The world was all before him, where to chuse His place of rest, and Providence his guide."At parting he presented Pope with a Bible, and said, with a disingenuousness of which no man who had studied the Bible to much purpose would have been guilty: "If ever you learn that Ihave any dealings with the Pretender, I give you leave to say that my punishment is just." Pope at this time really believed the bishop to be an injured man.Arbuthnot seems to have been of the same opinion.Swift, a few months later, ridiculed with great bitterness, in the "Voyage to Laputa," the evidence which had satisfied the two Houses of Parliament.Soon, however, the most partial friends of the banished prelate ceased to assert his innocence, and contented themselves with lamenting and excusing what they could not defend.After a short stay at Brussels, he had taken up his abode at Paris, and had become the leading man among the Jacobite refugees who were assembled there.He was invited to Rome by the Pretender, who then held his mock court under the immediate protection of the Pope.But Atterbury felt that a bishop of the Church of England would be strangely out of place at the Vatican, and declined the invitation.During some months, however, he might flatter himself that he stood high in the good graces of James.The correspondence between the master and the servant was constant.Atterbury's merits were warmly acknowledged; his advice was respectfully received; and he was, as Bolingbroke had been before him, the prime minister of a king without a kingdom.But the new favourite found, as Bolingbroke had found before him, that it was quite as hard to keep the shadow of power under a vagrant and mendicant prince as to keep the reality of power at Westminster.Though James had neither territories nor revenues, neither army nor navy, there was more faction and more intrigue among his courtiers than among those of his successful rival.Atterbury soon perceived that his counsels were disregarded, if not distrusted.His proud spirit was deeply wounded.He quitted Paris, fixed his residence at Montpellier, gave up politics, and devoted himself entirely to letters.In the sixth year of his exile he had so severe an illness that his daughter, herself in very delicate health, determined to run all risks that she might see him once more.Having obtained a licence from the English Government, she went by sea to Bordeaux, but landed there in such a state that she could travel only by boat or in a litter.Her father, in spite of his infirmities, set out from Montpellier to meet her; and she, with the impatience which is often the sign of approaching death, hastened towards him.Those who were about her in vain implored her to travel slowly.She said that every hour was precious, that she only wished to see her papa and to die.She met him at Toulouse, embraced him, received from his hand the sacred bread and wine, and thanked God that they had passed one day in each other's society before they parted forever.She died that night.
It was some time before even the strong mind of Atterbury recovered from this cruel blow.As soon as he was himself again he became eager for action and conflict; for grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless.The Pretender, dull and bigoted as he was, had found out that he had not acted wisely in parting with one who, though a heretic, was, in abilities and accomplishments, the foremost man of the Jacobite party.The bishop was courted back, and was without much difficulty induced to return to Paris and to become once more the phantom minister of a phantom monarchy.But his long and troubled life was drawing to a close.To the last, however, his intellect retained all its keenness and vigour.He learned, in the ninth year of his banishment, that he had been accused by Oldmixon, as dishonest and malignant a scribbler as any that has been saved from oblivion by the Dunciad, of having, in concert with other Christchurchmen, garbled Clarendon's History of the Rebellion.The charge, as respected Atterbury, had not the slightest foundation: for he was not one of the editors of the History, and never saw it till it was printed.He published a short vindication of himself, which is a model in its kind, luminous, temperate, and dignified.A copy of this little work he sent to the Pretender, with a letter singularly eloquent and graceful.It was impossible, the old man said, that he should write anything on such a subject without being reminded of the resemblance between his own fate and that of Clarendon.They were the only two English subjects that had ever been banished from their country and debarred from all communication with their friends by act of parliament.But here the resemblance ended.
One of the exiles had been so happy as to bear a chief part in the restoration of the Royal house.All that the other could now do was to die asserting the rights of that house to the last.Afew weeks after this letter was written Atterbury died.He had just completed his seventieth year.
His body was brought to England, and laid, with great privacy, under the nave of Westminster Abbey.Only three mourners followed the coffin.No inscription marks the grave.That the epitaph with which Pope honoured the memory of his friend does not appear on the walls of the great national cemetery is no subject of regret: for nothing worse was ever written by Colley Cibber.
Those who wish for more complete information about Atterbury may easily collect it from his sermons and his controversial writings, from the report of the parliamentary proceedings against him, which will be found in the State Trials, from the five volumes of his correspondence, edited by Mr Nichols, and from the first volume of the Stuart papers, edited by Mr Glover.
A very indulgent but a very interesting account of the bishop's political career will be found in Lord Mahon's valuable History of England....
