This was what has sometimes been called the honorable acquittal of Oxford. An English judge once spoke humorously of a prisoner having been "honorably acquitted on a flaw in the indictment." Harley's was like this: it was not an acquittal, and it was not honorable to the man impeached, the House that forebore to press the impeachment, or the House that contrived his escape from trial. Oxford had been committed to the Tower and impeached for reasons that had little to do with his guilt or innocence, or with true public policy; he was released from prison and relieved from further proceedings in just the same way. There was not evidence against {171} him on which he could be convicted of high-treason, and this was well known to his enemies when they first consigned him to the Tower. But there could not be the slightest moral doubt on the mind of any man that Oxford had intrigued with the Stuarts, and had endeavored to procure their restoration, and that he had done this even since his committal to the Tower. His guilt, whatever it was, had been increased by him, and not diminished, since the beginning of the proceedings taken against him. But he had only done what most other statesmen of that day had been doing, or would have done if they had seen advantage in it. He was not more guilty than some of his bitterest opponents, the Duke of Marlborough among others. All but the very bitterest opponents were glad to be done with the whole business. It must have come to a more or less farcical end sooner or later, and sensible men were of opinion that the sooner the better. Of Harley, "Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer," as his titles ran, we shall not hear any more; we have already foreshadowed the remainder of his life and his death. This short account of his sham impeachment is introduced here merely as a part of the historic continuity of the narrative. History has few characters less interesting than that of Oxford. He held a position of greatness without being great; he fell, and even his fall could not invest him with tragic dignity. On December 13, 1718, Lord Stanhope, who had been raised to the peerage, first as Viscount and then as Earl Stanhope, introduced into the House of Lords a measure ingeniously entitled "A Bill for Strengthening the Protestant Interest in these Kingdoms." The title of the Bill was strictly appropriate according to our present ideas, and according to the ideas of enlightened men in Stanhope's days also; but it must at first have misled some of Stanhope's audience. Most Churchmen are now ready to admit that the interests of the Church of England are strengthened by every measure which tends to secure religious equality; but most Churchmen were not quite so {172} sure of this in the reign of George the First. The Bill brought in by Stanhope was really a measure intended to relieve Dissenters from some of the penalties and disabilities imposed on them in the reign of Queen Anne.