It was resolved to proceed against Atterbury by a Bill of Pains and Penalties to be brought into Parliament. The evidence against him was certainly not such as any criminal court would have held to justify a conviction. A young barrister named Christopher Layer was arrested and examined, so were a nonjuring minister named Kelly, an Irish Catholic priest called Neynoe, and a man named Plunkett, also from Ireland. The charge against Atterbury was founded on the statements obtained or extorted from these men. It should be said that Layer gave evidence which actually seemed to impugn Lord Cowper himself as a member of a club of disaffected persons; and when Lord Cowper indignantly repudiated the charge and demanded an inquiry, the Government declared inquiry absolutely unnecessary, as everybody was well assured of his innocence. The Government, however, declined to follow Lord Cowper in his not unreasonable assumption that the whole story was unworthy of explicit credence when it included such a false statement. The case against Atterbury rested on the declaration of some of the arrested men that the bishop had carried on a correspondence with James Stuart, Lord Mar, and General Dillon (an Irish Catholic soldier, who after the capitulation of Limerick, had entered the French service), through the instrumentality of Kelly, who acted as his secretary and amanuensis for that purpose. It was a case of circumstantial evidence altogether. The impartial reader of history now will feel well satisfied on two points: first, that Atterbury was engaged in the plot; and second, that the evidence brought against him was not nearly strong enough to sustain a conviction. It was the case of Bolingbroke and Harley over again. We know now that the men had done the things charged against them, but the evidence then relied upon was utterly inadequate to sustain the charge. A "Dialogue in Verse between a Whig and a Tory" was written by Swift in the year 1723, "concerning the horrid plot discovered by Harlequin, the Bishop of {220} Rochester's French Dog." The Whig tells the Tory that the dog-- "His name is Harlequin, I wot, And that's a name in every plot"-- was generously "Resolved to save the British nation, Though French by birth and education; His correspondence plainly dated Was all deciphered and translated; His answers were exceeding pretty, Before the secret wise committee; Confessed as plain as he could bark, Then with his fore-foot set his mark." [Sidenote: 1723-1731--Atterbury's sentence]