Bill and support the Bishops. I observed he also spoke without much scruple of Lord North, on a separate line from Government. It is given out that the King has declared himself much against the Bill. Lord Mansfield persists in concealing his own opinion till he comes to the House."[1]
The information thus conveyed by Shelburne to Chatham proved correct. When the second reading of the Bill was taken, every Bishop and Archbishop was in his place to reject it. Amongst those who proved how thoroughly the episcopal order had repented of whatever share they might be considered to have had in the liberal work of the Revolution, was Bishop Lowth of Oxford. "He took up the question," says Walpole, "in a spirit of revenge," and declared he would vote against the Bill because the Dissenters would not receive Bishops in America. Shelburne rose, and in reply informed the House "that he was Secretary of State when Archbishop Seeker had struggled for an American Bishop, and that both Archbishop Seeker and Archbishop Drummond had had an interview with him, and that at that interview it was he who had urged how unwelcome a Bishop would be to the Dissenters, and they who had both assured him that the Dissenters did not object to it: Archbishop Drummond was still alive and in the House,[2] and could deny the fact if it was otherwise." This Drummond could not do. It would seem as if the Bishops had determined to justify the charges against them of "want of candour, and of scandalous love of power "with which Richmond opened and Chatham closed the discussion.[3] The Bill was rejected by 102 to 29, and a like fate awaited the measure in the following year.[4]
- ↑ Shelburne to Chatham, March 18th, 1772.
- ↑ Drummond was Archbishop of York from 1761 to 1776.
- ↑ Walpole Journals, i. 94, 95.
- ↑ In vol. xvii. 442, of the Parliamentary History, will be found the speech which Dr. Newton, Bishop of Bristol, "intended to have made." The first sentence is "The Act of Toleration was one of the first fruits of the glorious Revolution." The last sentence is, "God forbid, my lords, that this House should ever, contrary to so many Acts of Parliament, contrary to the whole tenour of the Gospel, give their sanction and authority to men who not privately, as the Apostle says, but publicly, bring in damnable heresies."
