B R_AFIY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N I VERS ITY 
 
 or ILLl N015
 
 A LETTER 
 
 SIR ROBERT INGLIS, BART., M.P.
 
 A LETTER 
 
 TO 
 
 SIR ROBERT INGLIS, BART., M.P., 
 
 ON CERTAIN STATEMENTS 
 
 m AI ARTICLE OF THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, No. 193, ENTITLED 
 "BISHOP PHILLPOTTS." 
 
 Bif HENRY, LORD BISHOP OF EXETER. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
 
 1852.
 
 Publications of the Bishop of Exeter. 
 
 Letter to tlie Freeliolders of the County of Durham, on the 
 
 Proceedings of the County Meeting holden on October 2lst, 1819, and par- 
 ticularly on the Speech of Mr. Lambton, M.P. 8vo. Is. 
 
 Letter to Mr. Canning on the Bill of 1825, for removing the 
 
 Disqualifications of Roman Catholics, and on his Speech in support of the 
 same. Svo. 3s. 6rf. 
 
 Second Letter to Mr. Canning on the Present Position of the 
 
 Eoman Catholic Question. Svo. Is. Qd. 
 
 Letters from King George the Third to Lord Kenyon on the 
 
 Coronation Oath, with his Lordship's Answers; and Letters of Mr. Pitt to 
 the King, and His Majesty's Answers, previous to the Dissolution of the 
 Ministry" in 1801. Svo. Is. &d. 
 
 Letters to the late Charles Butler, on the Theological parts of 
 
 his Book of the Eoman Catholic Church ; with Remarks on certain Works 
 of Dr. Milner and Dr. Liugard, and Dr. Doyle. Svo. 16s. 
 
 Charges delivered in 1836, 1845, and 1848, Svo. 2s. each. 
 
 Letter on the Observance of the Rubric. r2mo. Qd. 
 
 An Ordination Sermon. i2mo. is. 
 
 Sermon in behalf of the National Society; with a Pastoral 
 
 Letter. 12mo. Qd. 
 
 Letter on the Missionary Exertions of the Church. Svo. &d. 
 Reply to Lord John Russell's Letter to the Remonstrance of 
 
 the Bishops against the Appointment of Dr. Hampden. Svo. Is. 
 
 Letter on Scripture Readers. Svo. is. 6d. 
 
 Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury on the Case of the 
 
 Rev. James Shore. Svo. Is. 
 
 Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury on the Gorham Case. 
 Svo. 3s. 6c?. 
 
 Letter to the Churchwardens of Brampford Speke. Svo. is. 
 
 Speech on the Marriages Bill. Svo. is. Qd. 
 
 Pastoral Letter on the Present State of the Church. Svo. 4s. 
 
 Acts of the Exeter Diocesan Synod. Svo. 2s. 6rf. 
 
 Letter on certain Statements of the Archdeacon of Middlesex. 
 
 Svo. Is. Qd. 
 Letter on the Necessity of Episcopal Ordination. Svo. 2s. M. 
 
 Letter on certain Statements in the Edinburgh Review, 
 No. 193. Svo. 
 
 Sermons preached at the Visitation of 1845. i2mo. 6s. M. 
 
 Acts of the Synod of Exeter. By Authority. 1851. Svo.
 
 A LETTER, 
 
 Sj-c. Sfc. 
 
 My dear Sir Robert, 
 
 Bishopstowe, 20th Jan., 1852. 
 
 I THANK you for specifying to me the time 
 and place of a conversation which I held with you 
 on the subject of " the Roman Catholic Question " — 
 it was, you say, about the end of August (1 rather 
 think early in September), 1828, "when we met 
 " casually in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh." In that 
 conversation you may remember that our opinions 
 differed — that I expressed my persuasion that con- 
 cession could not be long deferred, and that the 
 friends of the Church ought to do their utmost to 
 devise such securities as might make it as little 
 dangerous as possible. In expressing your dissent, 
 you said then (what I believe you had often said to 
 me and others before), " The only security is 
 " exclusion." 
 
 A recollection of this conversation, as well as the 
 long friendship with you which I have had the 
 happiness to enjoy (now for forty-eight years, as you 
 kindly remind me), has induced me to ask — what you 
 
 B 2
 
 ( 4 ) 
 
 have most readily given — your consent to my ad- 
 dressing publicly a Letter to you on certain state- 
 ments made in the number of the Edinburgh Review 
 which has just appeared, charging me, inter alia, 
 with base and treacherous conduct relative to the 
 measure which was the subject of that conversation. 
 
 I have not read the Review myself, for I make it 
 my rule never to read anonymous attacks on me. 
 But seeing casually the Advertisement which an- 
 nounced my name, in the list of articles of the recent 
 number, I desired a friend, on whose judgment I 
 could rely, to inform me whether there are in it any 
 matters which require my notice. He has stated to 
 me, that there are two such matters — fii'st, that 
 which I have mentioned ; and secondly, what relates 
 to a trial for libel at Exeter in March, 1848, arising 
 out of a speech made by Lord Seymour to his con- 
 stituents at Totnes. 
 
 I will consider these two particulars separately- — 
 and, first, that which is most interesting to us both — 
 my conduct in respect to the Statute of 1829, com- 
 monly called " The Roman Catholic Relief Act." 
 
 The Review, I am told, contains the following 
 passage : — 
 
 " The Government, which carried Catholic Eman- 
 " cipation, was a Tory Government; and Tory states- 
 " men naturally desired to avert the loss of that 
 *' clerical support, on which their power had so 
 '* mainly depended : they knew the prejudices of the 
 ** Clergy, and felt how much they would be shocked 
 " by the passing of the measure ; and they reasonably 
 " wished to secure the support of that one of its 
 
 ^ 
 
 UIUC
 
 ( 5 ) 
 
 " most prominent ecclesiastical opponents, ivho had 
 " opposed it especicdly on religious grounds, and had 
 " most successfully enlisted clerical passions against it. 
 " His conversion and his arguments, it was hoped, 
 " might convince, or at least silence, many, who 
 " hitherto had hung so fondly on his words. 
 " Accordingly the conversion of Dr Phillpotts was 
 "effected at this critical juncture. He wrote* in 
 " favour of the Bill, and he voted for the author of 
 " the Bill, at the memorable Oxford election of 
 " 1829." 
 
 The last part of the assertion in the preceding pas- 
 sage is true, and I have no difficulty in stating the 
 reason for which my vote was so given. 
 
 It had been, as it still is, the honourable distinction 
 of the University of Oxford, Avhen once it has elected 
 a Representative in Parliament, to continue to him 
 the undisturbed possession of his seat, unless he 
 should forfeit the confidence of his constituents by 
 some flagrant departure from the principles which 
 ought to actuate public men. Uj^on this occasion, 
 the question, which was to decide the votes of the 
 electors, was not whether they approved the Bill 
 which had been passed, but whether Sir Robert Peel 
 had, by introducing it, deserved to forfeit the confi- 
 dence of his constituents. It was my undoubting 
 judgment that he had not, and I felt myself bound 
 
 * I do not believe that I ever so ivrote, even in a private letter, 
 and when my hopes of what the Bill would be were most sang^uine. 
 1 am confident that I did not. After I had heard the details of the 
 Bill stated in the House of Commons by Mr. Peel, publicly I wrote 
 nothing. But if the Reviewer can produce anything of the sort — 
 whether publicly or privately written — let it be produced.
 
 C 6 ) 
 
 to vote for him accordingly, in opposition to the 
 wishes and the judgment of many whom I most 
 valued. I knew (or believed on grounds as satisfac- 
 tory as knowledge) that Sir Robert Peel had been 
 brought to a conviction of the impossibility of any 
 longer effectually resisting the demand for concession 
 to the Roman Catholics. I knew that he had stated 
 this his conviction to King George IV., and, having 
 stated it, had entreated permission to resign his office 
 — thinking it better for his Majesty's service that the 
 measure should be carried by statesmen who had always 
 supported it, than by those who had hitherto resisted 
 it. I knew that the King had refused the permission 
 which was asked, and had required that those minis- 
 ters who had advised the necessity of concession, 
 should themselves give him their services in effecting 
 it. Sir Robert Peel, in yielding to his Sovereign's 
 very reasonable demand, thought it right to give to 
 his constituents an opportunity of declaring whether 
 he had thereby forfeited their confidence. As one 
 of those constituents, honouring the integrity with 
 w^hich I knew he had acted, I deemed it my very 
 plain duty to testify that feeling by continuing to 
 vote for him. 
 
 And now for my own conduct in respect to this 
 measure. It has been asserted again and again that 
 I had — to use the language of this Review — been 
 " one of its most prominent ecclesiastical opponents, 
 " who had opposed it especially on religious grounds, 
 " and had most successfully enlisted clerical passions 
 " against it." 
 
 What was the fact ? So long ago as the autumn
 
 ( 7 ) 
 
 of 1812, or the spring of the following year. Bishop 
 Barrington of Durham, whose chaplain I then was, 
 and on whose patronage my future preferment de- 
 pended, communicated to me his wish, that there 
 should be a petition to Parliament from the Clergy 
 of that Diocese against the Bill, which it was an- 
 nounced that Mr. Canning was about to introduce. 
 I at once told my Bishop that I could not join in 
 such a petition ; that my own opinion was in favour 
 of concession, if accompanied by adequate securities 
 for our own Church ; adding, if I remember aright, 
 that the statements of Mr. Pitt and Lord Grenville 
 had made me believe that such securities could be 
 provided. The Bishop received this declaration of 
 my adverse opinion with the kindness and candour 
 which were a distinguishing part of his truly Chris- 
 tian character. He applied to others who thought 
 with him; a meeting of the Clergy w^as called by 
 the Archdeacon, at which, the petition having been 
 proposed and seconded, I addressed the meeting at 
 some length, and concluded with moving an amend- 
 ment expressing confidence in Parliament, that no 
 such Bill would receive its support unless due secu- 
 rities were provided for the Church and its permanent 
 connection with the State. A division took place, 
 and I had the satisfaction of finding the majority 
 adopt my amendment. There must be some alive, 
 who were present at that meeting. Let them correct 
 this statement, if it be inaccurate. 
 
 The same views continued to actuate me, though 
 I confess with decreasing confidence in the statesmen 
 who advocated concession. In 1819 I published 'A
 
 ( 8 ) 
 
 Letter to Earl Grey on his Speech in moving the 
 Second Reading of his Bill for Abrogating the De- 
 clarations commonly called the Test against Popery, 
 by a Clergyman of the Diocese of Durham.' This 
 publication I sent to Lord Grey and the other Lords 
 on whose several speeches I had made any remarks, 
 together with letters to every one of them avowing 
 myself the author. In 1826 I appended it, with my 
 name, in a second edition of my ' Letters to C. But- 
 ler, Esq., on the Theological parts of his Book of the 
 Roman Catholic Church.' 
 
 The second paragraph of my Letter to Earl Grey 
 is as follows : — 
 
 " Your Lordship need not be apprehensive that I 
 " am about to obtrude upon you an argument on 
 " what is commonly called 'the Catholic Question.' 
 " That question seems to me so purely political, it 
 " is beset on both sides with so many difficulties, and 
 " involves so many conflicting considerations, which 
 " men of my profession are little likely, either from 
 " their studies or their habits, to appreciate correctly, 
 " that I would at all times rather avoid than court 
 " its discussion. On the wisdom of Parliament, and 
 " on its steady and approved attachment to the Esta- 
 " blished Church, 1 confidently rely, that, whatever 
 " course be finally adopted, whether of withholding 
 " or of granting what is asked, the real interests of 
 " that Church will always be regarded as of prime 
 " and fundamental importance ; that no motive of 
 " temporary expediency will be deemed sufficient to 
 " justify a departure from the standing policy of the 
 " British Constitution ; and that no concessions will 
 " be made, which Parliament, in its deliberate judg-
 
 ( 9 ) 
 
 " ment, shall not find compatible with the security 
 " of the Church, and its permanent union with tlie 
 " State." 
 
 The first or introductory Letter to Mr. Butler, 
 stating ' Reasons for the present Publication,' con- 
 tains the following passage : — 
 
 " At any period, and under any circumstances, I 
 " should have judged it right to expose so important 
 " a misstatement as I consider yours to be ; and I 
 " am not prevented from so doing by an apj^rehen- 
 " sion that I may be thought desirous of supporting 
 " one side of a great political question by the in- 
 " direct influence of a theological argument. To 
 " say the truth, the connection of the political and 
 " theological questions does not appear to me so abso- 
 " lutely insejMrable as many wiser men than my- 
 " self continue to regard it. But, at any rate, you, 
 " and those who act with you, have not a sha- 
 " dow of right to complain on this ground. You 
 " have sought to strengthen your political cause by 
 " mixing with it a statement of the theological 
 " dogmas of your Church. Now, let those dogmas 
 " be truly stated (and the truth, when disputed, can 
 " only be ascertained by evidence and argument), 
 " and then let their final bearing on the ^^olitical 
 " question be that, and only that, which truth shall 
 " warrant." 
 
 Such were the public declarations of my senti- 
 ments up to the end of the year 1826 : it was thus 
 that I " had opposed the measure, especially on re- 
 ligious grounds " — and " enlisted clerical passions 
 against it."
 
 ( 10 ) 
 
 We now come to the important year 1827. But, 
 before I proceed, I wish to state that at that time 
 the only members of any Government with whose 
 friendship I had been honoured — the only ones 
 to whom I had ever spoken, except in casually 
 meeting them at table — Avere the late Lords 
 Sidmouth and Eldon : to the latter I had the 
 honour of being in affinity, for my wife was niece 
 of his lady. In 1822 or 1823, a communication 
 was made to me, as I understood, from Lord 
 Liverpool, asking whether there was any bishopric 
 in Ireland which I could be induced to take. It was 
 at the same time told me that it was not my English 
 preferment which was wanted, but myself. At that 
 time the See of Clogher was vacant, with an income, 
 as I believed, of 14,000/. per annum. I declined 
 the offer, having in truth no willingness to go to 
 Ireland ; as I held the rectory of Stanhope, Avhich 
 was fully adequate to all my wishes. I was subse- 
 quently told by Bishop Barrington that he thought it 
 likely I should be placed on the English bench. I 
 expressed surprise, and no desire for such a station. 
 But, as the Bishop had an apprehension that the 
 rectory of Stanhope might become at the disposal of 
 the Government, I at that time, if I mistake not, 
 renewed a promise made by me Avhen I received that 
 rectory, that, althougli I Avould not bind myself by 
 any engagement which might involve me in diffi- 
 culty, yet during his life I would not accept a 
 bishopric without his consent, nor after his death, 
 unless I should think that, if he were alive, he would 
 approve my acceptance of it. I added, with perfect
 
 ( 11 ) 
 
 sincerity, that I had no wish to be made a Bishop — 
 the largeness of my family seeming to me to make 
 it undesirable. 
 
 These are matters of autobiography, which I little 
 thought of ever making public, and which I am well 
 aware are open to the objection that the statement 
 of them rests solely on my own authority. Still 
 they illustrate, I think, my public conduct. 
 
 In 1827, I addressed those Letters to Mr. Can- 
 ning, which excited more attention than I had anti- 
 cipated. An examination of them must satisfy all 
 who will take the trouble of making it, that they 
 were not written by one who deemed it impossible 
 that securities should be devised which would render 
 concession both expedient and safe. I cite in parti- 
 cular the following passage (pp. 158-160) : — 
 
 " Sir, it has sometimes passed as a day-dream 
 " through my mind, how happy for us it would have 
 " been, if you had been reserved to the present hour, 
 " free and unshackled, to follow the dictates of your 
 " own judgment, in discerning the fittest course to 
 " be taken with this question, and to employ the re- 
 " sources of your own views in recommending that 
 '• course to others. What your exact plan would be 
 " I do not presume to guess ; — perhaps your Bill of 
 *' 1813, with more or less of modification, if neces- 
 " sary, — but, above all, with some means of continu- 
 " ing the exclusion of those who would not renounce 
 " that most mischievous of all their dogmas, that 
 " great practical heresy, which would make our ad- 
 " mitting them to legislate for a Protestant Church 
 " to be little less than an act of suicide ; — I mean the
 
 ( 12 ) 
 
 " tenet, ' that all men are bound, of necessity to sal- 
 " vation, to be subject to the Pope, and to be mem- 
 " bers of the Church of Rome.' I will hazard the 
 " charge of presumption by venturing to sketch a 
 *' test, founded on this principle, in lieu of the denial 
 " of the doctrine of Transubstantiation, &c. 
 
 " ' I, A. B,, do declare, in the presence of Almighty 
 " God, that I do not hold, nor believe, that it is ne- 
 " cessary, in order to their eternal salvation, that His 
 " Majesty King George, or any of his liege people, 
 " being Protestants, be, or shall become, in any way 
 *' subject to the Pope, or to any authority of the See 
 " of Rome: and I do declare, that I do not hold, nor 
 *' believe, that the Protestant Church of England and 
 " Ireland, as by law established, is in such wise 
 " heretical, that any of the members thereof are, on 
 " that account, excluded from the promises of the 
 " Gospel, or cut off from Christian salvation ; and I 
 " do faithfully promise and swear, that I will not use 
 *' any power, right, or privilege, which does, or shall, 
 " to me belong, for the purpose of destroying, or in 
 " any way weakening, the Protestant Church, and 
 " the establishment thereof, as it is now by law 
 " maintained : so help me God.' 
 
 " Sir, I bear no man's proxy, and am not sure that 
 " such a test would satisfy any other individual of 
 *' any party. 
 
 " That it would not satisfy the Irish leaders, I am 
 " well aware, and, in plain truth, I should have no 
 " sort of confidence in any that would. That it 
 *' would be offensive to the Church of Rome, and to 
 " all the bigoted members of that Church, I have as 
 " little doubt, and for that very reason I should have 
 " more reliance on its efficacy. The great deside-
 
 ( 13 ) 
 
 " ratum has always been to separate between the 
 " bigots and the moderate members of that Church ; 
 " to bear with as light a hand as possible on the 
 " latter, and to control the hostility of the former 
 " with the most effectual restraints that the wisdom 
 " of the Legislature can devise. I should hope that 
 " among the noble and the educated laity of that 
 " communion, both in England and Ireland, many 
 " would be found who would spurn the mandates 
 " of their Church, if she would refuse to let them 
 " give to their Protestant countrymen such a security 
 " for the safe and honest exercise of their functions 
 " as legislators." 
 
 In looking back at this passage I frankly own that 
 I do not think it was marked by "absolute wisdom," 
 though I do not the less claim it as a testimony of 
 my sincerity. 
 
 Not long after the publication of this Letter to Mr. 
 Canning, I received a communication through Lord 
 Stowell, who honoured me with his friendship, that 
 his brother, the Chancellor, was much dissatisfied 
 with the passage which I have cited. I answered 
 that I had expected it would be unsatisfactory to his 
 Lordship ; but, that, as I was addressing the public 
 on a public question, I must express honestly my 
 own sentiments, not the sentiments of others, how 
 mucli soever I might respect their judgment. Simi- 
 lar intimations of Lord Eldon's opinion were made 
 by other members of the family. 
 
 The year 1827 passed away. Early in the follow- 
 ing year, I published ' A Letter to an English Lay- 
 man on the Coronation Oath ' — my last publication
 
 ( 14 ) 
 
 before the Bill of 1829 was introduced. Of this 
 2)ublication the Reviewer, I understand, has said — 
 " his strongest work against Emancipation being 
 " published the very year before he assented to the 
 " measure." 
 
 With what truth this is stated, will appear from 
 the following extract : — 
 
 " AjypUcafion of the j^f'eceding Argument." 
 
 " I have thus endeavoured to prove that the Oath taken by 
 the King at his Coronation has a most important bearing on 
 the great question of concession to the Roman Catholics ; and 
 I think it has been made manifest, that the Oath does most 
 undeniably restrain the King from concurring in any Act, for 
 that or any other purpose, of which his Majesty is not in his 
 conscience assured, that it neither overthrows, nor seriously 
 endangers, any part of the Protestant Church Establishment, 
 in England or in Ireland. 
 
 " If this be so, the first inquiry, respecting the application 
 now made to the Legislature by the Roman Catholics, ought 
 to be, whether they ask for that which it is inconsistent with 
 his Majesty's Oath to grant. If they do (and most certainly 
 they do), it is the kinder course of proceeding towards the 
 applicants themselves, as well as the wiser and more considerate 
 for the preservation of public tranquillity, to say to them at 
 once, ' What you ask, it is impossible for us to grant. We 
 ' are ready to do the best we can for you, and shall sincerely 
 ' rejoice, if w^e find that we can do much. But, remember, 
 ' that with the best possible disposition towards you on our 
 ' part, your success is much more in your own power than it is 
 ' in ours. The course you have of late pursued is the very 
 ' worst you could have chosen ; and if you have been sincere in 
 ' the language you have used, the principles you have avowed, 
 ' the objects you have proclaimed, you must think us the most 
 ' incapable set of dastards that ever were entrusted with the 
 * interests of a great country, should we give ear to you for a
 
 ( 15 ) 
 
 single hour. You ask for " total, unqualified, unconditional " 
 concession. How can you be so absurd ? The wise among 
 you know that this you cannot have — the honest do not desire 
 it. You call your demands, the " just and indefeasible rights 
 of rnen and citizens^ What nonsense is this ! Your very 
 oracles, Dr. Doyle and Mr. O'Connell, have admitted the 
 contrary ; they have admitted that, during the time of the 
 Stuarts, it was " necessary for the English Government to 
 pass restrictive laws against the Roman Catholics," * — in 
 other words, that the Legislature must exercise its discre- 
 tion, when, and what, restrictions shall be imposed. Go 
 home, then — try to make us forget, by your peaceable and 
 rational conduct, the folly of your body, and the worse than 
 folly of your leaders. We wish to give you all that can be 
 given with safety to those objects, which, whatever you may 
 think of them, are, in our estimation, fundamental, essential, 
 indispensable. The security of our own Church is the first 
 of these objects — to consult for it the most imperative of all 
 our duties ; — and even if we could be base enough to desert 
 it, the King will not. He knows that he is bound by his 
 Coronation Oath to maintain that Church " to the utmost of 
 his power ;" and, if we should propose to him to violate his 
 oath, the only result would be to manifest his firmness, and to 
 bring hatred and contempt on ourselves. He, like his illustri- 
 ous father, would be ready to ascend a scaffold and lay his 
 head on a block,t if his duty should demand it, but he has not 
 courage to defy God. Let not, however, any among you 
 flatter yourselves that there is really any danger to him 
 in following the dictates of his conscience. His throne is 
 built on the hearts of his people — and those hearts only love, 
 honour, and venerate him the more for witnessing his faithful- 
 ness to his high engagements. 
 ' In one word, then, see whether you can offer us any real and 
 ' adequate security for our Church if the boon you ask be 
 
 * See Evidence before Commons, p. 218. 
 
 t King George's III.'s speech to Lord Grenville in 1807. But 
 this has been since stated to liave not been spoken.
 
 ( 16 ) 
 
 ' granted, or try to find the securities lohich ice, on our parts, 
 ' may devise, such as you can conscientiously accede to. If the 
 ' result be that religious duty on both sides makes entire accord- 
 ' ance impossible, let us come as near together as we can, and 
 ' respect each other the more for not sacrificing spiritual to 
 ' worldly interests.' 
 
 " Such, I venture to think, is the language which the friends 
 of the Roman Catholics of Ireland (and what Englishman does 
 not wish to be their friend ?) ought steadily and unceasingly 
 to hold towards them. If it please not the zealots on either 
 side, it is not, on that account, the less likely to be wise and 
 salutary." 
 
 Soon after this publication — probably in conse- 
 quence of it — a noble friend of mine, then a distin- 
 guished Member of the House of Commons, who had 
 always voted for what was called Emancipation, 
 though ardently attached to our Church, said to me, 
 " Why is it that you, who profess to think a scheme 
 of securities practicable, do not attempt to devise 
 one ? It would be a great service to the country if 
 this should be accomplished." 
 
 It was upon his suggestion that I gave my mind 
 to a deliberate consideration of the matter, with this 
 object in view. The result of my consideration is 
 given in the following letters, which will have the 
 value of exhibiting Lord Eldon himself, then no 
 longer in office, as desirous of seeing what I might 
 submit to him, and expressing his deliberate judg- 
 ment upon it.
 
 ( 17 ) 
 (No. I.) 
 
 (Private and Confidential.) 
 
 Lord Eldon to Rev. Dr. Phillpotts. 
 
 Dear Sir, Sunday , Sept. 28, 1828. 
 
 I THANK you for your letter* received here last 
 night. 
 
 Mr. Pennington having informed me that he will 
 call here (in his way to Weymouth to visit some 
 patient) this morning to see Lady Eldon, I hope my 
 absence from Church will be excusable, especially 
 if I employ my time in answering a letter which so 
 deeply concerns the religion of my country as your 
 letter concerns it. 
 
 You only do me justice in believing that no con- 
 siderations of mere punctilio would induce me to 
 withhold my advice. I certainly, too, should not 
 withhold it, whatever the effect might be as to my 
 character, if I could form a confident opinion that I 
 could offer advice which might be usefully given, 
 and which others would act upon as useful. I am 
 willing to carry it further, and to add that, if I 
 could offer such advice, I should be disposed to give 
 it, whether others would act upon it or not. No 
 reflection, however, that I have bestowed upon this 
 important subject has enabled me — and much re- 
 flection I have bestowed upon it — to form an opinion 
 that I can give any advice which can be useful, or 
 which can be acted upon, if any concessions are to 
 be made now. 
 
 * I have no copy of the letter here referred to, nor of that to 
 which No. 2 is an answer. — H. E. 
 
 C
 
 ( 18 ) 
 
 I agree entirely with you as to what you state 
 respecting the election at Clare. I had hoped that 
 it might have been in the judgment of the King's 
 IMinisters too " a most propitious and well-timed 
 incident," and that no statesman could have failed 
 to see the consequences which must result from the 
 power of returning eighty or one hundred members 
 by Irish Priests and demagogues to the House of 
 Commons. I confess I thought that the Clare elec- 
 tion not only gave the Government an opportunity 
 to act instantly and with decision, but made it im- 
 peratively their duty so to act. I never hesitated to 
 declare my opinion to all who conversed with me 
 upon the subject, that Parliament should not have 
 been allowed to separate till the advantages which 
 that election gave the Government had been duly 
 improved. Of the sentiments of Government re- 
 specting that election, I heard only that one member 
 of it, being asked what Government meant to do 
 with regard to it, answered "Nothing;" and His 
 Majesty was advised, I suppose, not to mention 
 Ireland in his speech upon the prorogation — accord- 
 ing to my memory Ireland not being mentioned 
 in it. 
 
 Your observations respecting Mr. are per- 
 fectly just with respect to his own conduct, ac- 
 cording to my understanding as to what it has been, 
 and with respect to those who have been perfectly 
 passive with regard to that conduct. 
 
 I do not know whether there is any law capable 
 of being administered in Ireland. If there is, and 
 the accounts we read of the proceedings of the 
 Roman Catholic Association are true, and capable 
 of proof in evidence, that Association and many of
 
 ( 19 ) 
 
 its members have been liable to effectual prosecution, 
 without any new Act of Parliament, on account of 
 what has passed in that Association in almost every 
 day in which it has met. And unless the Irish will 
 not administer the law, which I apprehend they 
 have, there is no occasion for the interposition of 
 the House of Commons. If there was, for the 
 reasons you mention, I should despair. A Govern- 
 ment, which would act with the cowardice which 
 was manifested in the business of last Session with 
 respect to the Corporation and Test Act, would 
 hardly face the Opposition that, in the outset at 
 least, would be found in the House of Commons to 
 proposing a new Act for dissolving the Association. 
 Unfortunately, the Irish Government lawyers will 
 not act in prosecutions, unless they receive from the 
 Home Secretary here instructions so to proceed ; 
 and it is not saying a great deal to say, after all that 
 has passed, that instructions of such a nature are 
 not very likely to be given. You may not remember 
 it, but, in the Session before I went out of office, I 
 declared, in my place in the House of Lords, that 
 the abstinence from prosecutions in Ireland could 
 not be accounted for, unless either what was pub- 
 lished respecting the proceedings there was not true, 
 or was found to be incapable of proof. I well re- 
 member that IMr. Pitt's instructions, when England 
 was threatened in 1793, 1794, and 1795, with revo- 
 lution, and a Convention or Parliament at York, 
 were not to apply to Parliament till the powers of 
 the common law were found to be ineffectual ; and, 
 at last, the application to Parliament was made, I 
 think, not to enable you to prosecute effisctually, 
 but to render legal proceedings less dilatory, and to 
 
 c 2
 
 ( 20 ) 
 
 prevent crime, after having first established that 
 there was law enough to punish for it, though not 
 with sufficient speed, 
 
 I had not heard of Sir A. Hart's declaration. I 
 forbear to use the word, which, I think, will duly 
 characterize it, even if law, as quoted by Saurin, had 
 not existed. 
 
 With respect to the Duke of Wellington's speech 
 in the House of Lords, it is to be regretted, if you 
 correctly understood him, that there should exist so 
 much of misapprehension as to what his Grace said, 
 as does exist. I know it to be very general. I 
 understood him as you do ; but very many, I know, 
 did not so understand him, and I have been informed 
 that he discouraged the intention of asking him for 
 an explanation. 
 
 But let us suppose that you and I correctly under- 
 stood him ; what follows upon that ? 
 
 In the first place, supposing the Roman Catholic 
 Association not to exist, what is to be done if you 
 concede ? In twenty-seven years you have been again 
 and again in Parliament attempting concession, and 
 to make concession consistent with security ! You 
 have not been able, employing for twenty-seven 
 years the whole of the national wisdom, to find out 
 what concessions you can securely make with respect 
 to the Protestant, or satisfactorily make with respect 
 to the Roman Catholic. I presume that arrange- 
 ment has not become more easy, when the Irish 
 Roman Catholics say that they must be put upon 
 an equality at least with the Protestants ; that they 
 must have a reform in Parliament, and the right 
 of suffrage continued to the freeholder under the 
 influence of the Roman Catholic Priesthood, or still
 
 ( 21 ) 
 
 more largely established; and when they tell you 
 that they not only will not be contented with this if 
 they receive it of your gift, but that they will have it, 
 and can have it, whether you choose to give it them or 
 not. I cannot imagine to myself what it is you can 
 concede to them with safety to the Established 
 Church, if you are to negotiate about concessions to 
 them, in possession, in fact, of the Government of 
 Ireland, and professing to treat ivitli the Government 
 of the United Kingdom^ on the part of " the people of 
 Ireland,"" as a body, in fact, though not in law, no 
 part of the people of the United Kingdom, separated 
 at least from that kingdom " de facto" as they 
 allege. If their power can wrest from you now what 
 they ask, will your granting what they now ask 
 disable them, by the exercise of that same power, 
 to wrest from you whatever they may further please 
 to demand? Is there the slightest probability that, 
 the Roman Catholic Association continuing to exist, 
 and its members continuing to outrage laAV day after 
 day with impunity, that the Association will be 
 pleased graciously to think that they have done 
 anything effectually which they accomplish, leaving 
 anything, which they mean, undone? If the Duke 
 of Wellington said what you and I understand him 
 to have expressed, it would have been well if he 
 would tell us after what fearless and firm legislation 
 he proposes to act fearlessly and firmly. I own I 
 cannot imagine what that legislation is to be ; and 
 I am not surely confident whether what shall be 
 accomplished by fearless and firm legislation will 
 leave us, in a Protestant state, what is worthy of 
 firm and fearless conduct to maintain it. 
 
 In a word, unless the Government will begin with
 
 ( 22 ) 
 
 eifectually destroying the Roman Catholic Associa- 
 tion, dissolving its power by dissolving its exist- 
 ence, and providing by law against the resuscitation 
 of, or attempt to recreate, a body assuming such 
 powders as this Association has assumed, I cannot con- 
 ceive what can be usefully or effectually done. 
 
 Can you suggest anything to me ? Believe me, 
 the Roman Catholic Association in Ireland, talking, 
 as Mr. O'Connell now does, of Parliamentary re- 
 form, general suffrage, communicating with persons 
 in foreign countries, &c., do not confine their views 
 to religious matters only. It is curious that, at the 
 latter end of our troublesome times, towards the 
 close of the last century, our Radicals here were 
 forming alliances with the Irish Roman Catholics. 
 They appear to be returning the compliment to our 
 English Radicals. I cannot help thinking that, as 
 you were good enough to suggest in conversation 
 what you have now been kind enough to suggest 
 again in correspondence, that you may be able to 
 give me some useful hints what concessions, and 
 w^ith what securities, may be made, first destroying 
 or not first destroying (and I see no symptoms of 
 the Government's attempting first to destroy the 
 Roman Catholic Association) the Roman Catholic 
 Association and their law as to the forty -shilling 
 freeholders. If you see what would be safe, " Can- 
 didus imperti." 
 
 I have some hope that the Irish Protestant Asso- 
 ciations may be useful. I must learn that there are a 
 great many more English Associations before I can 
 so think of them. The English have hitherto acted 
 as if they did not care one farthing about religion. 
 
 I heartily wish that I could see what I should call
 
 ( 23 ) 
 
 a second best course^ but I am unable so to do, 
 unless Government shall first, by law, inform the 
 people of Ireland that neither the present nor any 
 future Association shall bring the two parts of the 
 United Kingdom again into such a position with re- 
 spect to each other. This they may do if they please, 
 but then a House of Commons Minister must not 
 flinch from wiiat he approved, or a House of Lords 
 agree to what they disapprove for no better reason 
 than that the House of Commons have agreed to it. 
 I may be laughed at for my opinion ; but the Act of 
 last session, and the aid the Bishops gave to it, as to 
 the Test and Corporation Act, is, in that absurd 
 opinion, every day more and more considered as a 
 fatal blow to the Established Church. God forgive 
 those that inflicted that blow ! There are those who 
 voted against it, not unlikely to give way to the 
 Catholics. They like them, as friends to monarchy 
 and Episcopacy, better than some of the Dissenters 
 favoured by that Act. 
 
 Whatever may or might be the difficulties of my 
 tendering my advice — and my relative situation is not 
 quite the same as it was when I was asked advice 
 respecting certain marriages — not to mention that, 
 perhaps, in 56»me, if not in a very considerable degree, 
 my opinions respecting Roman Catholic matters may 
 have contributed to alter my situation — whatever 
 those difficulties might be, I should get the better of 
 them if I could see it to be probable that it would be 
 useful to the country to get over them ; but, judging 
 as well as a man not a member of the Cabinet can 
 judge, I see no probability of those steps being pre- 
 viously adopted by Government, without the pre- 
 vious adoption of which everything which my mind
 
 ( 24 ) 
 
 can suggest to me (to say the least of it) could be of 
 no use. 
 
 Excuse this hasty scrawl. 
 
 Lady Eldon joins in love to Maria, and in kindest 
 regards to all, with 
 
 Yours, dear Sir, 
 
 Most truly, 
 
 Eldon. 
 
 No. 2. 
 Lord Eldon to Rev. Dr. Phillpotts. 
 
 Dear Sir, October lO, 1828. 
 
 I RETURN you the enclosed,* which I have 
 been sorry to find that a Lord Chancellor could fur- 
 nish for the public's reading. It surprises me ex- 
 tremely — for, though his Lordship was formerly in- 
 clined, according to my recollection, to be more 
 favourable to the Roman Catholics in his views of 
 their state and claims than I have been, and latterly 
 seemed to alter his opinion — yet I am not to consi- 
 der as novel a converted Catholic returning to his 
 former errors, but I thought he had some discretion. 
 Lord Teynham has furnished a pretty strong proof 
 that that reconversion may be. After what I have 
 heard him state about Roman Catholics, his proceed- 
 ings in Kent are curious ! Be that as it may, how a 
 Lord Chancellor could hold such language upon 
 
 * This refers to a newspaper report of a proceeding in the Court 
 of Chancery in Ireland, in the course of which the Lord Chancellor 
 expressed an intention of giving a female ward (being a Protestant) 
 to the care of a Roman Catholic, saying that he should not be 
 swayed by consideration of the religion of the party. — H. E.
 
 ( 25 ) 
 
 such a subject astonishes me — whatever the written 
 law was. 
 
 I am sorry that I happen at present to be where I 
 have not a single law-book ; I must, therefore, defer 
 answering your question respecting the Roman Ca- 
 tholic Bishops assuming rank or titles, &c. Mr. 
 Saurin's opinion, in the mean time, I may say, appears 
 to me to be the warrant fcr a strong presumption 
 how the law stands upon that point under statute. 
 I certainly was not aware that there was any statute 
 law in Ireland which either created or removed the 
 disability. AVhat my notions have been, independ- 
 ently of statute law, you may collect from this fact : — 
 The Bishop of Norwich, two or three sessions ago, 
 tendered a petition to the House from a Roman 
 Catholic Bishop in Ireland, which puiported to be 
 his petition as Bishop of some See (I forget what) in 
 Ireland. The title of the petitioii caught my ear 
 when I was sitting upon the Woolsack. With my 
 notions of common law, and of the King's sole power, 
 exercised in the due mode, of nominating Bishops of 
 places in the kingdom, I left the Woolsack, and 
 stated my objections to any such petition being re- 
 ceived. The petition was rejected, nemine contra- 
 dicente, and I have a recollection that Lord Lands- 
 downe said a few words explanatory of the objections 
 to receiving it. It does not occur to me to think 
 that the repeal of the disabling statute would alter 
 what was the law before that statute passed, unless 
 the repealing statute was very specially expressed 
 with that view. I shall further consider this and 
 write again when I get to town ; but I am (so I may 
 be) at present under a mistake, if any Roman Catho- 
 lic Bishop could in England assume with impunity
 
 ( 26 ) 
 
 the title of Bishop of London (unless the present — 
 late Bishop of Chester — be a Roman Catholic), or 
 any Roman Catholic Bishop in Ireland could so 
 assume the title of Bishop (Archbishop) of Armagh, 
 unless the present Bishop (Archbishoj)) be a Roman 
 Catholic. You must excuse my impertinence in sup- 
 posing that any prelates of our Church can be Roman 
 Catholics; but my spleen, on account of Episcopal 
 conduct in the last session, misleads me so far in a 
 confidential letter. The question, however, is not 
 whether such assumption of title is not merely impu- 
 dent and nugatory, but whether it is subject to 
 legal animadversion, which I have always supposed it, 
 without statute, to be : it has, however, become ne- 
 cessary to consider the point more fully than I, who 
 have always taken it for granted, can say that I have 
 deliberately considered it. 
 
 The late events in Ireland may lead to conse 
 quences which may possibly render our considerations 
 what is " second best," not so necessary as they were, 
 before those events, thought to be. But yet it is 
 quite obvious that such may not be the case, and 
 therefore I repeat, Candidus imperii. It is now 
 thirty years ago since Lord Clare, in a very able 
 speech in one House, and Mr. Foster, then Speaker, 
 in another, stated that Ireland would never be at 
 peace till it was once more conquered. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 Eldon. 
 
 Thursday night. 
 
 Cobbett, I hear, attends the Kentish County Meet- 
 ing to persuade the men of Kent to adopt what he 
 calls the Romish Church Establishment, with or
 
 ( 27 ) 
 
 without its doctrines, to divide the Church revenues 
 between the clergy, poor, &c. 
 
 I also hear that his Majesty expresses his deter- 
 mination not to give way if the Houses of Parlia- 
 liament do, but to dissolve, and appeal to his people ; 
 but, query, supposing that purpose abided by, it comes 
 too late. There are those who thought, after the two 
 Houses differed, this might have been of use. Would 
 it be so now, when it is understood that the Irish 
 Roman Catholics have seen their mistake in electing 
 Roman Catholics, and mean now, as universally as 
 possible, to return members by force of such pro- 
 ceedings as took place at Clare, but members of any 
 or no religion (not Roman Catholics, who can't sit 
 in Parliament), but who undertake to vote for Ca- 
 tholic Emancipation ? This won't do unless the 
 right to elect is first altered. Previous to the last 
 election there was a great deal of prating how un- 
 favourable it would be in England to Roman Catho- 
 lics. In fact it was not so. 
 
 Bishop Copleston, I think, told us that he thought 
 that by next session a plan might be devised to 
 satisfy Protestants and Roman Catholics — what was 
 his " second best " ? 
 
 No. 3. 
 Rev. Dr. Phillpotts to Lord Eldon. 
 
 My Lord, Stanhope, October 9th, 1828. 
 
 It is with unfeigned and deep consciousness 
 of my own inability to say anything worthy of the 
 great subject, that I sit down to answer the question 
 which your Lordship has done me the honour of
 
 ( 28 ) 
 
 proposing to me — " What concessions, and with what 
 securities," do I think may be safely made to the 
 Roman Catholics ? 
 
 Permit me, in the outset, to say, that the longer I 
 have considered the subject, and the more closely I 
 have been able to watch the progress of events, the 
 more firmly am I convinced of two things, appa- 
 rently at variance with each other ; — first, that the 
 true principles of the British Constitution require 
 that concessions should not be made ; and, secondly, 
 that the wretched degeneracy of our present race of 
 parliamentary orators, their ignorance of those prin- 
 ciples, and, still more, their heedlessness of them — 
 the want of energy in most of our public men, the 
 want of authority* in Government on this question 
 (on which, sixteen years ago. Government, most — 
 what shall I say ? — most unhappily — abdicated all 
 authority) — above all, the lamentable absence of 
 almost everything that was wont to characterize an 
 English House of Commons, combine to make it cer- 
 tain that, ere it is very long, concessions will be made. 
 
 If I am right in this view of the state of things, I 
 have little difficulty in saying that this is the time 
 when concessions can be made Avith infinitely less 
 hazard, because I think they can be combined with 
 far more effectual securities, than if they be delayed 
 beyond the duration of the present Parliament. 
 
 I know not whether I shall be considered by your 
 Lordship as ascribing too much importance to the 
 control exercised by the priests and demagogues of 
 Ireland over the representation of that country, when 
 I say, that if they are suffered to retain their power 
 
 * This refers to making this an open question in constructing the 
 Cabinet.
 
 ( 29 ) 
 
 to the time of the next general election, I do not 
 think that the present Constitution can last ten years 
 longer. Eighty nominees of such a faction sent into 
 a House of Commons which is already filled with the 
 dupes of modern liberalism, and which is utterly 
 devoid of a single head capable of guiding or con- 
 trolling them, would very soon be able to overturn 
 all the institutions which, under Providence, have 
 given strength, dignity, and virtue to England. The 
 only hope would be, that the rashness and self- 
 conceit of such a party would precipitate matters too 
 violently, and cause a reaction even in the ranks of 
 vapouring declaimers, who now testify, on every 
 occasion, their readiness to sacrifice every ancient 
 principle to their own presumptuous dreams of im- 
 provement. But is this a hope to be relied on ? is 
 it one which could long endure ? 
 
 Redemption from the hazards of such a state of 
 things would appear to me to be cheaply purchased 
 at almost any cost. I admit that it ought to be ob- 
 tained without any sacrifice whatever — that a legis- 
 lature intrusted with the guardianship of such high 
 interests as those which are at the disposal of the 
 British Parliament, ought to feel it a prime and 
 paramount duty to put down at once so foul and 
 fraudulent an usurpation of the elective franchise as 
 that which prevails in Ireland. It ought to do so 
 from mere regard to justice and the rights of the 
 genuine freeholder, even if there were not such tre- 
 mendous dangers in the existing system. But is there 
 a hope that the House of Commons will do this ? 
 Is it not certain — was it not proclaimed in 1825? — 
 that that House will refuse to entertain the question, if 
 it be not combined with some plan of concession ?
 
 ( 30 ) 
 
 Looking at the matter thus, I am compelled to 
 regard concession as almost undeniably necessary ; 
 and my views are directed to the measures which 
 may seem likely to render concession as safe as the 
 nature and circumstances of the times will admit. 
 
 And here, as a preliminary, I should, with your 
 Lordship, lay it down as indispensable, that the out- 
 raged law of the land, the dignity of Government 
 (would to God that all the members of the Govern- 
 ment, particularly the Irish Government, felt what 
 that dignity demands!), and the honour of Great 
 Britain, should first be vindicated, before a single 
 step be taken in the way of concession. The Irish 
 Association must first be put down by the existing 
 law, as far as that law will go, and by the enactment 
 of new laws, similar perhaps to those which saved 
 England nine years ago from the danger of a servile 
 war. Why is more forbearance to be shown to the 
 Irish than to English traitors ? 
 
 In my poor judgment Parliament should be im- 
 mediately summoned to meet for this purpose before 
 Christmas, and should be opened by a speech from 
 the throne, specially calling for the advice and assist- 
 ance of the two Houses in putting an end to the pre- 
 sent disgraceful and perilous state of turbulence in 
 Ireland. 
 
 But then I will be presumptuous enough to say 
 further, that I should wish that, after this object shall 
 have been accomplished, a message from the King be 
 sent to both Houses, stating that, if the wisdom of 
 Parliament shall devise any means by which the 
 relief of his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects from 
 their remaining disabilities can be made consistent 
 with the full and complete security of that Protestant
 
 ( 31 ) . 
 
 Church which must always be the first object of 
 solicitude to a Protestant King and a Protestant* 
 kingdom, his Majesty will rejoice at such a result; 
 but that his Majesty cannot doubt that, in all their 
 deliberations on this momentous subject, Parliament 
 will bear deeply in mind what they owe both to the 
 feelings and the principles of the nation at large, and 
 also, in a peculiar manner, to those solemn obliga- 
 tions under which his Majesty came at his corona- 
 tion, and from which no considerations of temporal 
 expediency can excuse him. 
 
 (I venture to send my crude words as they first 
 present themselves. They will show my meaning, 
 though I am well aware that they are not such as 
 the dignity and solemnity of the occasion would 
 require. But less in effect than what I have written 
 would not perhaps, and ought not, I think, to satisfy 
 either King or people.) 
 
 And now for the plan of securities to be proposed. 
 
 I will set out with observing, that it would appear 
 to me utterly intolerable, in framing these securities, 
 to have recourse to any Roman Catholics, least of all 
 to the Pope. I should hope that Parliament would 
 adopt, in their fullest sense, the words of the Duke 
 of Wellington, — " We must legislate for ourselves, 
 and we must legislate firmly and fearlessly." 
 
 I will next say, that it would appear to me of main 
 importance, in framing such securities, to avoid all 
 mention of Roman Catholics, and to make laws in 
 general terms, which, while they operate on all, 
 shall yet be so devised as to provide against the par- 
 ticular dangers to be apprehended from that sect. 
 
 " Be it ever remembered, that this is the description given of 
 this kingdom by the charter of our liberties, the Bill of Rights.
 
 ( 32 ) 
 
 I. Let there be an Act for limiting the right of 
 voting for Members of Parliament for coun- 
 ties in Ireland^ to persons having estates in 
 fee or in tail, or on lease for lives renew- 
 able for ever, if the value of the land is 40s. 
 per annum, and less than 20/. per annum,^ 
 leaving the right, as at present, to all persons 
 having any freehold estate in land above that 
 value ; the value of the land to be in all cases 
 estimated according to the rent'' which it 
 would obtain if let. 
 
 " Ireland is mentioned alone : nor is there any fair ground of 
 complaint, if a different law prevail in Ireland from that which 
 takes place here. Already (as I need not remark) the laws regu- 
 latinsr the elective franchise in the two countries are different. If, 
 indeed, this Act should include England, there would be no injus- 
 tice ; for the small freeholds of a less interest than an estate in fee 
 or in tail, or for lives renewable for ever, are usually created for 
 the mere purpose of overpowering the real freeholders. But it 
 might be well to innovate as little as possible. 
 
 '' It has been sometimes said, that the 201. freeholders are as 
 much under the influence of the priests as the 40s freeholders. 
 This is, however, not the case. In the late election for Clare, the 
 great majority of the 20/. and higher freeholders was against O'Con- 
 nell. By referring to the return made to an order of the House of 
 Commons, it appears that in Clare the 40*. freeholders, including 
 all under 20/., registered between 1795 and 1823, were 24,000 — 
 the 20/. and higher freeholders \vere 1 800 only. Of those 24,000 
 perhaps there would be 8000 or 10.000 nominal freeholders having 
 votes at the same time (for the register of these small freeholds is 
 repeated every eight years). Therefore, the same freeholders 
 would, in those nineteen years, be numbered more than once. Of 
 these there must be many (especially in the intermediate sums be- 
 tween 40*. and 20/. per annum) having estates in fee, who would 
 not be disqualified by the proposed enactment. 
 
 " This criterion, rent, is suggested to obviate the present fraudu- 
 lent practice of a man's satisfying his conscience in swearing to the 
 value of his freehold at a certain sum per annum, if he would not 
 relinquish it for that sum, when the consequence of his relinquishing
 
 ( 33 ) . 
 
 The obvious benefit of this first security would 
 be to reclaim the power of choosing Members of 
 Parliament for Irish counties from pauperism to 
 property, and thereby to secure the elections, for a 
 long time, almost entirely to Protestants. In the 
 instances in which Roman Catholics would be chosen, 
 they would at least be men of property, and probably 
 men of education ; in either case not likely to be the 
 slaves of the priesthood. 
 
 It is said by all persons acquainted with Ireland 
 as it is now, and as it was thirty years ago (before 
 the establishment of Maynooth College), that there 
 is now one marked change. The priests are of a 
 lower grade in society ; they are not, as they for- 
 merly were, guests of the Popish gentry ; on the 
 contrary, they are kept at a distance, and have little 
 or no influence over them. 
 
 A Protestant gentleman of large fortune, resident 
 in the county of Clare, who has been with me lately, 
 says that the Roman Catholic gentry are more an- 
 noyed, if possible, than the Protestants, at the pre- 
 sent domination of the priesthood and the dema- 
 oosues. 
 
 »"o" 
 
 II. An Act, requiring all members of either 
 House of Parliament, before they sit or vote, 
 to take an oath, or make a solemn declara- 
 tion, founded either on the writ of summons 
 to Parliament, or on the declaration recently 
 substituted in lieu of the sacramental test, 
 for the security of the Church of England and 
 
 it might be to turn him out of house and home, which, it may b» 
 well supposed, he would not incur for a light consideration, cer- 
 tainly not for the sura which at present qualifies him to vote. 
 
 D
 
 ( 34 ) 
 
 Ireland ; the preamble of this Act recognising 
 this Church as a fundamental and essential 
 part of the Constitution. 
 
 The benefit to be obtained from such a statute 
 might be found greater than at first appears ; for it 
 would give to the Church the pledge not only of 
 Roman Catholics, but of all other Members of Parlia- 
 ment, none of Avhom are at present under any engage- 
 ment to it. If individuals would disregard, or explain 
 away, such a jdedge, it might be at least hoped that 
 the great body of either House of Parliament would 
 feel and respect its binding nature. At any rate it 
 would strengthen the claims of the Church, and 
 could not fail to affect powerfully the opinion of the 
 people against any open attempt to injure it. 
 
 This measure would be stoutly opposed. Lord 
 Holland protested against it by anticipation during 
 the debates on the repeal of the Test Act. So did 
 some one in the House of Commons. But if no 
 measure is to be adopted which will be opposed, 
 the Constitution m.ay as well be given up at once. 
 After all, since men of all parties are weary of the 
 Popish question, and eager to get rid of it, any 
 measure, strenuously insisted on as a necessary 
 adjunct to the settlement, might be carried, perhaps, 
 with less of resistance than under other circumstances 
 could be hoped. The proposed recognition of the 
 Protestant Episcopal Church of England and Ireland 
 as an essential part of the Constitution was made in 
 the preamble of the Bill 0/ 1813, as amended in the 
 Committees of the House of Commons of that year ; 
 and it is enacted in the Act of Union that the preser- 
 vation of the said United Church shall be deemed
 
 ( 35 ) 
 
 an essential and fundamental part of the said 
 Union. 
 
 III. An Act, declaring it to be unlawful, and 
 prohibiting all persons from calling them- 
 selves or others, in any printed book or paper, 
 under any qualification. Bishops of any see, 
 Deans of any chapter, or Eectors of any 
 parish, of which there are, according to law, 
 Bishops, Deans, or Rectors of the Established 
 Church of England and Ireland. The penalty 
 for the first offence a fine of ; for 
 
 the second, the party to be required to with- 
 draw himself I'rom the realm, and if he 
 return, without licence under the great seal, 
 transportation. 
 
 The necessity of some such statute is becoming 
 every day more imperative. The Popish Bishops 
 call themselves, and are called. Bishops of the Irish 
 Sees, without scruple, and often without qualifica- 
 tion. If it be urged (as it was urged by Mr. Pitt) 
 that in an Ep)iscopal Church there must he Bishops, at 
 least let the Popish Bishops be compelled to imitate 
 the modesty of the Protestant Bishops of the Epis- 
 copal Church of Scotland, who abstain not only from 
 all titles of Lordship, but even from calling themselves 
 publicly Bishoj^s of Sees, though there are no other 
 persons entitled by law to those sees. Within the 
 last two months this abuse and usurpation in Ireland 
 has extended beyond Bishops, and even beyond 
 Deans. The parish priests are now called by the 
 Association Catholic Rectors, and sometimes simply 
 Rectors, of such and such parishes. But for this in- 
 vasion of the rights of the Established Church there 
 
 D 2
 
 ( 36 ) 
 
 is absolutely no semblance of excuse ; it is sheer, un- 
 mixed, unmitigated hostility ; it is an avowal of a 
 determination to usurp the character of the National 
 Church, in defiance, and in derogation, of the law- 
 ful rights of the Protestant Episcopal United Church 
 of England and Ireland. 
 
 IV. A statute, prohibiting all persons in Holy 
 Orders, or pretended Holy Orders, or pre- 
 tending to Holy Orders, and all Ministers or 
 Teachers of Dissenting Congregations in Ire- 
 land, from in anywise interfering in any con- 
 tested election of Members of Parliament in 
 Ireland, whether by asking votes, or other- 
 wise; making any candidate ineligible, and 
 consequently all votes given to him thrown 
 away, who shall, by himself or by his agents, 
 use, or knowingly permit, the aid or inter- 
 ference of such persons ; saving, however, 
 the right of such persons to vote themselves, 
 and to solicit the votes of persons who are 
 tenants luider them of any land or tenement, 
 and are qualified to vote. 
 
 This, it will be seen, is here confined to Ireland ; 
 but if, in order with the better grace to exclude the 
 influence of the Popish Priest, it be thought fit to 
 extend the operation of the proposed measure to 
 England also, it is a restraint which, I think, would 
 not do us any harm ; nor would it, I believe, excite 
 any feelings of annoyance or dissatisfaction in the 
 minds of the Protestant clergy of this country. Per- 
 haps even our fair influence would not be lessened 
 by it.
 
 ( 37 ) 
 
 V. A general oath of allegiance and supremacy 
 to be taken by all persons in Ireland, as a 
 qualification for office, or on any other occa- 
 sion, when either the common oaths of allegi- 
 ance and supremacy are required at present, 
 or the oaths prescribed in the Acts of 21 & 
 22 Geo. III., and 33 Geo. III., to be taken 
 by Roman Catholics (in lieu of the oaths now 
 required by law) — 
 
 " I, A. B., do take Almighty God, and his only 
 Son, Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, to witness, 
 that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance 
 to our most gracious Sovereign Lord King 
 George the Fourth, and him will defend to 
 the utmost of my power against all con- 
 spiracies and attempts whatsoever that shall 
 be made against his person, crown, and dignity ; 
 and I will do my utmost endeavour to dis- 
 close and make known to his Majesty, and his 
 heirs, all treasons and traitorous conspiracies 
 which may be formed against him or them ; 
 and I do faithfully promise to maintain, sup- 
 port, and defend, to the utmost of my power, 
 the succession of the Crown in the heirs of 
 the body of the Princess Sophia, Electress and 
 Duchess Dowager of Hanover, being Pro- 
 testants, against any person or persons what- 
 soever : and I do declare that I do not be- 
 lieve that the Pope of Rome, or any other 
 foreign prince, prelate, state, or potentate, 
 hath, or ought to have, any temporal or civil 
 jurisdiction, directly or indirectly, within this 
 realm : (I do further declare that our Sove-
 
 ( 38 ) 
 
 reign Lord King George is over all persons, 
 and in all causes, ecclesiatical and civil, to the 
 laws of this kingdom in anywise appertainnig 
 within these his dominions, supreme :) and 
 I do swear that I will defend, to the utter- 
 most of my power, the settlement and ar- 
 rangement of property in this country as 
 established by the laws now in being. I do 
 hereby disclaim, disavow, and solemnly abjure 
 any intention to subvert the present Church 
 Establishment ; and I do solemnly swear that 
 I will not exercise any privilege to which I 
 am, or may become, entitled, to disturb or 
 weaken tlie Protestant Church of England and 
 Ireland, as by laic established, or the Protestant 
 Government in this kingdom. 
 
 " So help me God." 
 
 The whole of this form of oath is taken from those 
 already prescribed to be taken by the Irish Roman 
 Catholics by 21 & 22 Geo. II L c. — , and 33 Geo. 
 III. c. 21 (Irish), except the words describing the 
 succession of the Crown and the short clause within 
 brackets, and except the alteration of the last clause 
 into words more distinctly expressing the intention 
 of the legislature, and less obnoxious to unfair inter- 
 pretation than those in the existing statute. The 
 clause, so altered, resembles one proposed by Mr. 
 Canjimg in 18 J 3, and making part of the Bill as 
 amended in the Committee of the House of Commons of 
 that year. 
 
 In England it would not seem necessary to make 
 any change in the oath of allegiance, or oath of ab- 
 juration. The oath of supremacy (to be taken by all
 
 ( 39 ) 
 
 persons whenever the present oath of supremacy is 
 required) might be as follows, taken from the 37th 
 Article of the Church : — 
 
 " I, A. B., do declare that the King's Majesty 
 hath the chief power in this realm, unto 
 whom the chief government of all estates of 
 this realm, whether they be ecclesiastical or 
 civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is not, 
 nor ought to be, subject to any foreign juris- 
 diction. 
 
 " So help me God." 
 
 Proviso, that the present oaths be continued to 
 be taken by all persons holding any office, 
 benefice, place, or dignity in the united Church 
 of England and Ireland and the Church of 
 Scotland, by all judges in every Ecclesiastical 
 Court, by persons holding office in all Univer- 
 sities, or taking degrees in English or Scotch 
 Universities, or Colleges, or Schools of Royal 
 or state foundation. 
 
 Proviso, that all Archbishops, Bishops, Priests, 
 and Deacons of the united Church of England 
 and Ireland, all Chancellors, or Vicars-General 
 of Dioceses, all Judges in any Ecclesiastical 
 Court or Court of Appeal, shall take the 
 oaths now required by law. 
 
 The stiffer Papists may object to the concluding 
 words, because they hold that all baptized persons 
 are subject, in spirituals at least, to the jurisdiction of 
 the Church and of the Pope. But let those that 
 will object to such a form ; their objection would only 
 prove more strongly the necessity of requiring it.
 
 ( 40 ) 
 
 The reason for proposing different forms of oaths 
 for the two countries, is the different state of the law 
 at present in the two. The oath now taken by the 
 Irish Roman Catholics contains a clause so much 
 more distinctly engaging them to abstain from injuring 
 the Protestant Church than any in the oath of the 
 English Roman Catholics, that it must not be sur- 
 rendered. And it is not likely that it would be 
 objected to by the Irish Protestants, if enjoined to be 
 taken generally by all persons in Ireland. But if 
 proposed as the oath to be taken by all persons in 
 England, it would, without doubt, be strongly op- 
 posed ; nor would it be desirable to disturb the 
 adjustment made by the statute which repealed the 
 Test and Corporation Acts in the last session. 
 
 VI. An Act prohibiting any person from advising 
 the King in tlie disposal of ecclesiastical bene- 
 fices who is not a member of the Church of 
 England and Ireland ; and enacting, that if 
 any ecclesiastical benefices be in the patronage 
 of any office under his Majesty, the person 
 appointed to such office shall, at the time of 
 taking the other oaths required to be taken 
 by him on entering thereupon, make and sub- 
 scribe the following declaration : — 
 
 "I, A. B., do solemnly declare that I am a 
 member of the United Church of England 
 and Ireland. 
 
 "So help me God." 
 
 In default whereof the exercise and enjoyment 
 of the said patronage shall belong (during the 
 continuance in office of such person) to any
 
 ( 41 ) 
 
 Privy Councillor whom his Majesty shall 
 appoint, such Privy Councillor first making 
 and subscribing the said declaration. 
 
 It may seem to be necessary, consistently Avith this 
 measure, to retain the existing restraints on Roman 
 Catholics who are possessed of advowsons. And, in 
 my opinion, there are, obviously, sound reasons of 
 justice and policy against permitting any persons who 
 are not members of the Established Church to pre- 
 sent to any of the benefices of that Church. But as 
 other Dissenters are permitted to enjoy this patronage, 
 it Avould, perhaps, be hardly necessary or expedient 
 to retain this one badge of suspicion against Papists 
 alone. If retained, there might be a permission to 
 the Catholics to sell advowsons, if entailed, purchas- 
 ing lands with the money received for the same, and 
 making the lands, so purchased, liable to the same 
 limitations as the entailed advowsons. 
 
 VII. An Act, charging all assessments for the 
 repair of churches, and other church-rates, in 
 Ireland, on the landlord, and not on the occu- 
 pier, of lands and tenements— requiring the 
 occupier to pay them to the collectors, but 
 authorizing and empowering him to deduct 
 the sums so paid from the rent due to the 
 landlord. Perhaps an appeal to the quarter 
 sessions might be given on the expediency or 
 amount of any particular rate. 
 
 I apprehend that, at present, in every case of fair 
 letting of lands or houses, the landlord does, in fact, 
 pay the rates, inasmuch as their amount is calculated 
 as an outgoing when the bargain is made. But in
 
 ( 42 ) 
 
 the existing state of Ireland, where very little cal- 
 culation often takes place previously to the tenant 
 taking his small tenement, and excessive rents are 
 blindly submitted to, these rates do really fall upon 
 the tenant, and from their very nature and object, 
 being imposed for the support of a Church to which 
 he is adverse, they must be peculiarly galling. This 
 is, perhaps, the most specious of all the alleged 
 grievances. But the necessity of requiring these 
 rates to be paid by all, whether members of the 
 Established Church or not, rests on a principle which 
 must on no account be relinquished, how vehemently 
 soever it be assailed. 
 
 VIII. A continuance, at least for some years, of 
 the prohibition against Roman Catholics in 
 Ireland (not possessing certain qualifications 
 in land or money) having arms in their pos- 
 session. 
 
 It would be obviously prudent to effect this by 
 silently retaining the present disability. If it be 
 opposed, there is unanswerable ground for insisting 
 upon it, in the turbulent and perilous state of that 
 country. 
 
 If this, or any other restraint be retained (as 
 some others must be — particularly in respect to ad- 
 vowsons, and also in respect to voting at parish 
 vestries, the founding of monastic establishments, the 
 prohibition of processions, &c.) it will be much better 
 to follow the precedent of the English Act of 1791, 
 which distinctly enumerates the laws to be repealed, 
 than the Irish Act of 1793, which commences with 
 a general repeal of all disabilities, and then proceeds 
 to special exceptions.
 
 ( 43 ) 
 
 IX. A proviso, similar to that in 1813, for Act 
 of Uniformity, &c. 
 
 X. Processions, &c. 
 
 I have thus ventured to detail my opinions as to 
 the measures which ought to accompany concession, 
 if concession be made. For doing this at so great 
 length I offer no apologies, for your Lordship has 
 been pleased to require it of me. It would be the 
 highest reward I could receive, if your Lordship 
 should be hereby induced to give your own mind to 
 a consideration of this important subject. From 
 you would proceed a scheme of real securities, if any 
 are attainable. 
 
 I am, my Lord, with the highest respect, 
 Your Lordship's most faithful and 
 obliged servant, 
 
 H. Phillpotts. 
 
 (No. 4.) 
 Lord Eldon to Rev. Dr. Phillpotts. 
 
 Dear Sm, Oct. 27, 1828. 
 
 I OUGHT long ago to have acknowledged the 
 receipt of your letter of the 9th of October, and I 
 should be treating that letter without that respect 
 which is most justly due to it, if I ventured, without 
 much and repeated consideration of its contents — 
 which, as yet, I have not been able to bestow upon 
 them — to offer to your attention many of those 
 observations with which I may hereafter trouble 
 you.
 
 ( 44 ) 
 
 That, under present circumstances, any concessions 
 ought to be made, I cannot agree ; that some will 
 be made, I cannot doubt. And yet I do not, at jDre- 
 sent, believe that I shall ever be able to question 
 effectually whether it is not a matter of duty, not to 
 be sacrificed to expediency, to try the effect of that 
 opposition in the first instance which will propose 
 that no concession ought at present to be made, and 
 that no such dangerous measure should be allowed 
 to pass as that which will leave the Catholics im- 
 pressed with a perfect conviction that we yield to 
 menace what we would not grant to entreaty ; 
 doubting too, as I doubt, whether concession should 
 be made to either. 
 
 I agree with you, that the Catholics ought not to 
 retain their power of election till the next general 
 election. My opinion is that Parliament ought not 
 to have separated till O'Connell's election had been 
 decided, and the right of suffi*age in Ireland had 
 been regulated : this is very well knoAvn, I believe, 
 to have been my opinion, but I have very little 
 reason to believe that its being my opinion would 
 recommend it to early, if to any, consideration by 
 those who alone could have given it an useful con- 
 sideration. 
 
 I fear that those who are now to advise will not 
 give the King the advice that will lead to his send- 
 ing to Parliament such a message as you propose. 
 The Cabinet is not so formed, I think, as that they 
 should agree to advise a message in all its contents, 
 in some of its indispensable contents, such as your 
 letter proposes. 
 
 The Act of Parliament No. 1, I think right ; but, 
 absolutely necessary as it is, I have reason to believe
 
 ( 45 ) 
 
 that it will be no easy matter to carry the measure, 
 and jjerhaps impossible if it should be proposed to 
 include England, 
 
 The Act of Parliament No. 2 would certainly be 
 opposed by Lord Holland, &c. That is perhaps of 
 more consequence than you deem it to be ; for no- 
 body can doubt, after what he saic j^ass in the House 
 of Lords, that he greatly influ need the minister last 
 session : and all that has occurred in debates in the 
 last twenty-five years convinces me that there will 
 be great opposition to any Bill that recognises the 
 Church as a fundamental and essential part of the 
 Constitution. The Act of last session, which con- 
 tains that poor, wretchedly miserable declaration, 
 which this proposed Bill is to contain, could never 
 have passed if Parliament would declare the Church 
 to be such a part of the Constitution ; and it seems 
 to me to be very difficult for the Episcopal Bench, 
 misled last year, as Story will have it, by the 
 
 Bishops and , to agree to such an Act, 
 
 when, because they did not like the sacramental 
 test, they thought it proper that offices in the state 
 and corporations should be filled by persons who gave 
 no test that they icere members of that Churchy which 
 was before last year a fundamental part of the Con- 
 stitution. If it be no longer such, the Bishops are 
 answerable for that. The declaration required by 
 the Act of last year is almost worthless ; the fact 
 that the Bishops would have nothing better, is the 
 only thing that can excuse the Lord who proposed 
 to alter it, as it came from the Commons, to such as 
 it is — next to Avorthless as it is. All the previous 
 statutes considered the Church as a fundamental part 
 of the Constitution ; it was titer ef ore that they did not
 
 ( 46 ) 
 
 measure the fitness of men for office by declarations 
 merely, but by their religious habits. The present 
 Episcopal Bencli thought their declarations a prefer- 
 able test — preferable to their being members of the 
 Church; nay, they could not reconcile it to their 
 enlightened consciences that they should even declare 
 
 that they were members of that Church ; and , 
 
 unless my memory is inaccurate, stated principles 
 about liberty new to an old member of the Church 
 
 of England, whilst talked unintelligibly. I did 
 
 not, till I received your letter, know that the latter 
 espoused Wilmot Horton's plan — which Wetherell 
 called playing at Dumby ; but after what I observed 
 through the session it did not surprise. Dr. Johnson 
 used to say that, in his time, among other bigots, 
 there were bigots in laxity. Are there none now? 
 
 As to your third Act of Parliament, I think there 
 ought to be an Act prohibiting the assumption of 
 titles, &c. 
 
 Your fourth proposed Act, I think would not 
 pass. 
 
 To your fifth, I think there are some weighty 
 objections. 
 
 As also to your sixth. 
 
 Upon these I forbear at present to say more than 
 that you shall hear from me again, and this intima- 
 tion I apply to your seventh and eighth, and to your 
 continuances also. 
 
 Indeed it was not my intention in this to have done 
 more than to acknowledge and thank you very much 
 for your letter, and the great attention you have 
 given to this important subject. I have been imper- 
 ceptibly and unintentionally led to drop from my pen 
 much that I did not mean, at present at least, to
 
 ( 47 ) 
 
 write, and which 1 shall reconsider before I write all 
 I mean to write. 
 
 There is one question which I think neither of us 
 have much attended to, and that is, What reason can 
 / have to believe that Government will receive any 
 suggestions from me. The only thing that the D. 
 ever said to me, that I can remember, as having a 
 tendency to account for his having in no degree com- 
 municated with me when he formed his adminis- 
 tration, was some few words that he dropped, im- 
 porting that he knew my opinions upon some points 
 were very strong, and such as could not be altered. 
 I never could imagine what this alluded to but my 
 opinions on the Catholic Claims and the Test and 
 Corporation Acts. I do not see how any advice of 
 mine, if I could usefully give advice, is to be intro- 
 duced to his attention, save in debate, properly with 
 reference to what is due to him and to myself. 
 
 All which I have hastily written, and that is all 
 that is contained in these sheets, is of course confi- 
 dential. 
 
 With Lady E.'s kind regards to you and Maria, 
 and mine, I remain 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 Eldon. 
 
 (No. 5.) 
 
 Lord Eldon to Dr. Phillpotts. 
 
 Dear Sir, Nov. 22, 1828. 
 
 I OBSERVE by the papers — and some paragraphs 
 in what I believe to be a ministerial paper give a 
 semblance of truth to what he says — that Mr.
 
 ( 48 ) 
 
 O'Connell has assured the Roman Catholic Associa- 
 tion tliat no less than three applications have been 
 made by the Government of Great Britain, through 
 the Hanoverian minister, to the Pope, to learn whe- 
 ther his Holiness will enter into a concordat with 
 our Government ; and that the answer returned is, 
 that he will not entertain the subject till Catholic 
 Emancipation shall have been first granted by Go- 
 vernment ; that this has been received by the Asso- 
 ciation in Ireland with great triumph ; and that they 
 will not accept emancipation, giving any securities. 
 JNIay we not postpone for a while the consideration of 
 securities ? What say you to the circumstance, if it 
 be a fact that Government have taken this step ? 
 
 We hope Maria and the family are >vell. 
 
 I go to town next week. 
 
 Yours faithfully, 
 
 Eldon. 
 
 Such was my correspondence with Lord Eldon in 
 1828. I could not publish it when the publication 
 would have vindicated me from all the injurious 
 reports which were circulated against me in 1829, 
 because the letters were " confidential." That Lord 
 Eldon joined in giving currency to those reports I 
 never heard, nor do I conceive it possible — knowing 
 as he did the nature of the communications which, 
 at his own request, had passed between us. Still, for 
 a year or two, no intercourse did in fact take place. 
 I was in the country, and he did not write to me. 
 When I became a Bishop, and therefore resided in 
 London, in 1831, I have no recollection of actual
 
 ( 49 ) 
 
 estrangement. Certainly, we were soon in confidential 
 intercourse : one very special occasion, in the begin- 
 ning of 1833, is fixed in my memory. From that time 
 to the end of his life I was in the habit of enjoying 
 not only his friendship, but his confidence. I hardly 
 ever parted from him without his thanking me for 
 my visit, and entreating me to repeat it. The last 
 letter which I have any trace of having received 
 from him, I have within these few days casually 
 found. It was written in answer to some letter from 
 me — the subject of which I forget — without a date, 
 but the cover has the Post-office stamp, July 20, 1837 
 — a few months before his death. It was written 
 manifestly with some difficulty, and in a character 
 hardly legible in several parts of it. I transcribe 
 it, with all its errors of language, as showing the 
 kindly feeling which he continued to entertain 
 towards me. 
 
 " My good Lord Bishop, 
 
 " When I have the pleasure of seeing you I will put 
 into your hands lOZ. for the purpose mentioned in your letter, 
 and we can converse upon the subject fully. 
 
 " I greatly fear that the Church will suffer by the plans of 
 the Commissioners, as I think it will also by the operations 
 of the subscribers for building churches before some attention 
 had been bestowed upon [what] is further to be done as to the 
 present ministers of the churches already built, and the future 
 ministers of those to be built. 
 
 " Associations are forming for the destruction of Church- 
 rates and every other species of payments by persons out of the 
 Church to its ministers — to [_sic] tithes to the clergy among other 
 payments. This does not surprise me, when I recollect the 
 extent to which our Protestant Church has been put under the 
 care of Roman Catholics in both Houses.
 
 ( 50 ) 
 
 " The Conservative meetings in diflFerent parts of the king- 
 dom are laughed at when those who read their proceedings 
 recollect how many of the speakers at such meetings, and how 
 many of those spoken of, had, as Conservators of the Constitu- 
 tion, had [sic] joined in destroying its Protestant character in 
 the Constitution, and that they seem not [sic] to have made 
 no opposition to shameful proceedings — utterly ruinous pro- 
 ceedings, as to the English Corporation Bill. 
 
 " May that great Being, who can command the raging of the 
 ocean to cease and be still, command the madness of the people 
 also to cease and be still. No human power can save us. 
 " Yours, my good Lord, &c. 
 
 " Eldon." 
 
 And here I should conclude what I have to say 
 of Lord Eldon, had I not been informed that the 
 Reviewer has inserted the following note: — 
 
 " The disgust excited among them by this exceedingly sud- 
 den conversion (his strongest work against Emancipation being 
 published the very year before he assented to the measure) is 
 amusingly illustrated by a letter to Lord Eldon, which the 
 Bishop has^ caused to be published in the Life of that noble- 
 man. {Tmss^s Life of Lord Eldon, vol. iii. p. 295.) Lord 
 Eldon appears to have shown his disgust at the Bishop's 
 tergiversation by a marked coldness, and an assumption of 
 superior rectitude, which w-as continued for some years. And 
 the Bishop rebukes him for his self-righteousness, and shows 
 him the danger of relying on his own works, in a strain really 
 quite evangelical. Many excellent persons have been much 
 edified by this letter." 
 
 There is something in this statement so shocking, 
 that I know not how to deal with it. To dare to 
 intrude into the room of a dying man, and scoff at 
 what there passed between him and his spiritual 
 counsellor — to have the confidence to affirm that I
 
 ( 51 ) 
 
 " caused to be published " a letter written under a 
 seal of secresy, which no Christian minister could 
 permit himself knowingly to violate — carries with it 
 its own reprobation. No man who knows me — no 
 decent person who knows me not — can need any 
 assurance that I caused not the publication of the 
 letter. I did not even communicate it to my own 
 wife, the near relative of Lord Eldon ; nor did I 
 know that it was still in existence, till I heard that 
 it was exhibited to the gaze of the world by his 
 biographer. 
 
 I have, I trust, already said enough to rid myself 
 of the opprobrium of having bartered my principles 
 for a Bishopric. Yet there remain two testimonies 
 borne to me by the Duke of Wellington and Sir 
 Henry Hardinge — which, if I did not cite them with 
 the thankfulness which they demand, I should be 
 unworthy to have received. 
 
 In the ' Mirror of Parliament * (House of Com- 
 mons), November 22, 1830, will be found what 
 follows : — 
 
 " Sir Henry Hardinge. — From what I know of the circum- 
 stances of this case I deem myself bound in justice to detain 
 the House with a few observations. For nine or ten years I 
 represented a city in the cathedral of which Dr. Phillpotts held 
 a Church dignity. Having known him so long and so well, 
 it is my pleasure as well as my duty to vindicate him from 
 certain false surmises which have gone abroad respecting him. 
 I have inquired of the Duke of Wellington, and am authorized 
 by that noble person to say that during the time of the discus- 
 sion on the Catholic Question he and Dr. Phillpotts were fre- 
 quently in communication together on that subject, but that Dr. 
 Phillpotts did, from the beginning to the end, oppose the passing 
 
 E 2
 
 ( 52 ) 
 
 of that measure on the ground that he feared sufficient securities 
 were not provided in the Noble Duke's bill ; to which bill he 
 was, down to the last moment, not a friend, but an opponent. 
 It had been the intention of Lord Liverpool to promote Dr. 
 Phillpotts to the Episcopal Bench — a circumstance which rests 
 on the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and which 
 could not but have much weight with the Noble Duke. The 
 House should also perhaps be informed that the Duke of 
 Wellington, before he proceeded to act according to Lord 
 Liverpool's intention, made the usual communications to the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, and 
 that the Noble Duke received the assent of those Right 
 Reverend Prelates to the propriety of the appointment of Dr. 
 Phillpotts to the See of Exeter. The Right Reverend Prelates 
 did indeed say that the appointment might be unpopular in 
 the Church ; but as the Noble Duke knew that the grounds 
 on which Dr. Phillpotts w^as unpopular were altogether mistaken 
 and erroneous, the Noble Duke saw that tliis should be no ob- 
 jection to the appointment." 
 
 Let me here state that his Grace had never given 
 to me the slightest intimation of his intention to 
 recommend me to a Bishopric — and that the facts 
 thus stated by Sir Henry Hardinge were before un- 
 known to me. 
 
 I next cite, without comment, from the ' Mirror 
 of Parliament,' March 22, 1832, pp. 1346, 1350. 
 
 " The Bishop of Exeter — I shall avail myself of the indul- 
 gence of the House in order to enter into an explanation to 
 disprove the charge of inconsistency which has been brought 
 against me. I am really grateful to the Noble Earl (Radnor) 
 for having made that charge, because he enables me to explain 
 a part of my conduct, which, as it at present stands before the 
 world, may not unnaturally be liable to misconstruction. I 
 speak in the hearing of a person who can contradict me ; and 
 I earnestly entreat the Noble Duke opposite to contradict me if 
 I utter a single syllable beyond the strictest line of sincerity.
 
 ( 53 ) 
 
 " The Noble Earl has alluded to some notions which he sup- 
 poses me to have entertained, both before and at the time of 
 the passing of the Bill of Relief to the Roman Catholics. I 
 conclude from his observations that the Noble Earl supposes 
 that I had pledged myself to the world as the decided opponent 
 of Roman Catholic Emancipation as it was called ; and that, 
 nevertheless, I assented to that measure when brought forward 
 by the Noble Duke. If this be the supposition of the Noble 
 Earl it is perfectly unfounded in both respects : I always main- 
 tained that it was necessary to obtain strong securities before 
 emancipation should be granted. When the Noble Duke, 
 then at the head of his Majesty's Government, had determined 
 to bring forward his Bill of Relief, he did me the honour to 
 communicate with me, because he knew I had stated that the 
 measure ought not to be granted unless accompanied with great 
 securities, and that I thought those securities might be found. 
 Upon that occasion I told the Noble Duke distinctly what 
 securities ought, in my opinion, to be demanded before the 
 boon was granted. The Noble Duke took my suggestions into 
 consideration, and subsequently told me what was the nature of 
 the measure he was about to propose. I then distinctly told the 
 Noble Duke that I disapproved of his plan, and that it was 
 impossible I could ever approve of it. I most distinctly and 
 decidedly, from first to last, in all the communications which I 
 had with the Noble Duke, declared that, in my opinion, the 
 securities which he proposed to take were extremely inadequate ; 
 and up to the last moment that the Bill was before this House 
 I maintained the same opinion. Now I entreat the Noble 
 Duke to contradict me if I have stated anything incorrectly. 
 
 " The Duke of Wellinyton. — I should not have thought it 
 necessary to address myself to the House upon this occasion, 
 having very recently stated my opinion upon the question under 
 consideration, if I did not consider it to be my duty to say a few 
 words upon what fell from the Right Reverend Prelate in re- 
 spect to the charge which has been made against him by the 
 Noble Earl. I must do that Right Reverend Prelate the 
 justice to say that every word which he has stated is perfectly 
 true and correct. I have often been astonished at the injustice 
 which has been done the Right Reverend Prelate in respect to
 
 ( 54 ) 
 
 his conduct upon the occasion to which the Noble Earl has 
 alluded, and at the length of time which this injustice lasted. 
 The circumstances connected with the case could not be 
 known to any one but myself and the Right Reverend Prelate. 
 He could not have repeated to his own disadvantage what 
 passed between us, and I must say that I have never said one 
 word upon the subject to any man." 
 
 Need I say how disagreeable it is to me to dwell so 
 much at length on what concerns myself? 
 
 I now turn with great reluctance to another matter — on 
 which I hoped that I had already said enough to justify my 
 own conduct, and therefore had resolved to say no more. 
 But the following passage in a periodical so widely circulated 
 as the Edinburgh Review, leaves me no option: — 
 
 " It was on similar provocation that Lord Seymour is reported, in 
 the Western 7Ywe* of July 25, 1847, to have addressed his con- 
 stituents as follows : — ' It is a calm, deliberate, collected statement, 
 and I proceed to show you that that calm, deliberate, and emphatic 
 statement is a deliberate falsehood. ( Cheers.) Now, it is painful to 
 me, as it must be to every one, to say that a statement so solemnly 
 made is directly false ; not only that it is an error in judgment or a 
 mistake, but that it is a deliberate and direct contradiction of the 
 truth. Let me tell you, it requires a lawyer to deal with this person. 
 (^Cheers and laughter.) Fortunately a lawyer wrote to him ; and 
 guardedly and cautiously as it was written, you see how totally it 
 has been perverted and departed from.' The famous case of the 
 Bishop of Exeter versus Latimer had its origin in the transaction 
 with the Duke of Somerset here alluded to, and in the report of 
 Lord Seymour's speech in a provincial newspaper and the editor's 
 comments. It was an action of libel for calling the Bishop a 
 notorious brawler and a careless perverter of facts. The editor 'jus- 
 tified,' and the case was tried by a special jury, most of them of 
 opposite politics to the defendant, when, after hearing the Bishop 
 swear to his own version of the affair, they returned a verdict for 
 the defendant." 
 
 The history of the transaction, on which this speech was 
 founded, is probably in the recollection of many ; for it was 
 published by me so recently as in the spring of 1849, in the
 
 ( 55 ; 
 
 form of ' A Letter to the present Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 containing all the Correspondence on the case of the Rev. Blr. 
 Shore ' — and that correspondence was copied into most of the 
 public journals in the beginning of the month of April of that 
 year. But what was then published was simply intended by 
 me to explain the case as respected Mr. Shore : I endeavoured 
 to spare all other parties, so far as it was possible to spare 
 them. The Edinburgh Review has made it impossible that I 
 should spare Lord Seymour any longer. I proceed, therefore, 
 to state calmly, I hope, and dispassionately, however fearlessly, 
 what his Lordship's conduct has been — and if, in doing this, I 
 am obliged to exhibit his Father, the Duke of Somerset's con- 
 duct also in an unfavourable light, I can truly say that I do so 
 with sincere reluctance. 
 
 In the summer of the year 1832, his Grace requested me to 
 meet him at Bridgeto^-n, a hamlet of the parish of Berry 
 Pomeroy, recently made part of the borough of Totnes, in 
 which he had much improved the size and quality of his houses, 
 and had erected a building designed to be a church. The 
 Duke was desirous of knowing what must be done in order to 
 his obtaining Ihe consecration of the building. 
 
 I informed his Grace that the object might be effected in one 
 of two ways ; either by the building being made a chapel-of- 
 ease to the church of Berry Pomeroy, or by its being endowed 
 as the chapel of a district to be taken out of the parish : that in 
 the former case, the duty of providing for the service of the 
 chapel, and the consequent right of nominating the minister, 
 would belong to the vicar ; but that in the latter case, the 
 Duke might acquire the right of patronage by making an 
 endowment. 
 
 His Grace, having first expressed his fixed resolution to take 
 such a course as should secure to himself the right of nominat- 
 ing the minister, declined coming to an immediate decision 
 respecting the endowment to be made for that purjiose ; but he 
 shortly afterwards instructed his solicitor, Mr. Maberiey, to 
 communicate with my secretary, Mr. Barnes, who was duly 
 authorized on my part. 
 
 The following are the main particulars of the correspondence 
 which ensued between those gentlemen : —
 
 ( 56 ) 
 
 Extracts from Correspondence previous to the Bishop granting 
 his Licence for the Opening of Bridgetown Chapel : — 
 
 No. 1. 
 Mr. Maberley to Mr. Barnes. — August 18, 1832, 
 
 *' I am directed by the Duke of Somerset to put myself in com- 
 munication with you on the subject of the Consecration of the Chapel 
 lately built by his Grace at Bridgetown. His Grace has made 
 known to me the very satisfactory interviews that have taken place 
 between the Bishop and him, and his Grace's conviction that the 
 Bishop and yourself are disposed to facilitate his views, so far as 
 may consistently be done. 
 
 "The Duke was not aware, I find, that it would be necessary for 
 him, in order to consecration and licence, to establish an endowment 
 to such extent as seems necessary. The Duke is, as you are aware, 
 the patron of the living, and a firm friend of the Church Establish- 
 ment ; nor do I think it at all likely that the chapel would ever go 
 out of his family. Under these circiunstances I confess that I am 
 inclined to recommend his Grace to keep his new building — at any 
 rate for the present — as a proprietary chapel. I believe — but in 
 this you can set me right — that all that will be required in such case 
 will be for his Grace to request a licetice of the Bishop for the 
 minister who may officiate, and that the Incumbent of the Parish 
 give his safictioti." 
 
 No. 2. 
 Mr. Barnes to Mr. Maberley. — August 27, 1832. 
 
 Has consulted the Bishop on the subject. 
 
 " The Duke may, perhaps, be under the impression that a larger 
 endowment was required than the Bishop would deem necessary for 
 consecration. The Bishop, considering the liberal intention of his 
 Grace with regard to the ultimate provision for the minister, would 
 only consider it necessary to require to have legally secured on land, 
 or money charged or secured on land, or money in the funds, a sti- 
 pend of 50/. a year. 
 
 " The Bishop, on hearing your proposal to license the chapel, at 
 present only as a proprietary chapel, desires me to say that he has a 
 strong disinclination to a licence of that description. The Bishop 
 hopes that the Duke will be able to make at once an arrangement 
 satisfactory to himself for endowment and consecration."
 
 ( 57 ) 
 
 No. 3. 
 Mr. Maberley to Mr. Barnes.— August 31, 1832. 
 
 Eefers to the Statute 1 and 2 Wm. IV. cap. 38. 
 
 " I apprehend that the sole objects of the Duke are, to have the 
 chapel consecrated, to retain the sole patronage, and to give a com- 
 petent stipend by pew-rents or otherwise, or both, to the minister 
 for the time being-. I am well assured that in the attainment of 
 these objects his Grace is most anxious to pursue the course which 
 the interests of the Establishment most require, and consequently of 
 which the Bishop should approve." 
 
 No. 4. 
 
 Mr. Barnes to Mr. Maberley. — September 8, 1832. 
 
 Refers to the Statute 1 and 2 Wm. IV. as not applicable to the 
 case, unless through the Church Building Commissioners. " The 
 Bishop, however, looks only to the endowment mentioned, and is 
 ready to do everytliing that may be in his power to carry into effect 
 the purposes of the Duke, as expressed by you." 
 
 No. 5. 
 Mr. Maberley to Mr. Barnes. — September 14, 1832. 
 
 " I begin to apprehend that the mutual objects of the Duke of So- 
 merset and the Bishop will not be attainable but through the Church 
 Building Commissioners. It will require some consideration to de- 
 termine what proposition to lay before them. It may also turn out 
 that the Duke's apprehension of its being necessary to let a twelve- 
 month go round is well founded ; and this would be much waste 
 of time, and the chapel is ready, I believe. It seems to me also, 
 that it might assist the Duke in determining definitively what he 
 may be inclined to do, relative to the endowment, &c., if an experi- 
 ment could be first made how the chapel is likely to answer. Under 
 these considerations I would beg to suggest whether it would be 
 better to request of the Bishop, in the first instance, a licence, as if it 
 were a proprietary chapel only, which need not by any means imply 
 thereby that the idea of endowment and consecration is abandoned. 
 The opening of the chapel in this way will, in the course of a few 
 months, probably enable the Duke to judge what may be the best 
 arrangement to propose for the ultimate adjustment."
 
 ( 58 ) 
 
 No. 6. 
 
 Mr. Maberley to Mr. Barnes. — September 19, 1832, 
 
 " Since my last, circumstanees have come to my knowledge which 
 confirm the opinions I then expressed as to the most advisable course 
 to pursue under present circumstances with respect to Bridgetown 
 chapel. I understand that great inconvenience will arise from delay 
 in the opening, particularly as the clergyman, the Rev, J, Shore^ 
 has left his curacy, and is already settled in Bridgetown. The 
 Duke was much pleased at the satisfaction expressed by the Bishop, 
 and his Grace is thoroughly aware that the Bishop is disposed to do 
 all he can to promote the early opening, I am informed that you 
 must be mistaken in supposing that there are no licensed chapels in 
 the diocese, I am told there is one at Dartmouth, and elsewhere. 
 In the present case we do not look to the chapel remaining perma- 
 nently thus; on the contrary, we trust to be able to procure the con- 
 secration on regular endowmentJ^ 
 
 No. 7. 
 Mr. Barnes to Mr. Maberley. — September 19, 1832. 
 
 *' The Bishop directs me to say that the Duke of Somerset Iiaving 
 stated liis wish and purpose to endow the chapel, and convey the 
 same for consecration, the Bishop will license the chapel till that 
 purpose can be conveniently carried into efff^ct. 
 
 " It is only necessary that the Duke should sign a petition, and 
 I toill draw a form and send to you." 
 
 Asking for a plan of the chapel, and to be assured that the Duke 
 is seised in fee. 
 
 No. 8. 
 
 Mr. Maberley to Mr. Barnes.— September 22, 1832. 
 
 Acknowledges receipt of letter of the 19th, 
 
 '' I write, however, in consequence of some expressions in your 
 letter, and to prevent all possibility of any future misunderstanding,, 
 unlikely as it may be to arise. 
 
 " I think that the communication of the Bishop's consent to license 
 is accompanied by words from you that, if unqualified and unex- 
 plained, would amount to an implied engagement on the part of tlie 
 Duke, at all events, and under any circumstances, and with what- 
 ever incotivetiience attended, still peremptorily to endow and convey 
 the chapel for consecration. As the Duke is a man who would be
 
 ( 59 ) 
 
 scrupulous, to the letter, in the performance of ei'erj/ iota of what he 
 could he considered either directly or bi/ implication to have engaged 
 for, it becomes the more necessary for me to take care that his Grace 
 does not lay himself under obligations calculated by any possibility 
 to bring him into a dilemma. It is his Grace's most seriotes and de- 
 termined intention and wish to do his best, through the medium of 
 the Church Commissioners, or otherwise, to procure the consecra- 
 tion of liis chapel and to make for it a permanent regular endow- 
 ment of proper amount. With the expression of this intetition the 
 Bishop loill, I doubt not, k?iowi?ig his Grace^ s attachment to the Es- 
 tablishment^ feel satisfied and rest content. But it is possible that 
 there may be impediments — unlooked-for requisitions — objections 
 made — interference with patronage — or the like, that may make it 
 unadvisable in the view of his Grace, or of any reasonable man, to 
 proceed to the conveyance and consecration, and may rather induce 
 his Grace to wish to wait till some further legislative regulations 
 afford better facilities, or remove difficulties, that may, in tlie pre- 
 sent state of the laws, exist. I must therefore claim for his Grace a 
 discretion in these matters beyond what your words convey. That 
 the Bishop is content that the Duke should have this, I do not doubt, 
 nor do I think that you meant to imply the contrary ; but if you 
 read again your words, I think you will find that the qualification 
 is necessary which I have taken the liberty to make. 
 
 " I will send you the plan, &c., as soon as I receive it, and shall 
 be obliged by the form of petition you propose to send me. 
 " I am, Sir, your very obedient and humble servant, 
 
 " Joseph Maberley." 
 
 Endorsed on this letter, in the Bishop's own hand : — 
 
 '' I am content to license the building on the declaration in this 
 letter.— H. E." 
 
 No. 9. 
 3Ir. Barfiesto Mr. Maherley. — September 26, 1832. 
 
 Has consulted the Bishop on the letter of the 22nd. 
 
 *' The Bishop's authority, as stated in my letter of the 19th, was 
 founded correctly, as his Lordship thinks, on the previous commu- 
 nications ; but the Bishop, on perusing your letter, authorises me to 
 say, that he is content to license the building on the declaration 
 therein contained."
 
 ( 60 ) 
 
 THE PETITION. 
 
 To the Right Reverend Father in God, Henry, by divine permis- 
 sion Lord Bishop of Exeter. 
 
 " The petition of the most noble Edward Adolphus, Duke 
 of Somerset. Whereas I, the said Duke, have lately erected in 
 my manor of Bridgetown, within the parish of Berry Pomeroy, in 
 your Lordship's diocese of Exeter, a building designed for a chapel 
 for religious worship according to the rites and ceremonies of the 
 United Church of England and Ireland, and liave fitted up the 
 same with reading-desk, pulpit, communion table, and convenient 
 pews and seats, calculated to accommodate with sittings above seven 
 hundred persons, and provided with Bible, Book of Common Prayer, 
 and all other things necessary for the due performance of Divine 
 Service; and the ground-plot of the said intended new chapel is 
 laid down in the plan hereto annexed, identified by my signature ; 
 and it is my intention to provide a permanent endowment for a 
 minister to serve the said chapel ; and as soon as such endowment 
 can be settled to your Lordship's satisfaction, to give and grant 
 the site of the said building for the purpose of the same being 
 consecrated as and for a chapel for religious worship according to 
 the rites and ceremonies of the United Church of England and 
 Ireland: Now being desirous of supplying accommodation for the 
 inhabitants of the said parish to attend the performance of Divine 
 Service in the said intended chapel, which is conveniently situated 
 for a considerable portion of the population who are at a distance 
 from tlie parish church, I request that your Lordship will be pleased 
 to grant your licence for the performance of Divine Service in the 
 said intended chapel according to the rites and ceremonies of the 
 United Church of England and Ireland : and I do hereby engage 
 that if your Lordship shall think Jit to grant such your licence, the 
 said intended chapel shall be set apart and appropriated exclusively 
 for that purpose. 
 
 Witness my hand this 28th day of October, in the year of our 
 
 Lord 1832. 
 
 (Signature) " Somerset." 
 
 Plan annexed. 
 
 (Signed) " Somerset." 
 
 The Bishop^ s Fiat Indorsed. 
 
 " Having personally inspected the building herein mentioned, 
 and highly approving it, I hereby direct that the licence issue as 
 prayed. 
 
 Nov. 2, 1832. (Signed) " H. E."
 
 ( 61 ) 
 
 THE LICENCE. 
 
 " Henry, by divine permission Bishop of Exeter, greetino*. 
 Whereas, we have received a petition from the most noble Edward 
 Adolphus, Duke of Somerset, setting forth that he had lately erected 
 in his manor of Bridgetown, within the parish of Berry Pomeroy, in 
 our diocese of Exeter, a building designed for a chapel for religious 
 worship according to the rites and ceremonies of the United Church 
 of England and Ireland, and had fitted up the same with reading- 
 desk, pulpit, communion table, and convenient pews and seats cal- 
 culated to accommodate with sittings above seven hundred persons, 
 and ])rovided with Bible, Book of Common Prayer, and all other 
 things necessary for the due performance of Divine Service ; and 
 the ground-plot of the said intended new chapel is laid down in 
 the plan annexed to the said petition, identified by the signature of 
 the said Duke, and also copied in the margin of this our licence ; 
 and that it is the intention of his Grace to provide a permanent 
 endowment for a minister to serve the said chapel ; and as soon 
 as such eiidoivment can he settled to our satisfaction to give and 
 grant the site of the said building for the purpose of the same being 
 consecrated as and for a chapel for religious tvorship according 
 to the rites and ceremonies of tiie United Church of England and 
 Ireland ; and his Grace, being desirous of supplying accommodation 
 for the inhabitants of the said parish to attend the performance ot 
 Divine Service in the said intended chapel, which is conveniently 
 situated for a considerable portion of the population who are at a 
 distance from the parish church, prayed that we would be pleased to 
 grant our licence for the performance of Divine Service in the said 
 intended chapel according to the rites and ceremonies of the 
 United Church of England and Ireland ; and His Grace thereby 
 engaged (hat if tve should think fit to grant such our licence, the 
 said intended chapel should be set apart and appropriated exclu- 
 sively for that purpose : Now we, the said Bishop, having ourself 
 visited and inspected the said intended new chapel, and being en- 
 tirely satisfied of the fitness of the same for the purpose of a chapel, 
 do by these presents as far as in us lies, and we lawfully can by the 
 laws, canons, and constitutions of this realm, give and grant our 
 licence or faculty that the said new chapel may be forthwith opened 
 and used for the celebration of Divine Service according to the rites 
 and ceremonies of the United Church of England and Ireland, by a 
 priest or minister in holy orders to be for that purpose licensed by
 
 ( 62 ) 
 
 us until we shall he enabled and shall think Jit to consecrate the 
 said chapel, or make some other order in this behalf. 
 
 " Given under our hand and episcopal seal this 9th day ot 
 November, in the year of our Lord 1832, and in the 
 second year of our consecration." 
 
 No. 10. 
 
 Note from the Duhe to Mr. Barnes. — November 11, 1832. 
 
 " The Duke of Somerset sends Jiis compliments to Mr. 
 Barnes, and has duly received the Bishop of Exeter's licence for 
 opening the new chapel at Bridgetown." 
 
 The foregoing Letters, the Petition of his Grace for a 
 Licence of the Building for the purposes of Divine Worship, 
 until Consecration should be obtained, and the Licence which 
 was granted thereupon, show the conditions required by me as 
 indispensable, and the engagement entered into by the Duke, 
 in compliance with this requisition. 
 
 On the Licence especially it is right to remark, that the 
 effect of it, taken in conjunction with the Duke's Petition, was 
 to secure the perpetual appropriation of the building as a 
 Chapel for the performance of Divine Service according to the 
 rites of the Church of England ; unless the Duke should violate 
 his engagement. For the Duke bound himself to secure that 
 point as the condition of the licence being granted; and this 
 obligation did, in truth, extend even beyond his Grace's life, if 
 he should die before Consecration. 
 
 This is not the form, either of the Petition or the Licence, 
 which is used in the case of a building not permanently pledged 
 as a place of Church Service. In such cases, the petitioner 
 engages, that only while it is so used it shall not be used for 
 any other purpose. 
 
 And this great security, insisted on by me, and given by 
 the Duke in his petition, did also virtually ensure endoianeiit — 
 inasmuch as the Duke could not otherwdse obtain a right to 
 nominate the minister, which had been declared by him to be 
 his great object.
 
 ( 63 ) 
 
 The licence of the building having thus been granted, the 
 Rev, J. Edwards, vicar of Berry Pomeroy, at the request of 
 the Duke of Somerset, nominated the Rev. James Shore, who 
 was licensed accordingly, to perform Divine Service in tlie new 
 building. 
 
 In 1834 Mr. Edwards died, and was succeeded by the 
 Rev. E. Broicn, on the presentation of parties w^ho had pur- 
 chased that turn from the Duke. 
 
 Mr. Brown, after a while, finding the chapel and hamlet of 
 Bridgetown an mipleasant portion of his charge, consulted me 
 on the expediency of effecting a separation ; and, having 
 obtained my consent, proposed to the patron, the Duke of 
 Somerset, to contribute a part of the vicarial tithes of the 
 parish towards the endowment of Bridgetown as a separate 
 district. The Duke took time to consider this proposal ; but 
 two or three years afterwards, Mr. Michelmore, the Duke's 
 steward, having first ascertained that ISIr. Brown was willing to 
 contribute all the vicarial tithes accruing within Bridgetown, to 
 the amount of about 80Z. per annum, stated to him that " it 
 was the wish of the Duke to ascertain whetlier the Bishop would 
 accept this portion of tithes, to be given by the vicar, as a 
 sufficient endowment for the purpose of consecration." 
 
 On this being communicated to me, I authorized Mr. Brown 
 to announce my acceptance ; but at the same time added, that 
 if the endowment were made altogether out of the vicarial 
 tithes, I could not consent to the nomination of the minister 
 being taken from the vicar, to whom, of common right, it be- 
 longed ; if, however, his Grace would augment the endowment 
 with 70Z. per annum, and give a house of residence, I would 
 assent to the patronage being vested in the Duke. It may be 
 right to say that the rectorial tithes of Bridgetown, the pro- 
 perty of the Duke, as lay impropriator, were understood to 
 amount to the sum thus required as the consideration for trans- 
 ferring the patronage to his Grace, who was also the proprietor 
 of all, or almost all, of the houses and lands in Bridgetown. 
 The proposition was submitted to the Duke in the following 
 letter of Mr. Brown to Lord Seymour.
 
 ( 64 ) 
 
 " My Loud, " Berry Pomeroy, August 6, 1841. 
 
 " Mr. Michelmore having stated it to be the wish of his 
 Grace the Duke of Somerset to ascertain whether the Bishop would 
 consider the tithes of the manor of Bridgetown a sufficient endow- 
 ment for the consecration of the chapel there, I have since iiad an 
 interview with the Bishop on this subject. 
 
 " His Lordship thus stipulates : — Should the chapel be conse- 
 crated as a district churcli, endowed solely with a portion of the 
 vicarial tithes of the parish, the Bishop would require tlie patronage 
 to be vested in the vicar ; but if endowed with such tithes, con- 
 jointly with an endowment on the part of his Grace making up the 
 sum of 150/. per annum, with a house for the minister, his Lordship 
 would give iiis full consent to the proposed district church, and to 
 the patronage remaining with his Grace the Duke of Somerset. 
 
 " The interest which your Lordship appeared to take in my pro- 
 posal, while it constitutes my apology for thus troubling you, en- 
 courages me to hope that you will promote by your influence the 
 attainment of so important and desirable an object. 
 
 " I have the honour to be, my Lord, &e. 
 *' Edward Brown, 
 
 Vicar of Berry Pomeroy. 
 
 " The Right Hon. Lord Seymour." 
 
 To this letter Mr. Brown received an answer from Lord 
 Seymour, stating that he must consult the Duke. Subse- 
 quently, Mr. Brown met his Lordship on this subject, by 
 appointment, at Mr. Michelmore's ; but there was no result. 
 
 Such was the only proposal ever made to me for the endow- 
 ment of the Duke's building at Bridgetown ; and I have ascer- 
 tained that no application whatever has been made to the 
 Church Building Commissioners, " through the medium of 
 whom, or otherwise," Mr. Maberley, in his letter. No. 8, had 
 declared it to be " his Grace's most serious and determined 
 intention and wish to do his best to procure the consecration of 
 his chapel, and to make for it a permanent regular endowment 
 of proper amount." 
 
 In 1843 Mr. Brown exchanged the vicarage of Berry Pome- 
 roy for a benefice in another diocese, then holden by the Rev. 
 W. B. Cosens. 
 
 Mr. Cosens declined giving a nomination to Mr. Shore, to
 
 ( 65 ) 
 
 be his curate ; and the following correspondence passed on the 
 subject between him and the Duke : — 
 
 " Vicarage, Berry Pomeroy, 
 "Mr Lord Duke, Dec. 19, 1843. 
 
 " It is with the greatest pain and regret that I have found 
 it quite impossible, with any regard to the spiritual care of this 
 parish, to certify that Mr. Shore ' is a Jit person to be licensed to 
 the chapel of Bridgetown.' I think it my duty, therefore, to say 
 that I am quite ready to nominate any curate appointed by your 
 Grace, whose views and practices afford me a fair hope of carrying 
 on the duties of the parish, for which I alone am responsible, with 
 advantage to the people committed to my care. Or should your 
 Grace wish to delay any such appointment, I am perfectly willing, 
 in addition to my two full services here, to perform an evening ser- 
 vice in the chapel, every Sunday for a timcj without fee or reward. 
 I beg to observe that each of these offers was distinctly made by nie, 
 and intended for your Grace's consideration, from six weeks to two 
 months since. Lord Seymour suggested that I ought to provide 
 for the chapel ; let the matter, therefore, if your Grace pleases, be 
 put upon that ground, and I am willing to enter into any engage- 
 ment to resign the chapel into your hands or those of your repre- 
 sentatives wlienever it shall be required. I will only add, that I 
 am ready to afford your Grace all reasonable explanation upon the 
 subject of the chapel, should you desire it, and that I am, with great 
 respect, your Grace's very faithful servant, 
 
 " To His Grace " W. B. Cosens. 
 
 The Duke of Somerset." 
 
 '• Sir, ''Brighton, Dec. 31, 1843. 
 
 " Your obliging letter of the 19th instant duly reached me, 
 and I have always regretted extremely that any difficulties should 
 have arisen with regard to the performance of Divine Service in the 
 chapel at Bridgetown. Indeed, the prohibition came upon me like 
 a clap of thunder ; and I have not, to this day, been able to com- 
 prehend the reason of it. But as you are so good as to offer me 
 some explanation, in case 1 should desire it, I must avail myself of 
 the intended favour ; for, after all the correspondence that, I am 
 told, has passed upon the subject, and the different conjectures that 
 have been suggested, I am at a loss to know why you refuse to 
 nominate Mr. Shore, whether it be in regard to doctrine or charac- 
 ter, or with respect to what other cause your objection has arisen. 
 " I have to thank you for the civility of the various proposals 
 
 F
 
 ( 66 ) 
 
 contained in your letter, and I havetlie honour to be, Sir, with much 
 respect, your faithful servant, 
 
 " To the Rev. W. B. Cosens." " Somerset. 
 
 " Vicarage, Berry Pomeroy, 
 " My Lord Duke, January 8, 1844. 
 
 " I HAD the honour of receiving your very kind letter, just 
 as I was on the point of leaving home to attend the Quarter Sessions. 
 
 The congregation, nearly half of whom were Dissenters 
 
 from Totnes, were as nearly unchurched as I could imagine possible. 
 Of the leading partisans of Mr. Shore, one, I am told, had been the 
 clerk in a Dissenting meeting-house, another a well-known Dissenter, 
 and a third, who was a Churchman, boasts that he advised Lord 
 Seymour to get a first-rate Dissenting preacher to serve the chapel. 
 These and all that party attend the meeting-house, though Totnes 
 Church is within one hundred yards of it, and is not half full ; and 
 the general tone of their language, as far as I have heard it, is the 
 grossest reviling of my predecessor, as good a man as ever lived, 
 joined to an open expression of their desire that the chapel should 
 be opened without the authority of the Bishop, in short, as a meet- 
 ing-house. Many of the congregation who have remained true to 
 the doctrines and discipline of the Church, regarded the chapel as a 
 means by which the Church was made to give place to the meeting- 
 house ; and this they especially recognized in their minister's omit- 
 ting, at the bidding of some Dissenters, the term 'religious' before 
 the words ' gracious Queen ' in the prayer for the Parliament; at 
 a former period, I am most credibly informed, the Communion 
 Service was repeatedly omitted, though Mr. Shore took especial 
 care to inform me that he had left it out once. These sentiments, 
 expressed to me by Mr. Sliore, rendered it impossible for me to say 
 that ' I believe him to be a fit person to be licensed to the chapel.' 
 If the only alternative to nominating Mr. Shore were the resigna- 
 tion of the living, I should consider it my duty to take that course, 
 rather than become an instrument to betray the interests of the 
 Church, or to commit a suicide upon my character as a clergy- 
 man." 
 
 On the 16th of February Mr. T. Michelmore, as agent of the 
 Duke of Somerset, did what Mr. Cosens had thus informed his 
 Grace the dissenting portion of the congregation at Bridgetown 
 uro-ed Lord Seymour, then representative of the borough in 
 Parliament, to do : he certified the building under the pro-
 
 ( 67 ) 
 
 visions of 52 Geo. III., c. 155, "as a place of meeting of a 
 congregation for religious worship of Protestants." 
 
 About this time the following handbill was circulated at 
 Bridgetown : — 
 
 NOTICE. 
 
 " The Bridgetown Chapel, having been duly registered in the 
 Court of the Archdeacon of Totnes, will be again opened for Divine 
 Service, under the ministry of the Rev. James Shore, on Sunday 
 next, at the usual time, a quarter before 1 1 o'clock. 
 
 " Thomas Michelmore, 
 Agent to the Duke of Somerset." 
 
 As I could not but consider the course thus taken to be in 
 direct violation of the engagement, on the faith of which I had 
 licensed the building, and as Mr. Shore was now acting in 
 open defiance of the duty which he owed to the Church in 
 which ho had been ordained, and to his own solemn vows, I 
 directed proceedings to be instituted against him in the Eccle- 
 siastical Courts. The successful issue of those proceedings 
 was made the occasion of a petition from him to the House of 
 Lords. 
 
 In that petition he called himself " a Protestant Dissenting 
 Minister, in Holy Orders, and a Preacher and Teacher of a 
 Congregation of Protestant Dissenters assembling for reli- 
 gious worship in a certain Chapel called Bridgetown Chapel." 
 It recited that " he had qualified himself to act as a Dissenting 
 Minister by taking the oaths required by 52 Geo. III., c. 155, 
 to be taken by Dissenting Ministers, on the 15th of March, 
 1844 "—and that '' on the 15th of February, 1844, Mr. Michel- 
 more, as Agent of the Duke of Somerset, in compliance with the 
 provisions of 52 Geo. III., c. 155, had certified to the Arch- 
 deacon that the said chapel was intended to be used as a place of 
 meeting of a congregation for religious worship of Protestants, 
 which certificate was duly registered." The Petition con- 
 cluded by praying "such relief as their Lordships should 
 consider to be agreeable to the Toleration," &c. 
 
 In speaking to this Petition, I narrated simply the circum- 
 stances of the case, especially the Duke of Somerset's Petition 
 for the licence exhibited above, and said, that the Duke having 
 
 F 2
 
 ( 68 ) 
 
 thus engaged to endow the chapel in order to its consecration, 
 and to appropriate the building, previously to the consecration, 
 exclusively to the purposes of divine worship according to the 
 rites and ceremonies of the United Church of England and 
 Ireland, had, for reasons which doubtless were satisfactory to 
 his own mind, violated both those engagements. 
 
 No inquiry was addressed to me respecting what 1 had thus 
 said, nor the grounds on which I had said it ; but, two or three 
 weeks afterwards, Lord Seymour went to Totnes, having pre- 
 viously procured a meeting of his constituents to be summoned 
 to hear him, at which meeting he made the speech, a portion 
 of which has been cited by the Edinburgh Review, as exhibited 
 above (p. 54.) On my attention being called to it, I sought to take 
 such legal steps against his Lordship as should enable him to 
 prove his charge against me, if it was well founded ; or should 
 enable me to establish my innocence before the world. For 
 this purpose I addressed to him the following letter: — 
 
 " Bishopstowe, Torquay, July 28, 1846. 
 " My Lord, 
 
 " My attention has been called to the report of the proceed- 
 ings of a public meeting held at Totnes on Tuesday last, and espe- 
 cially of a speech therein stated to have been delivered by your 
 Lordship on that occasion. 
 
 '' I now send to your Lordship a copy of the newspaper, the 
 ' Western Times,' of Saturday, the 25th instant, in which the report 
 is given. 
 
 " The sentiments and tone ascribed to your Lordship in the 
 reported speech are such, as forbid all remark or comment on my 
 part. But I have no hesitation in making to your Lordship a pro- 
 position, which I am bound to suppose will not be lightly rejected 
 — that your Lordship shall either deny the general accuracy of the 
 report, or, if it be in the main part of it accurate, that you make 
 such admission of its accuracy, as shall put me in a position to call 
 on you to justify the speech as reported, and prove the truth of its 
 main allegations before a jury of our country. 
 
 " I am, my Lord, 
 " Your Lordship's obedient servant, 
 " The Lord Seymour, London. " H. Exeter, 
 
 '< P.S. — I request your Lordship to return to me the newspaper, 
 which I now send, with any statement which your Lordship may 
 think fit."
 
 ( 69 ) 
 
 July 28, 1846.— Put the original letter, of which the above is a 
 copy, with the ' Western Times,' of Saturday, July 25, into the 
 post-office at Exeter, directed as above. 
 
 Fred. Kitson. 
 
 " Lord Seymour declines all communication with the Bishop of 
 Exeter, and is not desirous of reading the Gloucester ' Journal ' 
 which the Bishop has transmitted. 
 
 " Spring Gardens^ 
 Wednesday, July 29, 1846." 
 
 On the receipt of this letter it was determined that my 
 solicitor should go to London, and endeavour to bring Lord 
 Seymour to a sense of what was due to truth and justice : with 
 what success the attempt was made will appear from the follow- 
 ing correspondence : — 
 
 " Mr Lord, " Exeter, July 30, 1846. 
 
 " The Bishop of Exeter has this day shown me your Lord- 
 ship's letter to him, in which you state ' you are not desirous of 
 reading the ' Gloucester Journal ' which the Bishop has transmitted 
 to you.' 
 
 " I am a solicitor, acting with Mr. Barnes, the Bishop's Secre- 
 tary, as his Lordship's adviser ; and I feel it my duty to state to 
 your Lordship, that, by the Bishop's direction, I on the 28th inst. 
 enclosed in an envelope, which was directed to your Lordship (and 
 was accompanied by a letter of the Bishop's), the ' Western Times* 
 newspaper, of the 2oth inst. 
 
 " The packet remained with me until I sealed and afterwards 
 put it in the post-office. Having no Gloucester paper before me at 
 the time the letter to your Lordship was written by the Bishop, I 
 feel it due to myself to request your Lordship to have the kindness 
 to state whether the paper transmitted by the Bishop, and received 
 by your Lordship, was the ' Gloucester Journal ' or the ' Western 
 Times.' 
 
 " The paper which was enclosed in the envelope directed by the 
 Bishop is signed with my initials, ' F. & K.' 
 " I have the honour to remain, 
 
 " Your Lordship's very obedient servant, 
 
 " Fred. Kitson. 
 
 " The Eight Honourable the Lord Seymour."
 
 ( 70 ) 
 
 To this letter I received in London, on the 3rd instant, the fol- 
 lowing reply : — 
 
 « Sir, " Saturday. August 1. 
 
 '' Is answer to your letter, I have only to say, that the paper 
 received by me in an enclosure with a letter from the Bishop of 
 Exeter was a ' Gloucester Journal,' with writing upon it, and 
 apparently an address to Miss Biddle, Chelsea. 
 
 " I am, 
 
 '' Your obedient servant, 
 " Frederick Kitson, Esq." " Seymour. 
 
 Mr. Kitson's statement written to me at the time, and to the 
 entire accuracy of which he fully pledged and pledges himself, 
 is as follows : — 
 
 " Being totally unable to account for Lord Seymour's statement, 
 and being anxious to give as well as to receive the fullest explana- 
 tion on this most inexplicable matter, I on the 4th instant wrote to 
 Lord Seymour as follows : — 
 
 " New Huramuras, Covent Garden, 
 " My Lord, August 3, 1846. 
 
 " I BEG to acknowledge the receipt of your Lordship's note 
 of the 1st instant, which has been forwarded to me here, and to 
 request the favour of a personal interview at the earliest hour that 
 it may be convenient to your Lordship to appoint, as I am desirous 
 of explaining my reason for statiig that the paper transmitted on 
 the 28th July, with a letter from the Bishop of Exeter, was the 
 ' Western Times,' and not the ' Gloucester Journal.' 
 
 " I also think it right to communicate to your Lordship a letter 
 I have this morning received from the Bishop of Exeter, and which 
 I now call for the purpose of doing. 
 
 " I have the honour to be, 
 
 " Your Lordship's very obedient servant, 
 " The Lord Seymour. " Fred. Kitsox. 
 
 " P.S. — In case I should be unable to see your Lordship. I will 
 leave the Bishop of Exeter's letter to me at your Lordship's house." 
 
 " I called with this letter at Lord Seymour's residence, and deli- 
 vered it with my card to the servant, requesting him to ask if I 
 could see his Lordship. The servant returned in a few minutes, 
 and said, ' his Lordship was then very much engaged.' I desired 
 the servant to request his Lordship to name his own time. This
 
 ( 71 ) 
 
 message was, I presume, delivered to Lord Seymour, as immediately 
 afterwards the servant returned, and said, ' His Lordship desires me 
 to say, he has read your letter, and is unable to make any appoint- 
 ment.' I then left the following letter to me from the Bishop of 
 Exeter, dated the 2nd August, for Lord Seymour's perusal : — 
 
 " Bishopstowe, Torquay, August 2, 1846. 
 " My dear Sir, 
 
 " Mr. Barnes has sent to me a copy of your letter of the 
 30th ultimo, to Lord Seymour, and of his Lordship's answer to you 
 of the 1st instant, which I enclose herewith, 
 
 " The circumstances of this case are most mysterious, and seem 
 to defy all attempt at elucidation. 
 
 " In your office on Saturday last, the 28th of July, I wrote an 
 address to Lord Seymour, London (with my name, H. Exeter), on 
 a large envelope, in which you, in my presence, and by my direc- 
 tion, placed a copy of the ' Western Times ' of the 25th ultimo, 
 which you showed to me, and which you have subsequently informed 
 me was marked by you with your initials. 
 
 " I gave to you also a letter from me to Lord Seymour, to be 
 put in the same envelope, which you assure me you did so place, 
 and which it is certain was so placed, because Lord Seymour 
 received that letter, and answered it to me by return of post. 
 
 " That the newspaper which accompanied that letter in the enve- 
 lope did not pass from your hands till you had sealed it (I conclude 
 with my seal, as I directed), and put it into the Exeter post-office 
 with your own hands, but also that you had not, nor ever had, in 
 your possession, nor ever (as you believe) saw, a Gloucester news- 
 paper ; and your clerk, who had been questioned by you, makes the 
 same declaration of himself. Indeed, you say tiiat the envelope 
 was not out of your own keeping, till, having been sealed by you, 
 it was committed to the post-office. 
 
 " I now add, that I had no ' Gloucester Journal' in my pos- 
 session, that I had not seen any such paper for many years, and that 
 I am utterly ignorant of tlie existence of any such person as ' Miss 
 Biddle, Chelsea,' to whom Lord Seymour writes to you that there 
 is in writing on the paper apparently an address. It is, therefore, 
 physically impossible tiiat a ' Gloucester Journal ' should have been 
 placed in the envelope through any inadvertency of mine. 
 
 " I advise your waiting on Lord Seymour, and endeavouring to 
 see his Lordship, showing this letter to him. 
 
 " I am, my dear Sir, 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 " Frederick Kitson, Esq." " H. Exeter.
 
 ( 72 ) 
 
 Hearing nothing from Lord Seymour, I on the same day ad- 
 dressed him as follows : — 
 
 " New Hummums, Covent Garden, 
 " My Lord, Aug. 3, 1846. 
 
 " As your Lordship declined to favour me with an interview 
 this morning, may I request your Lordship to return to me the 
 paper which was enclosed in the envelope addressed to your Lord- 
 ship on the 28th July, by the Bishop of Exeter, as received by you. 
 
 " If your Lordship will leave the newspaper with your servant, 
 I will call for it at eleven o'clock to-morrow ; or, should you wish 
 to retain it, I will leave it in liis hands. 
 
 " I may add, that I never saw any newspaper or other writing 
 addressed to ' Miss Biddle, Chelsea,' in my life. 
 
 " I have the honour to remain, 
 " Your Lordship's very obedient servant, 
 " The Lord Seymour." " Fred. Kitson. 
 
 This letter was delivered at Lord Seymour's house, in the even- 
 ing of the 3rd instant, and on the following morning I called at the 
 time named in my note, and on inquiring if Lord Seymour had left 
 any paper for me, the servant placed in my hands an unsealed 
 envelope, addressed to me, of the 2nd instant. 
 
 Thinking afterwards that it was possible Lord Seymour might 
 have misunderstood my second note of the 3rd instant, I addressed 
 him as follows: — 
 
 " Neio Hummums, Covent Garden, 
 " My Lord, Aug. 4. 1846. 
 
 " I yesterday wrote to your Lordship, requesting you to 
 return the newspaper which your Lordship states was enclosed in 
 the Bishop of Exeter's letter to you of the 28th July. On calling 
 this morning at your house at the time mentioned in my note 
 (eleven o'clock), your servant placed in my hands an unsealed 
 envelope, containing the Bishop of Exeter's letter to me of the 2nd 
 instant, which I had left yesterday for your Lordship's perusal. 
 
 " I now beg your Lordship to inform me whether I am to under- 
 stand that you intended this as the answer to my letter requesting 
 the return of the newspaper. 
 
 " I have tlie honour to remain, 
 '• Your Lordship's very obedient servant, 
 " The Lord Seymour." " Fred. Kitson. 
 
 This letter was delivered at Lord Seymour's house on the day it 
 bears date, and to it I have received no answer whatever.
 
 ( 7^ ) 
 
 Upon this correspondence I make no further comment than 
 to say, that if any person can devise any explanation of Lord 
 Seymour s part in it, which is consistent with any principle of 
 action, which an honourable man would not blush to avow, I 
 heartily wish that his Lordship may have the benefit of such 
 a construction. 
 
 After this, my utmost endeavours were exerted to obtain 
 such legal evidence as should enable me to proceed against 
 Lord Seymour, either criminally, or by action at law, as I 
 should be advised. For this purpose my solicitor went to 
 Plymouth, where the first report of Lord Seymour's speech 
 was published in a newspaper edited by the brother of the 
 editor of the Exeter Western Times. The following letter 
 gives the result of the interview : 
 
 " My Lord, 
 
 " I DID not return from Plymouth until late last night, 
 having to wait at Plymouth until Mr. Latimer could consult his 
 legal adviser, Mr. Bulteel, which he very properly wished to do, 
 and who (Mr. B.) was afterwards present at our interview. 
 
 " The advice he gave was to tell everything, as he would other- 
 wise himself be liable to an indictment. 
 
 " Mr. Latimer, who was perfectly civil, then stated, without any 
 threat or inducement on my part, that he himself attended the meet- 
 ing at Totnes, but not at Lord Seymour's request, or in consequence 
 of any communication from him. 
 
 " He (Latimer) took the notes himself in short-hand, and pro- 
 duced them to me ; the report in his paper is a transcript of such 
 notes, and he will swear to their accuracy, and to having heard Lord 
 Seymour speak them. 
 
 " After the meeting was over, Lord Seymour sent to him to say 
 he should like to read his notes, but this Latimer declined, as the 
 ' Western Times ' report was gone, and if Lord Seymour altered 
 his (Latimer's) report, there would be a difference between the two. 
 
 " Lord Seymour never saw his notes, nor had he any authority or 
 direction from him to publish them ; it was entirely his own act." 
 
 We had thus obtained evidence that the offensive words 
 were spoken by Lord Seymour, but none to implicate him in 
 the publication. 
 
 The case was laid before the most eminent counsel, who
 
 ( 74 ) 
 
 advised, — first, that an indictment would not lie for the words 
 spoken ; secondly, that although a criminal information would 
 undoubtedly be granted if I were a layman, on the ground 
 that the speaking such words manifestly tended to a breach of 
 the peace ; yet as such a consequence could not be appre- 
 hended from slanderous words spoken of a Bishop, the rule 
 would not be granted. 
 
 So much for criminal proceedings against Lord Seymour. 
 As to an action, I was advised, that if the words had been 
 spoken of me as a Bishop, the action would lie. But this not 
 being so, the words being applied to what I had said in Parlia- 
 ment as a member of the House of Lords, a civil action on 
 account of them could not be sustained. 
 
 Then the point was considered, whether the action could be 
 brought under the old statutes of De Scandalo Magnatum. 
 But here, too, I was strongly urged to forbear from the attempt, 
 because those statutes were practically obsolete, and an attempt 
 to revive them in these days would be not only very odious to 
 the people, but would most probably be regarded with much 
 disfavour by the Court. 
 
 Upon the whole, therefore, the opinions given to me by two 
 most eminent counsel were decidedly opposed to any legal pro- 
 ceeding against Lord Seymour. 
 
 It remained for me to endeavour to do justice to myself by 
 proceeding with an indictment against the editor of the 
 Western Times, who had not only published the speech, but 
 had accompanied it with the offensive comments quoted by the 
 Review. The defendant entered a plea of justijication. The 
 case was tried before Mr. Baron Piatt and a special jury at 
 Exeter, the chief evidence consisting of the written documents 
 exhibited above, especially the Duke of Somerset's petition for 
 the licence, and his accepting the licence on the grounds and 
 under the conditions therein expressed. The following is part 
 of the judge's charge to the jury : — 
 
 " There does not seem to be much doubt that the offer respecting 
 this chapel was made to the Bishop, and that he was ready to conse- 
 crate it, provided it was endowed, the land of the chapel conveyed 
 to the Church, and that the chapel should be used for Divine Ser- 
 vice according to the ritual of the Church of England. You will
 
 ( 75 ) 
 
 have to consider whether he did grant the licence, upon the Duke's 
 entering into that engagement, for the endowment and consecration 
 of this chapel. If he granted the licence, having obtained that 
 engagement, why then he was perfectly right in what he stated in 
 the House of Lords, and this issue also must be found for the Crown, 
 the basis of the libel being the falsehood of the allegation in the 
 House of Lords." 
 
 The letters were then read by the judge, observing on them 
 as he went on, and commenting on the following passage in 
 Mr. Maberley's letter to Mr. Barnes of the 22nd of September, 
 1832, in which he states, — 
 
 " It is his Grace's most serious and determined intention to do 
 his best, through the medium of the Church Commissioners and 
 otherivise, to procure the consecration of this chapel, and to make 
 for it a permanent regular endowment of proper amount ; loith the 
 expression of this intention, the Bishop will, 1 doubt not, knowing 
 his Grace's attachment to the Establishment, feel satisfied and rest 
 content." 
 
 Upon this the judge observed, — 
 
 " Are these things to be treated as a matter of form'? It never can 
 be intended, that an individual in the rank of life of the Duke of 
 Somerset shall not be bound by what his agents state on liis behalf: 
 that can hardly be conceived for a moment. Mr. Maberley's duty 
 was to see that the Duke did not enter into an engagement which 
 he never intended to fulfil." 
 
 The judge then remarked on the petition for the licence, on 
 which he said, — 
 
 " The diocesan would desert his duty if he granted the licence 
 without having a declaration on the part of the person signino- it, 
 holding out certain events intended to take place, and which alone 
 formed the inducement on which the Bishop would o^rant the 
 licence." 
 
 " Do you suppose that the Duke, if he told the Bishop that he 
 tvould not endow this chapel, would have obtained this licence "? The 
 Bishop certainly would never have issued the licence." 
 
 His Lordship next read Mr. Barnes's letter to Mr. Maberley, 
 of September 25, and his answer of September 2Q, showinfr 
 the Duke's title to the property, and inclosing plans, &c. ; and 
 proceeded, —
 
 ( 76 ) 
 
 " What was the use of ascertaining the Duke's title, tohich had 
 been alluded to in the preceding letter of Mr. Barnes, unless it teas 
 for the purpose of waking over the chapel a7id endowing it ? " 
 
 The judge, in referring to the petition of the Duke for a 
 licence, said, — 
 
 " If you think that this was not an undertaking on the part of the 
 noble Duke, you will say so. But it seems to me, that tlie literal 
 meaning of the language would convey to a reasonable man, to 
 whom this Petition was addressed, that the Duke entered into the 
 engagement which is alleged, although the word 'undertake' is 
 not actually used. If this was an agreement proved between the 
 parlies, it would be my duty to state to you tlie legal effects of the 
 terms which it contained. But this is a question between the Duke 
 and the Prelate, as to what they meant between each other at the 
 time ; whether the former did not enter into a solemn engagement 
 with the latter upon this correspondence. If he did not, the Bishop 
 is wrong ; if he did, the Bishop is right. You will say, looking at 
 tiie whole, whether you collect that the Duke did hold out to the 
 Bishop an expectation that he would endow this chapel. 
 
 " If you think that he did hold out that intention in such a man- 
 ner as amounted to an undertaking, then it seems to me that the 
 Bishop was perfectly right in saying that the pledge had been 
 given, and that it had been violated. 
 
 " AYe cannot respect persons here If the party states that 
 
 from which he afterwards departs, it is for us to judge the trans- 
 action according to the principles of justice, and to state what the 
 evidence brings home to our minds as to the justice of the case ; 
 after finding first whether the matter charged in the indictment is 
 libellous, you will in the second place say whether the Duke did 
 not undertake to endow this chapel. That it has not been endowed 
 is quite certain. If you collect from the nature of the correspond- 
 ence, and 710 man to whom that Petition was addressed but must 
 have concluded that the Duke undertook to endow that chapel, the 
 verdict must be for the Crown on that issue also, because the Bishop 
 stated in the House of Lords that which he was justified in stating, 
 and which was perfectly consistent with the truth, and the libel in 
 that respect Avill be false. 
 
 " If, however, you think that the undertaking was not given, you 
 will eive the verdict for the defendant on that issue." 
 
 After the evidence so adduced, and after these comments on 
 it by the judge, the jury found a verdict for the defendant ;
 
 ( // ) 
 
 and in that verdict the honest reviewer has exulted, as we have 
 seen. But the matter did not stop here ; the defendant's 
 counsel subsequently made application to the judge for costs, 
 which was refused, the judge saying, "I do not think you 
 would like a new trial ; you were exceedingly lucky in getting 
 the verdict. How it was given, I do not understand quite ; 
 / thought it icas a very wrong verdict, I assure you. Unless 
 the jury were misled, one cannot understand it. You have a 
 right to keep all you got, and no more." 
 
 The learned judge here suggests that there had been the 
 possibility of a new trial ; and I have been told that it has been 
 boastfidly said that I dared not apply for a new trial. It is very 
 true that I dared not. The matter was much considered. First 
 I was told that to grant a new trial, in the case of an acquittal, 
 however manifestly wrongful, was without precedent ; and 
 although under the new law of libel there were reasons for the 
 application which did not exist before, yet it was deemed very 
 uncertain whether the attempt would be successful ; while to 
 fail for any reason would be very damaging. 
 
 In the next place, if a new trial should be granted, was I 
 prepared to go again before an Exeter jury ? Had I reason to 
 hope, that another set of jurors there would be found less pre- 
 judiced, less ignorant, or less wilful, than those who had pro- 
 nounced against me on the trial ? The very plain and glaring 
 strength of my case — the very strength of the observations of 
 the judge upon it, showed, unhappily, how little confidence 
 could be placed in such a jury. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. I should be sorry to be 
 supposed to believe that the majority of the citizens of Exeter 
 are unfit to be entrusted with the sacred duty of administering 
 the best and highest privilege of the subjects of a free State. 
 But this I say, that in the present state of society in England, 
 the English trial by jury, except as a security against the 
 excesses of regal power — excesses which are never likely to be 
 experienced again — is, in any cases into which party spirit can 
 enter, one of the very worst expedients for eliciting a true 
 judgment which the ingenuity of man could devise. 
 
 Not many years ago, having occasion to consult a very 
 eminent counsel, now a not less eminent judge, whether I
 
 ( 78 ) 
 
 should bring an action in a matter where a pecuniary interest 
 only was concerned, he told me, that my case, not only in law 
 but in justice, was clear ; " Yet," said he, " I advise you not to 
 bring an action. My experience of juries since the Reform 
 Act is, that you are never safe if there be any ground whatever 
 for a popular appeal to them. They now think themselves at 
 liberty to give their verdict, not as the law, or even as justice, 
 rightly understood, may prescribe, but according to their owti 
 views of what is fitting." As the learned person who was 
 advising me had himself been an ardent Reformer, I could not 
 help remarking to him that this was a startling admission for 
 him to make. " It may be so," said he, " but I am giving 
 you the result of my own experience." 
 
 To return to my own case. I frankly own, I dared not 
 venture on the lottery of another special jury at Exeter. A 
 small minority of Radicals, or Puritans, or Misbelievers —nay, 
 a single one of these on the panel — one single hater of Bishops 
 in general, or of myself in particular — might be sufficient to 
 weary out the patience of his more honest fellows, and extort 
 from them a verdict like that in Regina v. Latimer. 
 
 Lord Clarendon tells us, that when the Bill " for extirpating 
 Episcopacy " was pending in Parliament, they who prosecuted 
 the Bill did so '' with impatience " and perseveringly, while 
 *' the others who abhorred it, growing weary of so tiresome an 
 attendance, left the House at dinner-time, and afterwards fol- 
 lowed their pleasures : so that the Lord Falkland was wont to 
 say, that ' They who hated Bishops, hated them worse than 
 the Devil ; while they who loved them, did not love them so 
 well as their dinner.' " I am afraid that a similar feeling is 
 too likely to be found in the jury-box of these days. 
 
 There is, besides, in the present times, a special provocation 
 of popular dislike of some amongst us — the ultra-Protestant 
 feeling which, prevalent in many places, is peculiarly so in 
 Exeter. A large portion of its inhabitants — not of the lowest 
 orders — scruple not to regard me as little better, if at all better, 
 than a Papist, because I deem it my duty to stand by that 
 teaching of the Church which is older by 1200 or 1300 years 
 than that of Wittemburgh and Geneva. So recently as the 
 5th of November last there was a great display of this Pro-
 
 ( 79 ) 
 
 testant zeal, sustained at a very considerable expense by per- 
 sons who would be termed " respectable," if the possession of 
 money sufficed to confer that title. The progi'amme of a 
 " Grand Triumphal Procession " is now before me, in which 
 the mob were taught to regard their Bishop as the representa- 
 tive of the great enemy of mankind. Effigies of myself, and 
 of several of the most learned, most active, most devoted of the 
 city clergy were prepared for the flames, and many of them 
 actually burned. I am told that a few private gentlemen 
 exerted themselves to prevent my effigy from meeting with this 
 fate. I know not who they were, but should rejoice to thank 
 them for their kindness. AVould, however, that the burning of 
 my own effigy — and all the worst that they could do to me 
 — had taken effijct, rather than that an indelible brand of 
 shame had been stamped on a city which prides itself on the 
 motto of Semper Fidelis. I shall not be deemed to speak too 
 strongly, when I say that a large cross of wood was burned at 
 the western door of the Cathedral — after public notice of the 
 intention printed and circulated freely through the place — yet 
 without the slightest pretence of precaution by the authorities 
 — nay, it was done in the presence of the police, who were 
 silent gazers on the spectacle— for " no directions were given, 
 and no steps taken to stop the proceedings." 
 
 But enough of this. If I know myself, I should not have 
 made so long a story, had my own personal interests only been 
 concerned. But an attack on the character of an English 
 Bishop, in the pages of a Review which circulates in every 
 country where English literature or English history is an 
 object of attention, demands notice ; and if it has received from 
 me more notice than it demanded, I trust that my readers will 
 bear with my garrulity. 
 
 In conclusion, I know not whether I shall be believed, when 
 I add, that the matter has caused to me less vexation than my 
 accusers probably anticipated. At my age — considerably 
 beyond the appointed days of man — human judgment of my 
 conduct is, as it ought to be, a matter of comparatively little 
 moment. Not that I aflPect to be indifferent to the opinion of 
 the world — certainly not of the wise and good — on the con- 
 trary, I fully admit, that " consentiens laus bonorum, incor-
 
 ( 80 ) 
 
 rupta vox bene judicantium," is the highest enjoyment which 
 this world can give. But it is an enjoyment w^hich cannot 
 safely be pursued as an end. " It must follow," as a great 
 man has truly said, " not be followed, if it is to be indeed worth 
 anything." We must be content (God grant that I may be 
 enabled, as well as content) to pursue the path of duty, whether 
 it be smooth or rough — whether attended " by evil report or 
 good report." 
 
 Farewell, my dear Sir, 
 
 And believe me always very faithfully yours, 
 
 H. Exeter. 
 Sir Robert Harry Inglis^ Bart., M.P. 
 
 P.S. As I understand that the Reviewer has made various 
 statements to my discredit in respect to the distribution of my 
 patronage, to my excessive desire to enrich my family with it, 
 and especially with my undue eagerness to obtain patronage 
 by lapses, I have desired my Registrar and Secretary to report 
 to me on these particulars, which Report I give in an Ap- 
 pendix.
 
 ( 81 ) 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 PATRONAGE— NEPOTISM— LAPSES. 
 
 Letter to the Bishop of Exeter from Ralph Barnes, Esq., his 
 
 Lordship's Registrar and Secretary. 
 My Lord, 
 
 Your Lordship has requested me to look at an article in the 
 * Edinburgh Review' of this month, and to give to your Lordship 
 a statement of facts relating, first, to your exercise of the patronage 
 of the See generally ; secondly, with especial view to what has been 
 done for members of your own family ; thirdly, in respect of lapses. 
 
 I. With regard to the first of these particulars, I find that there 
 have been sixty-one vacancies of benefices in the patronage of the 
 See during your Lordship's incumbency, of which the present is 
 the twenty-second year. 
 
 Of these, ten have been given by you to incumbents of the 
 diocese, in the way of promotion ; not one, as I fully believe, having 
 been given to be held in plurality. One to a schoolmaster of the 
 diocese. Forty-six have been given to curates of the diocese, three to 
 clergymen who, having been formerly curates here, have been 
 brought back by your Lordship ; of these three, two are your 
 own sons, the third the Vice -Principal and Professor of Hebrew 
 of Lampeter College, formerly curate of a populous parish in Exeter. 
 There remains one case of a clergyman who was permitted by 
 you to exchange his benefice in Yorkshire for one in this diocese 
 which was held by a nephew of your lady, who had served here 
 several years as curate before he was collated to the benefice. 
 This benefice was soon afterwards vacated, and given to a curate of 
 your Lordship's diocese. 
 
 Besides the benefices belonging to the See, Jour have fallen to your 
 Lordship under the Corporation Act — all these have been given to 
 curates of this diocese. 
 
 Your Lordship has also, as a member of the Chapter of Exeter, 
 nominated to eleven vacancies of benefices in tlie gift of that body — 
 ni?ie in this diocese, two in the diocese of Oxford. Of the nine, four 
 
 G
 
 ( 82 ) 
 
 were given to curates of the diocese, two to incumbents of the diocese, 
 of whom one was about to resign his benefice, which he held under 
 bond for a minor : of the other three (which were successively vacancies 
 of the vicarage of the parish in which you live), one was given to your 
 chaplain, and on his resigning it, to a clergyman who had been many 
 years in the diocese — a considerable portion of that time as a curate, 
 and on its again falling, to the Rev. Alexander Watson, of Chelten- 
 ham, in acknowledgment, as your Lordship has stated, of the services 
 rendered to the Church generally by his many works, and to your- 
 self in particular by his work, entitled " An Apology for the plain 
 Sense of the Doctrine of the Prayer Book on Holy Baptism," in 
 which he vindicated you from an attack of the Rev. W. Goode. 
 
 Of the two benefices in the diocese of Oxford, one was given by 
 you to an incumbent of this diocese, the other to a clergyman of the 
 diocese of Oxford, as a consideration for his father's resigning a 
 benefice held by him in plurality, on which he could not reside. 
 This you gave to a perpetual curate of a populous parish of this 
 diocese, thus securing to the benefice the advantage of a resident 
 rector, which it liad not enjoyed since the year 1798. 
 
 There is one other case, that of a perpetual curacy in a town, with 
 an endowment of 60/. or 70/. per annum, but witliout a house. This 
 not being acceptable to any person of this diocese, who had sufficient 
 property to fill it usefully, was conferred on a clergyman of a distant 
 diocese, known to your Lordship, who was willing to accept it in 
 order to give his sick wife the benefit of a mild climate. This case, 
 and that of the Rev. A. Watson, are the only instatices of benejices 
 now held in this diocese on your Lordship's nomination by clergy- 
 men who were not previously of the diocese. 
 
 There have besides fallen to your Lordship's patronage nine vacan- 
 cies of the districts under Sir R. Peel's Act, of which in seven instances 
 the districts were conferred on curates at the time serving in the 
 diocese ; one on the incumbent of a small benefice in the diocese, one 
 only on a clergyman of another diocese, known by his previous re- 
 sidence in this diocese, and recommended by clergymen of the highest 
 character in it. He had the further recommendation of an ample 
 private fortune, which enabled him the better to assist a very poor and 
 populous district of miners. 
 
 The whole account, therefore, stands thus : — 
 
 Vacancies of Benefices in the gift of the See . . 61 
 Ditto in the gift of the Dean and Chapter, to which 
 
 your Lordship nominated 11 
 
 Under the Corporation Act 4 
 
 Districts under Sir Robert Peels Act .... 9 
 
 »5
 
 ( 83 ) 
 
 Of these you have given — 
 
 To Incumbents in this Diocese 14 
 
 To a Schoolmaster of this Diocese 1 
 
 To Curates of this Diocese 62 
 
 To Clergymen formerly of this Diocese ... 3 
 To Clergymen not of this Diocese (one being a Benefice 
 in the Diocese of Oxford to a Clergyman of that 
 Diocese), the cases being those which have been 
 stated above 5 
 
 85 
 
 II. In respect to the second point, to which your Lordship directs 
 my attention, — what has been done by you in providing for mem- 
 bers of your own family, — I have to state, that of eight sons, who 
 lived to man's estate, your Lordship admitted Uvo to Holy Orders 
 and conferred on each of them a benefice, with an income of not 
 more, I believe, than ^01. per annum clear. To the elder of them 
 you have given moreover the Archdeaconry of Cornwall, with a 
 clear income of about 300/. per annum.* 
 
 To a son-in-law, who had served as a curate in this diocese many 
 years, even after his marriage, you gave a benefice of a clear income, 
 as I believe, of not more than 300/. per annum. For another son- 
 in-law, who had also served as curate many years after his marriage, 
 you obtained the benefice of the parish to which his house is conti- 
 
 * The Reviewer, I am told, has stated, that one of my sons applied to 
 his College for testimonials of his fitness for Holy Orders, and was refused. 
 Thjs is not true. Tlie real facts are as follows : — 
 
 One of them had incurred the censure of his College by a violation of 
 discipline. Bnt no act vf immorality \>iksq\ ex ch&r^eA against him. On his 
 return home, after taking his B.A. Degree — which he took in honours — 
 I spoke to him, as a father might be expected to speak, of the conduct 
 which had brought him under censure. I advised him to think of some 
 othei* profession : for I feared he had not that spiritual-mindedness, without 
 which, he could not be fit for Holy Orders— adding, that nothing would 
 induce me to ask preferment for him, if he should be unworthy. He 
 answered, that his most earnest desire was to be a clergyman — even if he 
 were to remain a curate all his life. Upon this, I placed him on probation ; 
 and at the end of two years, being fully satisfied, I ordained him. It was 
 not necessary for him to apply to his College for testimonials ; and he did 
 not apply. He came not as a candidate from the University ; but was 
 accepted on my own knowledge of his fitness. I thank God, he has justified 
 my confidence. He has been in Holy Orders more than twenty years. 
 During that time, he has served in more than one diocese, and in several 
 parishes ; and I defy the most rigid censor of clerical character to deny, 
 that, during every portion of his clerical life, his conduct has been not 
 only unreproached, but irreproachable. — If I should add exemplary, those 
 who have known him best, would sustain the assertion. — H. E. 
 
 G 2
 
 ( 84 ) 
 
 guous, and in which a considerable portion of his property is situate, 
 pro(hicing a clear income of less than 300/. per annum, in exchange 
 for one to which you collated the incumbent of the former benefice. 
 This benefice is now become again vacant, and your Lordship has 
 desired me tliis day to state, that to it you have given a fiat for the 
 collation of the curate of the parish in which you live ; which curate 
 is about to become your son-in-law. 
 
 Your Lordship has collated a nephew of your own to a benefice 
 from which, his private fortune enabling him to employ the assist- 
 ance of two curates, the clear income is probably not 50/. per 
 annum. 
 
 There is, lastly, a nephew of your lady who, having served in the 
 diocese as curate several years, was collated by you to the vicarage 
 of Stockland, which fell to you by lapse, under circumstances which 
 I shall state presently. I will here only say, that it was your pur- 
 pose to present it to another clergyman, i^ whom you made the 
 offer. But as he declined it, by reason of the law-suit in which the 
 new vicar must be involved, you offered it to the Rev. Henry Rat- 
 cliffe Surtees, warning him of the hazard he incurred, which hazard 
 did not deter him from accepting the offer. 
 
 Of Mr. Rurtees, the ' Review ' contains a statement, that he was 
 found guilty in an action in the County Court of an assault on one 
 of his parishioners. I have made it my business to inquire into the 
 facts of this case, which, in the public report of the proceedings, 
 appear as follows : — The Reverend Henry Ratcliffe Surtees had, 
 agreeably to the Bishop's directions, cautioned his candidates against 
 going to any public-house after the confirmation. They had pro- 
 mised him to attend to this caution, and, in order that they might 
 have no temptation, he had himself provided them with conveyances, 
 and provision of meat and drink. Notwithstanding this, several of 
 tJie young men on their return went into a public-house, and Mr. 
 Surtees, hearing tliat they were there, Avent thither, found them 
 drinking and singing, and pulled one of the lads out of the hous'e by 
 the collar. The lad sued him for an assault in the County Court, 
 and the judge, treating it as a mere assault, gave the plaintiff five 
 shillings damages, with costs. 
 
 Now, my Lord, I had never before read any report of the case. 
 I have now read it, occupying more than two full columns of a news- 
 paper of the day ; and I venture, M'ith all confidence, to say, that 
 no candid mind would rise from the perusal without more than 
 acquitting Mr. Surtees of the Reviewer's inuendos. and convicting 
 the author of the note of slander. 
 
 III. With regard to the third point, that of lapses, the Reviewer
 
 ( B5 ) 
 
 starts with some curious positions in regard to tlie law, which were 
 not very likely to lead hira to a just conclusion : — " The law gives to 
 the Bishop no cognizance of the patron's title to preseiit, that being 
 regarded not as an ecclesiastical but as a civil right, cognizable by 
 the Court of Common Pleas, not by the Court of Arches. Hence, 
 if there be but one undisputed claimant to the right of presentation, 
 the Bishop's duty is simply to institute the patron's nominee, without 
 questioning his title." (The italics are the Reviewer's.) 
 
 The Reviewer's law substantialh'^ amounts to this, that the Bishop 
 is bound to accept the presentation of any one ; that he has no cog- 
 nizance of the alleged title to present ; and so that any usurpation 
 may, through the Bishop's negligence, still more by the Bishop's 
 connivance, be perpetrated against the true patron's right. The 
 Reviewer continues : — " If there be more than one party claiming to 
 present, the Bishop must nominate the nominee of that party, whose 
 claim seems best founded," introducing a note, that " there is a legal 
 method provided, \vhereby the Bishop is bound to ascertain this, 
 called a jus paironatus." The Reviewer would then allow to the 
 Bishop in some cases a judicial function. Now, in truth, the 
 Bishop has one and the same judicial function precisely in every 
 case. As to the particular mode of inquiry by "jus patronatus," it 
 is a proceeding, however wisely founded, very rarely fit to be 
 adopted, fiom its want of power to scrutinize the truth. In no in- 
 stance in this diocese, either in my time or for a period, I believe, 
 long before, has such a proceeding been taken ; and it is manifestly 
 inapplicable to the cases which form the gravamina of the ' Review.* 
 Why, my Lord, if the Reviewer's law be right, it would go well 
 nigh to expunge from the law the titles of advowson, and right of 
 patronage altogether ; for as the putting of the clerk into the bene- 
 fice is the only fruit of patronage, the power which the Reviewer 
 would give to the Bishop would really be putting into the Bishop's 
 hands the power of usurping every bit of lay-patronage in his dio- 
 cese. And were the charge brought against the Bishop by the Re- 
 viewer true, that " he appears to have systematically acted upon the 
 theory that all the patronage of the diocese rightfully belongs to the 
 Bishop, and that all means are justifiable which may defeat the 
 claims of any other patron," then, indeed, the power whicii the Re- 
 viewer invites the Bishop to exercise, and lays down as his duty in 
 every case, that of taking the presentation of every claimant not dis- 
 puted, and instituting upon it, without questioning the title, that is, 
 without satisfying himself of the validity of i), would be the ready 
 means of systematically carrying out the theory' imputed. But, my 
 Lord, the Reviewer's statement of the law is most unfounded. The dut}^
 
 ( 86 ) 
 
 of the Bishop is, in every case of the exercise of patronage, to inquire 
 and obtain reasonable satisfaction upon the validity of the rioht alleged. 
 The power and due exercise on the part of the Bishop of that rea- 
 sonable inquiry is the patron's privilege ; and the means pro- 
 vided for maintaining and recording the chain of title wherein the 
 property of the advowson itself consists are his security. "We shall 
 see presently whether in this diocese, during your Lordship's episco- 
 pate, that power and that duty have or have not been reasonably 
 exercised. But, first, it is my duty to your Lordship to say, that 
 in ivhatever degree this poioer has been exercised during your time, 
 it has been so exercised (such has been my privilege) solely tinder 
 my administration as your Lordship's legal adviser. It has been 
 so conducted under rules which I have found most to accord both 
 with the preservation of the right of patronage and the Bishop's 
 security ; and I have every reason to believe that no just ground of 
 complaint has been afforded. I have never sought for more than 
 such information and such evidence as agreeably with the circum- 
 stances of the case appeared to me to be the readiest means of 
 affording a reasonable assurance of legal title in the party present- 
 ing. Sure I am that I have never received from your Lordship any 
 directions or instructions of any hind, to be more or less strict in any 
 inqttiry of this nature, generally or specially. I have simply en- 
 deavoured to ascertain in whom resided the legal right. I have 
 given every aid and assistance in my power, when requested, to 
 make good that right ; and I am unconscious that hardship to the 
 patron in the slightest degree has ever been the consequence of the 
 inquiries I have thought it my duty to make. 
 
 I proceed to state the facts of the three cases adduced in the 
 'Review,' — those of Chudleigh, Combpyne, and Stockland. The 
 Reviewer alludes to two other cases of lapse, as having happened in 
 the same month (the autumn of 1837) with Combpyne, as if these 
 five cases were mentioned only " in passing, as a sample of the 
 vigour of his (the Bishop's) administration." Now, the fact is, that 
 during your Lordship's incumbency in this see, in other words, in 
 the course of more than twenty-one years, there have been some- 
 where about 800 institutions and licences to benefices. But no liti- 
 gation, as far as my recollection serves me, has ever taken place 
 concerning right of patronage between the Bishop and patron, ex- 
 cept only in those very three cases of Chudleigh, Combpyne, and 
 Stockland. And the only instances wherein the Bishop has exer- 
 cised his right of lapse, in cases other than the five mentioned in 
 the ' Review ' — Chudleigh, Brushford, Roborough, Combpyne, and 
 Stockland — are the following : — In 1832 your Lordship collated by
 
 ( 87 ) 
 
 lapse to the Vicarage of Paignton, the patron having, on a scruple 
 of conscience, declined to present. In 1837 you filled by licence 
 the Perpetual Curacy of Brushford, of 40/. or 50/. per annum, the 
 patron having made no nomination. In the same year you collated 
 to the Rectory of Roborough, the patron, a clergyman, having peti- 
 tioned for himself to be instituted, but having withdrawn that peti- 
 tion and not presented any one else. In the same year occurred the 
 case of Combpyne, which will presently be noticed. In 1838 you 
 collated to the Rectory of LufRncott, a benefice below the value of 
 100/. a year, the patron not having presented. And, lastly, your 
 Lordship collated to Stockland. There were, indeed, two other 
 cases of licenses to Perpetual Curacies by lapse, — in 1832, Penzance, 
 and in 1834, St. Juliot's — the particular circumstances of which 
 are not in my recollection, and I have been unable to find anything 
 to explain them ; but I am confident that there was no dispute what- 
 ever about your Lordship's right by lapse. 
 Now, first as to the Combpyne case : — 
 
 Except the bare facts that there was a presentation which the 
 Bishop refused to accept as valid, and afterwards collated by lapse, 
 and that the Court of Common Pleas upon argument on demurrer, 
 in Quare. impedit brought by the patron claiming title, held the 
 presentation to be valid ; the whole version of the story as told in 
 the Review — the whole tissue of the Reviewer's inuendoes is abso- 
 lutely and essentially untrue. 
 
 The living became vacant on 11th November, 1836. The first 
 intimation on the part of the patrons was received by the Bishop 
 from the clerk to be presented on the 28th April, and by me from 
 the patrons' solicitor on the 1st May following. The lapse would 
 occur on the 11th May. The title shown was that the right of 
 patronage was vested in Mrs. Edwards and Mr. Knight as co-tenants. 
 I required, as I have always done in such cases, that the co-tenants 
 should join in presenting ; and I refused, on the part of the Bishop, 
 to accept the presentation tendered on the part of Mrs. Edwards. 
 My objection was not founded on, nor had any reference to, her co- 
 tenant being a Roman Catholic. The reason given for Mr. Knight's 
 not joining was that he claimed no title to present on this turn, — 
 that he disclaimed. But no such disclaimer was ever produced, and 
 it was not until the 9th May that any intimation whatsoever was 
 given that Mr. Knight was a Roman Catholic. If Mrs. Edwards 
 had intended to make her title through her co-tenant's title, he being 
 a Roman Catholic, it was for her to apply to the University of 
 Oxford for its concurrence. But she chose to rest her claim on her 
 own right, distinct from her co-tenant, and she succeeded. It was
 
 ( 88 ) 
 
 my advice to the Bishop, sanctioned by the opinion of one now in- 
 vested with a very high judicial function, that if the statutes which 
 transferred to the Universities Church patronage vested in Roman 
 Catholics had any application, they would make the University, in a 
 case like the present, a co-patron. The Court of Common Pleas 
 decided otherwise. The case is fully reported in the fifth volume of 
 Bingham, and it must be quite sufficient, to show the law was not 
 clear, that the Court having, in order to protect the Bishop from 
 costs, certified under the statute that the Bishop had probable cause 
 for defending the action : on an application to discharge that cer- 
 ficate, a report of which is in the sixth volume of Bingham, the 
 Court refused the application ; the Chief Justice Tindal saying, 
 " As to the question whether the Bishop had probable cause for de- 
 fending the action, in a case which we took time to consider, it 
 might be permitted to the Bishop to doubt." And Bosanquet, Judge, 
 said, " Considering the host of authorities to which we were referred 
 on the argument, I think the Bishop had probable cause for defend- 
 ing the action." To which Erskine, Judge, added, " I think the 
 Bishop had probable cause for defending the action, which he did, 
 not on the ground that he had himself collated another incumbent, 
 but on account of difficulties as to the title of the plaintift'." 
 And now for the sequel of the Reviewer's story : — " The judgment 
 of the law having been pronounced, we might have supposed that 
 the Bishop would be eager to remedy the injustice he had committed, 
 and atone for the heavy expenditure which he had thrown on 
 the injured party, by immediately instituting the rightful incum- 
 bent. On the contrary, the delays interposed were so vexatious, 
 that at last the patron was compelled to appeal to the Metropolitan 
 for redress, when he obtained from the right-minded Archbishop 
 Howley immediate institution. Thus the case of Mr. Gorham was 
 not the first where the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 was called to perform an act of justice, which the law liad imposed 
 on the Bishop of Exeter. Nor was Archbishop Sumner the first 
 Archbishop whose Metropolitan jurisdiction was invoked to restrain 
 this contumacious suffragan." Now mark the facts which have pro- 
 duced this tirade : — First, as to the Bishop's interposing vexatious 
 delays, no step was taken on the part of the Bishop, save his success- 
 fully resisting the patron's application for costs. The clerk, right- 
 fully, as it turned out, presented, never applied for institution. He 
 addressed a letter to your Lordship, now in the Registry, dated 
 January, ] 840, renouncing all claim to the living ; and I may, 
 perhaps, my Lord, under present circumstances, be allowed to quote 
 a paragraph of that letter. He says, " I have been much hurt at
 
 ( 89 ) 
 
 finding that certain scurrilous comments relative to the suit have been 
 going the round of the newspapers, I feel it due, both to your 
 Lordship and to myself, to declare that I have had no hand, diiectly 
 or indirectly, in giving circulation to such comments, and that I am 
 far from participating in the unbecoming and uncourteous spirit in 
 which they are made." It belonged to the patron herself to follow 
 her own course in obtaining the fruits of the judgment. It was not 
 likely that she would take any advice on my part. Tliere was no ne- 
 cessity for her appealing to the Metropolitan ; and my own opinion 
 at the time was that the case did not allow her appealing to him ; that 
 the writ ought to have gone to the Bishop ; and I find that I stated 
 that opinion in a communication at that time to the Archbishop's 
 secretary, but she chose to apply for, as she had a perfect right to 
 do, a writ to the Archbishop to institute her clerk — she obtained 
 that writ, and the Archbishop instituted upon it. Such is the sum 
 and substance of this case. But as the Reviewer has thought fit to 
 charge your Lordship with contumacy to the late Archbishop, I 
 think it right to insert the enclosed copy of a letter from you to your 
 London secretary, which I have fount! in the registry with the 
 ofl[ice papers on this subject. 
 
 " To J. Burder, Esq. (Copy.) 
 
 " Dear Sir, " College, Durham, 17 August, 1840. 
 
 " I HAVE this morning received your letter enclosing Mr. 
 Hodgson's official notice of a writ and a presentation of the Rev. 
 Z.I.Edwards, by Mrs, Martha Edwards, of Combpyne Rectory in the 
 county of Devon and Diocese of Exeter, addressed to his Grace the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury, having been left (it is not stated where, 
 but I suppose in Dean's Yard), and of this notice having been given 
 to me, in order that I may intimate to his Grace whether I have 
 any objection to the grant by his Grace of the institution sought 
 imder this presentation, 
 
 " I request you to communicate to Mr. Hodgson, for the informa- 
 tion of his Grace, the following answer. Personally, I not only have 
 no objection to such institution being granted, but I shall be really 
 glad if it appears that it can be granted legally under this presenta- 
 tion, for I wish the affair to be concluded. 
 
 " In order that his Grace may be better enabled to judge what 
 course he shall take, I will here relate the circumstances of the 
 case so far as my memory can recall them. 
 
 " About three years ago the Rectory of Combpyne fell vacant. A 
 short time before the expiration of six months a presentation was
 
 ( 90 ) 
 
 either shown to my secretary, Mr. Barnes, or a claim to make such 
 presentation was made on behalf of Mrs. Edwards. Mr. Barnes 
 was of opinion, and accordingly advised me, that Mrs. Edwards, being 
 tenant in common of the right of advowson (with a Roman Catholic), 
 could not claim to present alone. I in consequence declined to 
 assent to her right. Time flowed on, lapse accrued, but I did not 
 avail myself of the lapse until nearly six months more had elapsed, 
 thus giving an opportunity to Mrs. Edwards to apply to the Uni- 
 versity of Oxford to join her in a presentation, for I believed that the 
 University was entitled to the Roman Catholic's interest. About 
 that time a formal instrument of presentation to me by Mrs. 
 Edwards of Rev. — Bradley (I think that was the name) was ten- 
 dered to me by the clerk in person. Under legal advice I declined 
 instituting him, and collated the curate of the adjoining parish, tvho 
 had performed the duties during the sequestration. 
 
 " Quare impedit was brought against me, and, being advised by 
 Mr. Knight Bruce, I defended my collation. The question was 
 reserved at the assizes * by Lord Denman (with consent of the parties 
 if I mistake not) for the adjudication of the Court of Common Pleas. 
 On hearing the arguments, the Court intimated strong doubts, and 
 postponed their decision ; subsequently they pronounced in favour of 
 Mrs. Edwards's presentation, but on an application being made 
 for costs to be awarded to the plaintiff, they repelled it with some 
 energy, saying that the Bishop might well object to the presentation, 
 and doubt the propriety of instituting upon it, for that the Court 
 itself had felt great doubts upon the point. 
 
 " The doubts were founded on the point that the other tenant in 
 common was a Roman Catholic; had he been a Protestant, it 
 would have been clear in my favour. 
 
 " I was advised to sue a writ of error, but I considered I had 
 done as much as my duty required, and was not called upon by that 
 duty to carry the matter further. 
 
 " Meanwhile, the other tenant in common {the Roman Catholic) 
 died, and was succeeded in liis interest by a Protestant. I ex- 
 pressed a willingness to give eftect to the presentation which had 
 been the subject of litigation — that is, of Mr. Bradley — but I 
 declined accepting the presentation by Mrs. Edwards of another 
 clerk, unless I was satisfied that / ought to do so ; and as there 
 would be no security for me to institute at all until the formal 
 judgment of the Court was sued out, I required that this step should 
 be taken ; intimating my wish to do what I could for Mrs. Ed- 
 
 I find that in this particular I was in error. — H. E.
 
 ( 91 ) 
 
 wards, at the same time paying due regard both to the fitness of the 
 case, and especially to the right of the other tenant in common, now 
 a Protestant, The solicitor for Mrs. Edwards wrote letters to 
 Mr. Barnes, in this state of the affair, so very unbecoming (as I 
 considered them), that I refused to hear anything more through 
 him. 
 
 " Thus the affair has rested for several months, nor have I heard 
 anything of the parties or their claim since April last, until I 
 received your letter this morning. 
 
 " I repeat that I have not the slightest personal feeling on the 
 question (except a wisli that Mrs. Edwards, an aged gentlewoman 
 and a widow, should enjoy her full right) ; and therefore, if the 
 Archbishop has the power, and thinks it right under the circum- 
 stances to exercise the power, of instituting Mr. Edwards, I shall be 
 well satisfied that the matter be so ended. 
 
 " I am, dear Sir, 
 
 " Yours sincerely, 
 
 " H. Exeter." 
 
 Secondly. The case of Chudleigh. This was a case of patronage 
 vested in trustees, under a deed of 1682, of trust to present the 
 person nominated by the parishioners. In short, the nomination 
 rested with the ratepayers, and was conferred by election in the 
 usual way of parish elections. The number of trustees had been 
 irregularly filled up. The deeds of trust were confessedly defective. 
 An election took place. A clerk, the present Incumbent, was 
 elected by a majority. One of the six trustees declined to join in 
 the presentation. The Bishop was dissatisfied with the conduct of 
 the election, and being advised that there had not been made such 
 a presentation as the Bishop was entitled to require, he refused to 
 institute. An information was filed against the Bishop and all the 
 parties, in the Court of Chancery, in the name of the Attorney- 
 General, and the Court established the presentation. It will be 
 seen that the Bishop's insisting, where there are co-tenants, on a 
 presentation by all the co-tenants, is the same ground as was taken 
 in the Combpyne case ; a ground which, I believe, is not only 
 warranted by law, but that to deviate from it is to abandon the rules 
 of law, and that the assertion of the rule is the only safe principle 
 by which a Bishop can be advised to act. A full report of this case 
 will be found in the second volume of Younge and Collyer's Reports. 
 
 The case is touched on in the ' Review ' merely obiter ; but 
 the point insinuated is, that the objections to the title to present, 
 although of a legal nature, originated with — were suggested by —
 
 ( 92 ) 
 
 your Lordship. Now the objections made were twofold : first, the 
 illegality of the presentation ; and secondly, that which specially 
 offended your Lordship — namely, the indecorum and impropriety 
 of the proceedings at the election. The objections to the title 
 were mine ; the Court decided against them. On the objections to 
 the election the Court pronounced no decision. The Vice-Chan- 
 cellor said, " I profess only to decide upon tlie mere question of 
 title, without any reference Mhatever to the question whether there 
 have or have not been any illegal proceedings beyond this. I 
 do not consider that they are in issue before me. I do not intimate 
 any opinion whetiier there have or have not been any illegal 
 proceedings." And again, " I cannot but think that there was 
 quite enough to create in the mind of the Ordinary great disap- 
 proval of what had taken place, a strong desire to correct it, and 
 a strong desire to prevent, if by any lawful means he could, the 
 repetition of such proceedings, and thorouglily to investigate the 
 circumstances." Where, then, is the ground of accusation against 
 the Bishop, to be drawn from the circiunstances of this case, of 
 objecting to title for the {)urpose of catching at a lapse? The 
 objections to the proceedings at the election were taken on grounds 
 of ecclesiastical rule, and no decision has ever been pronounced ou 
 them. The objections to the title appear in the Report of the case. 
 They are for lawyers to discuss, and for lawyers to form a judgment 
 upon them. They have no place here ; I liave my own opinion on 
 them, and am not unprepareti, at any fit opportunity, to maintain it. 
 Thirdly. The case of Stockland. Tlie Reviewer's romance about 
 Monmouth's Rebellion and Judge Jeffreys I may well pass over. 
 He says, that the freeholders of the parish (in 1688) purchased the 
 advowson, and that " thus they became themselves possessed of the 
 advowson as tenants in common, and their legal representatives have 
 continued to exercise the right of presentation withoiit dispute to 
 tiie present time." This benefice having been transferred to tlie 
 diocese of Exeter from that of Bristol, under one of the Ecclesias- 
 tical Commissioners' Acts, we had no record of proceedings under 
 former presentations. The Reviewer's statement continues, " that 
 Mr. Cox had become by purchase the representative of the majority 
 of these original co-tenants, and thus virtually the owner of tiie 
 advowson." He proceeds that, " on the avoidance of the living, 
 Mr. Cox preseited himself to it ; but an opposition so suited to pro- 
 mote the Bishop's designs, that it might have been contrived by 
 himself, was made to this presentation by the representatives of a 
 small minority of the co-tenants." I will not do your Lordship the 
 injustice of meeting this gross insinuation by even an indignant con-
 
 ( ^3 ) 
 
 tradiction of it. The Reviewer says, that Mr. Cox had become* the 
 representative of the majority of the original co-tenants. I was 
 never furnished with the means of ascertaining what proportion of 
 the representatives of the original co-tenants had joined in the pre- 
 sentation of Mr. Cox. There was another presentation of another 
 clerk, by others claiming to be representatives of other co-tenants. 
 There were two presentations of Mr. Cox. The number of persons 
 who joined in the fii'st of those presentations was five, in the second 
 three. The number of persons who joined in the adverse presenta- 
 tion was nine. But no means were ever furnished of obtaining 
 satisfactory information in regard to what number of the original 
 shares were represented in these several presentations. The Reviewer 
 suggests that the Bishop might have issued a Commission " de Jure 
 Patronatus." The Bishop miglit have done so, but it would have 
 been a very idle sort of proceeding ; for the return must have been, 
 that neither the one party nor the other had a right to present. 
 That point was palpable. J\fr. Cox might have become by pur- 
 chase the representative of the majority of the original co-tenants, 
 or he might not. The fact was never made to appear, one way or 
 the other ; but if it were so, he did not thereby become, legally or 
 virtually, the owner of the advowson ; and the poetical effusion of 
 the Reviewer did not thereby assume reality, that " thus the pro- 
 perty had once more reverted to the same state in which it had been 
 before the campaign of Jeffreys." The advowson had not once 
 more reverted to the same state in which it was before the unfortu- 
 nate sale and purchase in 1688. There were originally fifty-six 
 co-tenants ; and it was no marvel that the title to each share could 
 not be easily deduced, but it had always been open to the parties 
 looking forward to the exercise of the right of patronage at uncer- 
 tain and perhaps long intervals to have provided for the power of 
 legally exercising it. If they did not do so — if they permitted the 
 right of patronage to get into such a mass of confusion as to make 
 it probable that no power short of an Act of Parliament could or 
 can set it right — if thereby they have rendered it impossible for the 
 Bishop to exercise, with justice, the powers which the law has in- 
 trusted to him, the complaint surely lies rather against the parties 
 Avho have so involved the patronage in difficulties and disputes, than 
 against a Bishop who, under such circumstances, refused to take a 
 part with either one claimant or the other. 
 
 The charge may be summed up thus : — 
 
 The Bishop, it seems, " appears to act systematically upon the 
 theorj' that all the patronage in the diocese rightfully belongs to 
 the Bishop, and that all means are justifiable which may defeat the
 
 ( 94 ) 
 
 claims of any other patron." The system attributed to the Bishop 
 is this — that "upon the vacancy of a living, it is his practice 
 (wherever he thinks there is a chance of succeeding) to demand the 
 inspection of the patron's title-deeds." If any flaw be discovered, 
 he refuses to institute. "At first the Bishop merely hints his 
 doubts." " Were he at once to refuse to institute, the patron would 
 bring a writ of quare impedit against him immediately, which would 
 anticipate the lapse, and render it impossible to usurp the benefice." 
 The charge, then, is brought to this, that, for the purpose of creating 
 a lapse, objections to the validity of the presentation are concealed 
 until it be too late to amend the defect. Now, the only instances 
 produced in proof of this charge are those which I have detailed. 
 The public will say whether they substantiate such a charge or not. 
 This I think they will say, that, if it were a theory and a system, 
 and if it bore no other fruits than those which have been alleged, it 
 must have been a miserably foolish one. 
 
 In conclusion, my Lord, I restrain myself from all expression of 
 my feelings on tliis extraordinary occasion, because I know that by 
 this forbearance I best comply with your own wish. I may, how- 
 ever, be permitted to express my perfect confidence, that one who, 
 like your Lordship, has lived so long before the world, strong in 
 reliance on mightier than human strength, may safely defy every 
 anonymous assailant. 
 
 I am, my Lord, 
 Your Lordship's obliged and very obedient servant, 
 
 Ralph Baenes. 
 Exeter, January 26, 1852. 
 
 The Lord Bishop of Exeter. 
 
 LONDON : PRINTED. Bt W. CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD-STREET.
 
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