It must be admitted that the Queen in her distribution of ecclesiastical patronage always recognised the claims of scholarship and learning, and she took infinite pains to discover the most deserving men. Among the divines to whom she gave high preferment, besides Berkeley, were the learned Butler and the judicious Secker, many years later Archbishop of Canterbury. Secker, when he was Queen’s chaplain, mentioned to Caroline one day the name of Butler, the famous author of _The Analogy between Natural and Revealed Religion_. The Queen said she had thought that he was dead; Secker said: “No, madam, not dead but buried”. The Queen took the hint, and soon after appointed Butler Clerk of the Closet. He was thus brought into contact with her, and she delighted exceedingly in his psychological bent, and would command him to come to her, on her free evenings, from seven to nine, to talk philosophy and metaphysics. She caused his name to be put down for the next vacant bishopric, and on her death-bed she commended Butler particularly to the King, who carried out his wife’s wishes and made him Bishop of Durham. Dr. Thomas Sherlock, a man eminent for his talents and learning, was much liked by the Queen. She appointed him to the see of Bangor, and later translated him to Salisbury in succession to his rival Hoadley. For some time Sherlock filled much the same position with the Queen that Gibson, Bishop of London, did with Walpole. He was the Queen’s favourite bishop, and she intended to translate him to London when Archbishop Wake should die, and Gibson, whom Whiston used to call “the heir apparent to Canterbury,” should be advanced to the primacy by Walpole. Between these two eminent prelates, Sherlock and Gibson, there existed a most unchristian spirit of jealousy, and Gibson besought Walpole not to allow Sherlock to succeed him in the bishopric of London. Alas! for the mutability of temporal things: when at last Wake died, it was not Gibson, but a comparatively unknown bishop, Potter of Oxford, who succeeded him in the primacy. Before that time arrived Gibson fell out of favour with Walpole, and Sherlock with the Queen, for the part they played in securing the rejection of the Quakers’ Relief Bill. Walpole had yielded to the clamour of the Church party so far as to refuse to repeal the Test and Corporation Acts, but by way of compensation to the dissenters he wished to carry a bill for the relief of Quakers. It was a point of conscience with the Quakers to refuse to pay tithes unless compelled to do so by legal force. This force was always applied, and they paid. All they asked for now was that the legal proceedings against them should be made less costly. Walpole was willing to give them this relief and the Queen supported him, but the bishops, headed by Gibson and seconded by Sherlock, elated by their recent victory over the Nonconformists, rose against it to a man, and though the Bill was carried in the Commons it was rejected by the Lords.