Atterbury

Atterbury, FRANCIS, Bishop of Rochester, was born 6th March 1663, at Milton, near Newport-Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, and educated at Westminster School, whence in 1680 he passed to Christ Church, Oxford. In 1687 he gave proof of that ready controversial talent which distinguished him through life, in a reply to a pseudonymous attack on Protestantism by Obadiah Walker, master of University College. Taking orders about the same time, he won such reputation as a preacher, that he was appointed lecturer of St Brides (1691), a royal chaplain, and minister to Bridewell Hospital. In 1698 a sensation was created in the learned world by the Hon. Charles Boyle's Examination of Dr Bentley's Dissertations on the Epistles of Phalaris (q.v.). This clever, but shallow performance was really composed by Atterbury, who had been the young nobleman's tutor at Christ Church. In 1700 he distinguished himself in a controversy with Dr Wake regarding the powers and privileges of Convocation. His zealous and caustic defence of the ecclesiastical against the civil authority, procured him the thanks of the lower House of Convocation, the archdeaconry of Totnes, a canonry of Exeter, and the degree of D.D. In 1704 he was promoted to the deanery of Carlisle; in 1710 was chosen prolocutor of Convocation; in 1712 became Dean of Christ Church; and in 1713 was made Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster. To Atterbury is ascribed, with great likelihood, Dr Sacheverel's famous defence (1710) before the Lords; and he was author of the scarcely less famous Representation of the State of Religion (1711). He may well have aspired to the primacy; but the death of Queen Anne extinguished his hopes in that direction. His known character and Jacobite leanings made him no favourite with George I. In 1715 he refused to sign the bishops' declaration of fidelity, and some of the most violent protests of the Peers against the government measures proceeded from his reckless pen. His deep complicity in a succession of plots for the restoration of the Stuarts at length brought down upon him the charge of treason, and in 1722 he was committed to the Tower. A bill of pains and penalties was brought into the House of Commons, and passed in the Lords by 83 to 43. Atterbury, who had defended himself with great ability, was deprived of all his ecclesiastical offices, and for ever banished the kingdom. No doubt he was implicated in treasonable plots, but the legal proof on which this sentence was founded cannot be deemed sufficient to justify its severity. In 1723 he quitted England, and after a short stay at Brussels, settled in Paris, where he died, 15th February 1732. He was laid in a nameless grave in Westminster Abbey. His works, which fill ten volumes, comprise sermons, and letters to Pope, Swift, Bolingbroke, and others of his friends—the brightest luminaries of that Augustan age. See Macaulay's article, and Williams' Memoirs and Correspondence of Atterbury (2 vols. 1869).