or indifference in such an instance ought to warn them of the little gratitude that such machinations can inspire or expect.

Among those who had preferred the service of the king to that of the heir apparent, was the duke of Newcastle; * who, having married his sister to lord Townshend, both his royal highness and the viscount had expected would have adhered to that connection- and neither forgave his desertion.

I am aware of the desultory manner in which I have told my story, having mentioned the reconciliation of the king and prince before I have given any account of their public rupture. The chain of my thoughts led me into the preceding details, and, if I do not flatter myself, will have let you into the motives of my dramatis personæ better than if I had more exactly observed chronology; and as I am not writing a regular tragedy, and profess but to relate facts as I recollect them; or (if you will allow me to imitate French writers of tragedy), may I not plead that I have unfolded my piece as they do, by introducing two courtiers to acquaint one another, and by bricole the audience, with what had passed in the penetralia before the tragedy commences?

The exordium thus duly prepared, you must suppose, ladies, that the second act opens with a royal christening. The princess of Wales had been delivered of a second son. The prince had intended

*Thomas Holles Pelham, duke of Newcastle, lord chamberlain, then secretary of state, and lastly first lord of the treasury under George the second; the same king to whom he had been so obnoxious in the preceding reign. He was obliged by George the third to resign his post.

his uncle the duke of York, bishop of Osnaburg, should with his majesty be godfathers. Nothing could equal the indignation of his royal highness when the king named the duke of Newcastle for second sponsor, and would hear of no other. The christening took place as usual in the princess's bed-chamber. Lady Suffolk, then in waiting as woman of the bed-chamber, and of most accurate memory, painted the scene to me exactly. On one side of the bed stood the godfathers and godmother; on the other the prince, and the princess's ladies. No sooner had the bishop closed the ceremony, than the prince, crossing the feet of the bed in a rage, stepped up to the duke of Newcastle, and, holding up his hand and fore-finger in a menacing attitude, said, "You are a rascal, but I shall find you;" meaning, in broken English, "I shall find a time to be revenged."- "What was my astonishment," continued lady Suffolk, "when going to the princess's apartment the next morning, the yeomen in the guard-chamber pointed their halberds at my breast, and told me I must not pass! I urged that it was my duty to attend the princess. They said, 'No matter; I must not pass that way.'”

In one word, the king had been so provoked at the prince's outrage in his presence, that it had been determined to inflict a still greater insult on his royal highness. His threat to the duke was pretended to be understood as a challenge; and to prevent a duel he had actually been put under arrest as if a prince of Wales could stoop to fight with a subject. The arrest was soon taken off; but at night the prince and princess were ordered to leave the palace, and retired to the house of her

chamberlain, the earl of Grantham, in Albemarle

street.

CHAPTER IV.

As this trifling work is a miscellany of detached recollections, I will, ere I quit the article of George the first, mention two subjects of very unequal import, which belong peculiarly to his reign. The first was the deprivation of Atterbury, bishop of Rochester. Nothing more offensive to men of priestly principles could easily have happened: yet, as in a country of which the constitution was founded on rational and liberal grounds, and where thinking men had so recently exerted themselves to explode the prejudices attached to the persons of kings and churchmen, it was impossible to defend the bishop's treason, but by denying it; or to condemn his condemnation, but by supposing illegalities in the process: both were vehemently urged by his faction, as his innocence was pleaded by himself. That punishment and expulsion from his country may stagger the virtue even of a good man, and exasperate him against his country, is perhaps natural, and humanity ought to pity it. But whatever were the prepossessions of his friends in his favour, charity must now believe that Atterbury was always an ambitious turbulent priest, attached to the house of Stuart, and consequently no friend to the civil and religious liberties of his country : or it must be acknowledged, that the disappointment of his ambition by the queen's death, and the proscription of his ministerial associates, had driven

on attempts to restore the expelled family in hopes of realizing his aspiring views. His letters published by Nichols breathe the impetuous spirit of his youth. His exclamation on the queen's death, when he offered to proclaim the pretender at Charing-cross in pontificalibus, and swore, on not being supported, that there was the best cause in England lost for want of spirit, is now believed also. His papers, deposited with king James's in the Scottish college at Paris, proclaimed in what sentiments he died; and the fac-similes of his letters published by sir David Dalrymple leave no doubt of his having in his exile entered into the service of the pretender. Culpable as he was, who but must lament that so classic a mind had only assumed so elegant and amiable a semblance as he adopted after the disappointment of his prospects and hopes? His letter in defence of the authenticity of lord Clarendon's history, is one of the most beautiful and touching specimens of eloquence in our language.

It was not to load the character of the bishop, nor to affect candour by applauding his talents, that I introduced mention of him; much less to impute to him any consciousness of the intended crime that I am going to relate. The person against whom the blow was supposed to be meditated never in the most distant manner suspected the bishop of being privy to the plot-No: animosity of parties, and malevolence to the champions of the house of Brunswic, no doubt suggested to some blind zealots the perpetration of a crime, which would necessarily have injured the bishop's cause, and could by no means have prevented his disgrace.

Mr. Johnstone, an ancient gentleman, who had

been secretary of state for Scotland, his country, in the reign of king William, was a zealous friend of my father, sir Robert, and who, in that period of assassination plots, had imbibed such a tincture of suspicion, that he was continually notifying similar machinations to my father, and warning him to be on his guard against them. Sir Robert, intrepid and unsuspicious, used to rally his good monitor; and, when serious, told him, that his life was too constantly exposed to his enemies to make it of any use to be watchful on any particular

* At the time of the Preston rebellion, a Jacobite, who sometimes furnished sir Robert with intelligence, sitting alone with him one night, suddenly putting his hand into his bosom and rising, said, "Why do not I kill you now?" Walpole starting up, replied, "Because I am a younger man and a stronger." They sat down again and discussed the person's information. But sir Robert afterwards had reasons for thinking that the spy had no intention of assassination, but had hoped, by intimidating, to extort money from him. Yet if no real attempt was made on his life, it was not from want of suggestions to it. One of the weekly journals pointed out sir Robert's frequent passing Putney-bridge late at night, attended but by one or two servants, on his way to New Park, as a proper place: and after sir Robert's death, the second earl of Egmont told me, that he was once at a consultation of the opposition, in which it was proposed to have sir Robert murdered by a mob, of which the earl had declared his abhorrence. Such an attempt was actually made in 1733, at the time of the famous excise-bill. As the minister descended the stairs of the house of commons on the night he carried the bill, he was guarded on one side by his second son Edward, and on the other by general Charles Churchill; but the crowd behind endeavoured to throw him down, as he was a bulky man, and trample him to death; and that not succeeding, they tried to strangle him by pulling his red cloak tightbut fortunately the strings broke by the violence of the tug.