Note 74 — Chapter IV

This sermon is noticed by Gray in a letter written at the time.—Works, vol. iv. p. 49. Warburton did not carry his imprudence so far as to print it. He had been a candidate for the see of London in 1761, and was not a little disappointed by the preference given to Bishop Hayter, to which he thus modestly alludes in a letter to Hurd. “You and your poet say true, ‘I will bet at any time on a fool or a knave against the field.’ Though the master of the course be changed, yet the field is the same, where the race is not to the swift.” (Letters from a Late Eminent Prelate, &c., p. 328.) His hopes must have been rekindled by the early death of Bishop Hayter, only to be again dashed by the appointment of Bishop Osbaldiston; and his ambition received a deathblow by the elevation of Terrick. His contempt of his successful competitors appears to have been expressed in every way calculated to be most offensive to them: even at a dinner at Archbishop Secker’s, about this period, he taunted the Bench with leaving the defence of the Church against its various assailants to their chaplains, and not performing the task themselves, as Ridley and Jewel had done of old; and quoted, at the same time, the saying of Jewel: “Why are we distinguished from the rest of our brethren with superior titles and riches, but that we may out-do them in the service of the public, so that when men see our great achievements, they may say these men deserve their superior titles and riches who perform them thus nobly.” The prelates wisely indulged him in this freedom. He never rose beyond the see of Gloucester, which it may be remarked he owed not to his learning and theological reputation, but to Mr. Pitt’s regard for Allen. Perhaps Mr. Pitt was the only statesman who would have had the courage to place him on the Bench. Notwithstanding his friendship with Mr. Yorke, he was neglected by Lord Hardwicke, who, he says, “amidst all his acquaintance, chose the most barren and sapless, on which dry plants to shower down his most refreshing rain.”—Letters, p. 433. The violence of his temper, his overbearing disposition, and the vagueness of his political creed, gave Ministers some excuse, yet it shows an imperfection in the system of ecclesiastical patronage, that a man of his genius and attainments should have been so often set aside for the obscure and now long forgotten individuals whom Court or Ministerial favour continually placed in the higher offices of the Church. He resented this treatment to the last. It embittered a lot which ought to have been happy, for he had wealth, rank, reputation, and domestic prosperity; but his letters breathe an air of discontent unworthy of a great man. He died at an advanced age in 1776.—E.