The King was highly indignant and denounced the whole bench of bishops as “a parcel of black, canting, hypocritical rascals”. Walpole’s resentment was especially levelled against Gibson, and the Queen’s against Sherlock. The Queen sent for the latter bishop and trounced him in terms which recall those which Queen Elizabeth was said to address to her recalcitrant prelates: “How is it possible,” said Caroline to Sherlock, “you could be so blind and so silly as to be running a race of popularity with the Bishop of London among the clergy, and hope you would rise upon the Bishop of London’s ruins (whom you hate and wish ruined) when you were going hand in hand with him in these very paths which you hoped would ruin him?... Are you not ashamed not to have seen this, and to have been at once in this whole matter, the Bishop of London’s assistant and enemy--tool and dupe?” She told the crestfallen prelate that in the present temper of the King and Prime Minister he could hope for neither London nor Canterbury, and advised him to go to his diocese and try to live it down. As their dioceses were the last places where Queen Caroline’s bishops were generally to be found, this was equivalent to a sentence of banishment. Many years later Sherlock succeeded Gibson as Bishop of London. The Queen’s chief adviser in Church matters was her favourite, Mrs. Clayton. Mrs. Clayton had no pretence to learning, and was ignorant of the rudiments of theology--though, like many women of her type, she loved to pose as an authority on theological questions. She had imbibed the Arian principles then fashionable at court, and could repeat parrot-wise the shibboleth of her party. As she held much the same views as the Queen (though without her saving graces of learning and common sense), they often settled between them who should succeed to the vacant deaneries and bishoprics. Walpole came often in conflict with Mrs. Clayton over Church appointments, for she was always urging the Queen to prefer extreme men of heterodox views who gave much trouble to the Government by their indiscreet utterances. At last, after several experiences of the vagaries of these bellicose divines, Walpole remonstrated so strongly that Mrs. Clayton’s recommendations were chiefly confined to the Irish Church. Here for years she appointed practically whom she would. The influence of the Queen’s woman of the bedchamber was well known to aspiring divines, and she was overwhelmed with letters from parsons and prelates pining for preferment. Many of these letters (preserved in the Sundon correspondence) are couched in the most cringing tone, and are full of the grossest flattery. The deans and bishops _in esse_ or _in posse_ generally followed up their letters by making her little presents; for instance, we find the Bishop of Cork sending her a dozen bottles of “green usquebaugh, sealed with the figure of St. Patrick on black wax,” and another prelate a suit of fine Irish linen.