A History of the Four Georges, Volume IMcCarthy, Justin
History
A History of the Four Georges, Volume I
McCarthy, Justin
Great Britain -- History -- 1714-1837; Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1714-1837
At Marlborough's funeral we see for the last time in high public estate
one of the few Englishmen of the day who could properly be named in the
same breath with Marlborough. This was Francis Atterbury, the eloquent
and daring Bishop of Rochester. Atterbury came up to {212} town for the
purpose of officiating at the funeral of the great Duke. On July 30,
1722, he wrote from the country to his friend Pope, announcing his visit
to London. "I go to-morrow," Atterbury writes, "to the Deanery, and I
believe I shall stay there till I have said dust to dust, and shut up
this last scene of pompous vanity." Atterbury does not seem to have been
profoundly impressed with the religious solemnity of the occasion. His
was not a very reverential spirit. There was as little of the temper of
pious sanctity in Atterbury as in Swift himself. The allusion to the
last scene of pompous vanity might have had another significance, as well
as that which Atterbury meant to give to it. Amid the pomp in which
Marlborough's career went out, the career of Atterbury went out as well,
although in a different way, and not closed sublimely by death. After
the funeral, Atterbury went to the Deanery at Westminster--he was Dean of
Westminster as well as Bishop of Rochester--and there, on August 24th,
the day but one after the scene of pompous vanity, he was arrested by the
Under-Secretary of State, accompanied by two officers of justice, and was
brought, along with all papers of his which the officers could seize,
before the Privy Council. He underwent an examination, as the result of
which he was committed to the Tower, on a charge of having been concerned
in a treasonable conspiracy to dethrone the King, and to bring back the
House of Stuart. In the Tower he was left to languish for many a long
day before it was found convenient to bring him to trial.
[Sidenote: 1722--The King's speech]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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