On the 15th, 16th, and 17th, the Cabinet Council sat long and late, but with much secrecy, inquiring into this affair. The first night Lord Ravensworth was heard for four hours. The purport of his accusation was, that some few weeks before at Durham, one Fawcett, an Attorney, reading the newspaper which mentioned the promotion of Dr. Johnson to the Bishopric of Gloucester, said “He has good luck!” Being asked what he meant by that expression, he had replied, “Why, Johnson has drunk the Pretender’s health twenty times with me and Mr. Stone and Mr. Murray.” Dr. Cowper, Dean of Durham, who had been present at this dialogue, was called, and in a short and sensible manner confirmed Lord Ravensworth’s account. The conversation made no noise at the time; only Dr. Chapman, master of Magdalen College in Cambridge, gave private intelligence of it to Harry Vane, a creature of the accused triumvirate, and he, by Mr. Pelham’s order, wrote to Fawcett to know the meaning of this imputation. Fawcett denied what he had said, and acquitted the Bishop of the charge. The clamours against Stone, on his quarrel with the Bishop of Norwich and Lord Harcourt, and the Memorial reaching Lord Ravensworth soon after this conversation happened, he determined to signalize his zeal, and hastened to London, Fawcett having confirmed to him what he had denied to Vane, but begging not to be produced as an accuser. 16th, Fawcett was examined: never was such an instance of terror and confusion! yet with reluctance and uncertainty he owned that what he had uttered at Durham was true. The substance of his evidence was, “that, about twenty years ago, Murray, then a young Lawyer, Stone, then in indigence, and himself, had used to sup frequently at one Vernon’s, a rich Mercer, a noted Jacobite, and a lover of ingenious young men. The conversation was wont to be partly literature, partly treason; the customary healths, _The Chevalier_ and _Lord Dunbar_.” Had the greater part of the Council not wished well to the accused, it must have shocked them to hear a charge of such consequence brought after an interval of twenty years, brought on memory, the transactions of a private company, most of them very young men, at worst flattering an old rich bachelor of no importance, and, in their most unguarded moments, never rising beyond a foolish libation to the healths of their imaginary Monarch and his Minister. Considering the lengths to which party had been carried for the last twenty years; considering how many men had been educated at Oxford about that period, or had been in league with every considerable Jacobite in the kingdom, if such a charge might be brought after so long a term, who almost would not be guilty? Who almost would be so innocent as not to have gone beyond a treasonable toast? It was necessary to be very Whig to see Lord Ravensworth’s accusation in an honourable light.