230 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS

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. The King was highly indignant and de-
nounced 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



CAROLINE AND THE CHURCH 231

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 dio-
cese 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



232 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS

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 bed-
chamber was well known to aspiring divines, and she
was overwhelmed with letters from parsons and pre-
lates pining for preferment. Many of these letters
(preserved in theSundon 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.

Among Mrs. Clayton's Irish protdgds was Dr.
Clayton, a kinsman of her husband, for whom she
procured, despite the protest of the Primate of
Ireland, the bishopric of Clogher. Bishop Clayton
made several attacks on the doctrine of the Trinity,
and once proposed in the Irish House of Lords
to abolish from the prayer-book the Nicene and
Athanasian Creeds, in a speech of which one of his



CAROLINE AND THE CHURCH 233

colleagues remarked, "it made his ears tingle".
Dr. Clayton was not much of a scholar, and less
of a theologian, and he adapted his views to
meet the approval of his patroness. The letters
of this spiritual pastor to Queen Caroline's woman
of the bedchamber are models of subserviency.
Once Mrs. Clayton rebuked him for a sermon he
had preached on the death of Charles the First, which
seemed to her to praise the King overmuch. He
at once wrote to express his regret, and said he
would tone it down by adding " bred up with notions
of despotic government under the pernicious in-
fluence of his father". He placed his patronage,
like his opinions, at her disposal, and kept her
informed of everything that went on in Ireland —
acting, in fact, as a sort of spy in the court interest.
His complaisance was rewarded by his patroness,
who caused him to be successively advanced to the
wealthier sees of Killala and Cork. Most effusive
was his gratitude : " Mrs. Clayton cannot command
what I will not perform," he writes, and again :
" Could you but form to yourself the image of
another person endued with the same steadiness
of friendship, liveliness of conversation, soundness
of judgment, and a desire of making everybody
happy that is about her, which all the world can
see in you, but yourself, you would then pardon my
forwardness in desiring to keep up a correspondence.
... If I am free from any vice, I think it is that of
ingratitude." ^

^ Sundon Correspoiidence. The Bishop of Killala to Mrs. Clayton,
Dublin, 17th April, 1731.



234 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS

Bishop Clayton's view of the rules that should
govern ecclesiastical preferment are worth quoting.
The particular candidate he was recommending was
a son of the Earl of Abercorn, who had taken holy-
orders. " What occurs to me at present," he writes to
Mrs. Clayton, " is the consideration of ecclesiastical
preferments in a political view. It has not been
customary for persons either of birth or fortune, to
breed up their children to the Church, by which
means, when preferment in the Church is given by
their Majesties, there is seldom any one obliged
but the very person to whom it is given, having no
relatives either in the House of Lords or Commons
that are gratified or are kept in dependence there-
by. The only way to remedy which is by giving
extraordinary encouragements to persons of birth
and interest whenever they seek for ecclesiastical
preferment, which will encourage others of the same
quality to come into the Church, and may thereby
render ecclesiastical preferments of the same use to
their Majesties as civil employments." ^ Of the
higher interests of the Church or of religion, it will
be noted, this servile prelate makes no mention ;
but the fear of the world and the bedchamber
woman was always before his eyes.

Mrs. Clayton had a large number of poor and
obscure relatives, many of whom benefited at the
expense of the Church. One of her nieces, Dorothy
Dyves, whom she had made a maid of honour to
the Princess Royal, fell in love with the Princess's

' Ibid., igth March, 1730.



CAROLINE AND THE CHURCH 235

young chaplain, the Reverend Charles Chevenix, who
was not unmindful of the avenues to preferment thus
opened to him. Mrs. Clayton at first refused her
consent : she did not consider a poor chaplain good
enough for her niece, but Chevenix made the
following appeal to her : —

'• My salary as chaplain to her Royal Highness
will, I hope, be thought a reasonable earnest of
some future preferment, and, could I ever be happy
enough to obtain your protection, I might flatter
myself that I should one day owe to your goodness
what I can never expect from my own merit — such
a competency of fortune as may make Miss Dyves's
choice a little less unequal. My birth, I may venture
to add, is that of a gentleman. My father long
served, and at last was killed, in a post where he
was very well known — a post that is oftener an
annual subsistence than a large provision for a family,
and that small provision was unfortunately lost in
the year '20. One of my brothers is now in the
army, a profession not thought below people of the
first rank ; another, indeed, keeps a shop, but I hope
that circumstance rather deserves compassion than
contempt."^

Mrs. Clayton was touched by the frankness of
this appeal, but the shop remained an obstacle for
some time. At last she gave her consent, Chevenix
married Dorothy Dyves, and then it was only a
question of a little time for the chaplain to blossom

^ Sundon Correspondence. The Rev. Charles Chevenix to Lady
Sundon, London, 24th November, 1734.



236 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS

into a bishop. He was in due course advanced to
the see of Killaloe, and afterwards to the richer one
of Waterford. Truly Mrs. Clayton was, as her
niece describes her, one of the most " worthy and
generous of aunts ", No one could be more mindful
of family claims. Her patronage was not entirely
ecclesiastical, though she made the Church her
speciality ; she found for her brother-in-law a com-
fortable post in the civil service ; she obtained for
her nephews good military and civil appointments,
and her nieces were all made maids of honour.
Lord Pembroke sent her a valuable present — a
marble table — and obtained something for a poor
relative. Lord Pomfret gave her a pair of diamond
ear-rings, worth ^1,400; a very good investment,
for he got in return the lucrative appointment of
Master of the Horse. Mrs. Clayton, or Lady Sundon
as she had then become, was very proud of these
diamond ear-rings, and appeared with them at one
of the Queen's drawing-rooms. This roused the
ire of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who had
once filled a similar position with Queen Anne.
" How can that woman," said Duchess Sarah in a
loud voice, so that all around might hear, "how
can that woman have the impudence to go about
with that bribe in her ear?" "Madam," replied
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who was standing
by, " how can people know where there is wine to
be sold, unless there is a sign hung out ? "

It can well be imagined that a system of
ecclesiastical patronage conducted on these lines did



CAROLINE AND THE CHURCH 237

not result in advantage to the Church. Walpole
appointed bishops for purely political reasons, Mrs.
Clayton for monetary and family consideration,
the Queen because their views coincided with her
own. Yet the Queen, though sometimes misled by
her favourites, who traded on her ignorance of the
English Church, honestly tried to appoint the best
men according to her lights. The learning and
ability of her bishops were undeniable ; their only
drawback was that they did not believe in the
doctrines of the Church of which they were ap-
pointed the chief pastors. Without entering into
theological controversy, it may be safely laid
down that those who direct an institution ought
to believe in the institution itself. This is pre-
cisely what most of Caroline's bishops did not do ;
their energies were directed into other channels,
and their enthusiasms reserved for other pursuits.
Some of her bishops, notably those who were
appointed to sees in Ireland and Wales, never went
near their dioceses at all, while others treated the
cardinal doctrines of Christianity with tacit con-
tempt, if not open unbelief. The indifference of the
bishops filtered down through the lower ranks of
the clergy, and gradually influenced the whole tone
of the established Church ; if the bishops would
not do their duty they could hardly blame their clergy
for failing in theirs. Moreover, the policy of the
Whig Government, in packing the Episcopal Bench
solely with its own partisans, resulted in the bishops
being out of touch with their clergy, for the majority



238 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS

of the parsons, especially in the country districts, were
Tory, and clung to their political faith as firmly as
to their religious convictions.

At no period of her history has the Church of
England been in greater danger than she was
from her own bishops and clergy in the reign
of George the Second. On the one hand was a
party embittered by defeat, shut out from all hope
of preferment, and inflamed by a spirit of intoler-
ance in things political and ecclesiastical ; on the
other was a party just as intolerant in reality, but
hidingr its intolerance under the cloak of broad and
liberal views, and with leaders using the intellect
and learning they undoubtedly possessed, to sub-
vert, or at least to set aside, the doctrines of the
Church they had sworn to believe. Indifference in
practice quickly succeeded indifference in belief, and
herefrom may be traced most of the ills which
afflicted the Church of England during the eighteenth
century. It was no wonder, when the established
Church was spiritually dead, that earnest-minded men,
disgusted at this condition of things, and hopeless
of remedying it, set up religious bodies of their
own. The growth of Methodism in the eighteenth
century was directly due to the shortcomings of the
Church, which had lost its hold on the masses
of the people. The year after Queen Caroline's
death, in 1738, John Wesley returned from Georgia,
and, aided by his brother Charles, began the mission
which was attended with such marvellous results.
True, the Wesleys, in words at least, never wavered




BENJAMIN HOADLEY, BISHOP OF WINCHESTER.
From a Pnuiting by M)s. Hoadly in the yutioinil Poitrait Gallery.



CAROLINE AND THE CHURCH 239

in their adherence to the Church of England, but the
discouragement they met with from the bishops and
the often ill-directed zeal of their followers led in
time to the inevitable separation, which was followed
later by schisms among the Methodists themselves.
One of the most typical of the Georgian bishops
was Hoadley, who became successively Bishop of
Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury and Winchester, "cring-
ing from bishopric to bishopric ". Hoadley 's career
was a striking illustration of the superiority of mind
over body. When he was an undergraduate at
Cambridge he had an illness which crippled him
for life ; he was obliged to walk with a crutch, and
had to preach in a kneeling posture. His appear-
ance was exceedingly unprepossessing, but he com-
pletely overcame these natural disadvantages by
the sheer force of his will. He had taken up the
Church as a profession, and from the professional
point of view he certainly succeeded in it ; but
he does not seem to have believed in the teaching
of the Church whose principles he had nominally
accepted. He was a conformist simply because it
paid him to conform. Even a favourable biographer
writes : "So far indeed was Hoadley from adhering
strictly to the doctrines of the Church that it is a
little to be wondered at on what principles he con-
tinued throughout life to profess conformity ".

Hoadley early threw in his lot with the Whig
party, and in Queen Anne's reign was looked upon as
the leader of the Low Church divines, and a staunch
upholder of Whig principles. He did not obtain any



240 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS

considerable preferment until George the First came
to the throne, when he was made a royal chaplain,
and soon after advanced to the bishopric of Bangor.
He did not once visit his bishopric during the whole
of his six years tenure of the see, but remained
in London, as the leader of the extreme latitudin-
arian party, which, since the Princess of Wales's
patronage, had become the fashionable one, and
offered the best prospects of promotion. He there-
fore broke with the orthodox section of the Low
Church party, who came to regard him with little
less dislike than High Churchmen. Hoadley's love
of polemics soon brought him into conflict with
Convocation, and led to what was known as the
"Bangorian controversy". The bishop had preached
a sermon before King George the First on " The
nature of the Kingdom or Church of Christ," in which
he denied that there was any such thing as a visible
Church of Christ, or Church authority. Convocation
censured the sermon, and would have proceeded to
further measures against the recalcitrant bishop
had not the Government, by an arbitrary exercise
of power, suspended it altogether. Convocation,
thus prorogued was not summoned again until the
middle of the reign of Queen Victoria. It would
weary and not edify to enter into the details of this
dreary Bangorian controversy ; the tracts and pam-
phlets written upon it numbered nearly two hundred,
and the heat and bitterness were such as only a
religious dispute could engender.

Hoadley did not heed his ecclesiastical enemies.



CAROLINE AND THE CHURCH 241

for he had staunch friends at court ; he enjoyed not
only the favour of the King and the Princess of
Wales, but had the ear of Mrs. Clayton, soon to
become a dispenser of patronage. His letters to
her are some of the most fulsome preserved in her
correspondence. " I compare you in my thoughts,"
he writes, "with others of the same kind, and I
see with pleasure, so great a superiority to the
many, that I think I can hardly express my sense
of it strongly enough. Compared with them there-
fore, I may justly speak of you as one of the
superior species, and you will supply the comparison
if I do not always express it, and not think me
capable of offering incense, which I know you are
not capable of receiving," ^

In 1 72 1 Hoadley was translated from Bangor to
the richer see of Hereford, and two years later to
Salisbury, which was wealthier still. At Salisbury he
so far remembered his episcopal duties as to deliver a
primary charge to his clergy, a poor composition. He
was not content with Salisbury, and cast envious eyes
upon the rich see of Durham, which then main-
tained a prince-bishop. Walpole, who disliked him
as being a prot^gd of Mrs. Clayton's, passed him
over in favour of Dr. Talbot, Bishop of Oxford.

Hoadley owed much of his influence with the
Whig party to the fact that he had always shown him-
self very friendly to Dissenters, and was in favour of
abolishing the iniquitous Test and Corporation Acts

^Sundon Correspondence. Bishop Hoadley to Mrs. Clayton [un-
dated].

VOL. II. 16



242 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS

and other disabilities under which they laboured ;
the animosity of his enemies arose quite as much
from this fact as from their dislike of his opinions.
The Protestant Nonconformists were the backbone of
the Whig party, and the staunchest supporters of the
House of Hanover ; they therefore, not unnaturally,
expected, in return for their great political services,
that the disabilities which pressed upon them should
be removed. From time to time they gained certain
points, and the i\cts were rendered practically inno-
cuous by annual indemnities ; but still they disfigured
the Statute Book, and to this the Dissenters rightly
objected. In 1730 a determined attempt was made
by the Dissenters throughout England to secure
the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, and
they resolved to present a monster petition to
Parliament praying that the matter should be pro-
ceeded with forthwith. This action put the Govern-
ment into a position of considerable difficulty, and
it was entirely opposed to Walpole's policy of
letting sleeping dogs lie. Though both he and
the Queen (we will leave the King out of the
question, as he does not count) had the fullest sym-
pathy with the aspirations of Dissenters ; yet they
saw that to raise this question at the present time
would be to fan the smouldering embers of religious
controversy, and would put new heart and strength
into the Opposition, The clergy of the established
Church, almost to a man, would be against them, and,
with a general election impending, that would mean
that the Government would have an active enemy in



CAROLINE AND THE CHURCH 243

every parish and hamlet in the kingdom. Such a
reform, though just and reasonable in itself, would
have the effect of alienating a number of the Govern-
ment's lukewarm supporters, and would give an
opportunity for the Roman Catholics to assert them-
selves and claim relief also, for they were far more
cruelly oppressed than the Protestant Dissenters.

Walpole knew that Hoadley had influence with
the Dissenters, and he and the Queen talked it
over, and resolved to ask Hoadley to see the heads
of the dissenting party and endeavour to persuade
them not to bring forward their petition. As Wal-
pole had given offence to Hoadley by refusing him
Durham, the Queen undertook this delicate mission.
She sent for the bishop, and used all her eloquence
to bring him round to her way of thinking. She
dwelt on her admiration of his principles and
writings ; she said it was in his power to be
of great use to the Government, and to place her,
the Queen, under a personal debt of gratitude,
which she would be slow to forget. She pointed
out the danger that would arise from the
religious question being raised at the present
time, and she therefore desired him to ask the
Dissenters to postpone their request. Hoadley
demurred a good deal, possibly because the hint
of promotion was not definite enough, and pointed
out that as he had always urged the repeal of the
offending Acts, he could hardly turn round now
and eat his words. But he said he would feel the
popular pulse, and if it appeared that the present



244 CAROLINE THE ILLUSTRIOUS

was an inopportune moment for raising the question,
he would endeavour to persuade the Dissenters to
postpone it to a more convenient season.

Soon after this interview a report was promul-
gated by Walpole to the effect that "the Queen
had sent for the Bishop of Salisbury and convinced
him that this request of the Dissenters was so
unreasonable that he had promised her not to
support it ". This report had the very opposite
effect to what was intended. It caused the
Dissenters to be suspicious of their friend, and
consequently tended to nullify any advice he might
give them. The bishop went to Walpole in a rage
and said he could be of no service in the matter
whatever, and that so far from persuading the Dis-
senters from bringing forward their petition, he
should now encourage them to do so. Walpole
tried to soothe Hoadley by fair words, but finding
him not amenable to them, he gave him a strong
hint that if he persisted in his intention, he would
ruin any chances of promotion he might have from
the Government or the Queen. This brought the
bishop to his bearings ; he had more conferences
with the Queen on the subject, and was ultimately
bought over to complaisance by the promise of the
next reversion of the see of Winchester, The Dis-
senters fell into a trap. From all over England they
sent delegates to London, who on their part entrusted
the negotiations with the Government to a committee
of London Nonconformists, As this committee was
composed of tradesmen in the City, or lawyers eager



CAROLINE AND THE CHURCH 245

for promotion, Walpole was able to buy them over
singly and collectively, and so, betrayed by the
bishop and their delegates, the Dissenters went to
the wall.

Hoadley had the misfortune to please neither the
Government nor the Dissenters, for neither trusted
him ; but he probably did not mind, as he received
what he worked for — the see of Winchester. Soon
after his translation to Winchester he proceeded, after
the approved fashion of Mrs. Clayton's favourites, to
show his independence and disburden his soul, by
publishing a pamphlet called A Plain Account of the
Nature and End of the Sacrament of the Lord's
Supper. This set the clergy by the ears, and they
promptly started a heresy hunt, to the great discom-
fiture of the Government responsible for Hoadley's
promotion.

An answer was written to the pamphlet by Dr.
Brett, in which Hoadley was attacked with violence
and bitterness. The King, who objected to Hoad-
ley, asked the Queen what she thought of Brett's