CHAPTER XXIII.

THE LATER STUART PERIOD.

On the death of Parker, the papalist bishop of Oxford, in 1688, 'one Hall, a Conformist in London, who was looked on as half a Presbyterian, yet because he read the Declaration, was made Bishop (Burnet). This was TIMOTHY HALL, son of a wood-turner who owned some houses in the parish of St. Catherine by the Tower, where Timothy was born. He entered Pembroke Dec. 12, 1654, aged 17, and was 'trained up there under a Presbyterian discipline (which caused him ever after to be a Trimmer)'.' Cheseman was his tutor. B.A. Jan. 15, 1658.

Ejected in 1662 from the parsonages of Norwood and of Southam, Hall thought it better to conform, and became rector of Horsenden, 1668, perpetual curate of Prince's Risborough, 1669-77, vicar of Bledlow, 1674-7, and rector of Allhallows Stayning, 1677. He was curate of Hackney in 1685, and lecturer there in 1688. When James II ordered, in April, 1688, the Declaration of Liberty of Conscience to be read in every church, Hall was one of the handful of London clergy who complied, or at least gave half a Crown to another (the Parish Clerk I think) to do it. His nomination to the vacant see of Oxford, followed by a mandatory letter for his creation to be Doctor of Divinity, caused the deepest resentment. He was consecrated privately at Lambeth, Oct. 7, 1688. When however he arrived 'to take possession of his house at Cudesden, the Dean and Canons of Ch. Ch. refused to install him, the gentry to meet or congratulate him, the Vicech. and Heads to take notice of him, or any Master or Bachelaur to make application to, or take holy Orders from him.' At the next Trinity Embertide there were eighty-four to be ordained. Timothy Bishop of Oxon was then, as 'tis said, in Oxon, lodged at Dr. Lashers' house in Pennyfarthing Street, and deputed [Baptist Levintz], bishop of Man, to perform the ceremony in Magdalen Chapel. On Jan. 17, sixteen days before the last day of grace, Bishop Hall took the oath of allegiance to William and Mary.' 'This Mr. Hall, called by some Doctor, by others Sir, Hall, died miserably poor at [Homerton in] Hackney near London,' April 10, 1 Athenae, ii. 685.

2

6

Joshua Lasher, M.D., St. John's. Buried in St. Aldate's.

310

HARTE THE NONJUROR.

1690'. He was succeeded in the bishoprick by Dr. Hough. Wood mentions two printed sermons of Hall's, one at the funeral of Robert Huntingdon, the anti-Olivarian parliamentarian, in 1685. Lysons mistakenly calls Hall 'a Roman Catholic.'

ROBERT GROVE, who entered Feb. 22, 165, is probably identified in the Alumni Oxonienses with Robert Grove, Bishop of Chichester (1634-96), who took part in drawing up the Petition of May, 1688, against James II's Declaration for Liberty of Conscience. The Bishop (who graduated from Cambridge) is better remembered as an elegant scholar. He lies in his cathedral.

WALTER HARTE, the nonjuror-father of Pope's friend, the biographer of Gustavus Adolphus, to whose pupil, Philip Stanhope, the Chesterfield Letters were addressed-was a Tesdale fellow of Pembroke from 1674. His father was Edward Harte, innholder of Abingdon. Walter matriculated Dec. 6, 1667, as a scholar (1667-1674), M.A. 1674, incorporated at Cambridge 1676. There is a picture of him, painted by Zelman in 1685, engraved by Hibbart in 1767, and a small head-piece in the Amaranth.

Harte was Vicar of St. Mary Magdalen's, Taunton, at the time of the Bloody Assize, and deemed it his duty in that capacity to wait on Judge Jefferies in private and remonstrate with him on his severities against the rebels. Jefferies, who knew a man when he saw him, listened without disrespect to the courageous priest's admonitions, and, very much to his credit, when a prebendal stall at Bristol was vacant a few months after, suggested Harte's name for the preferment. He was also advanced to a canonry of Wells. At the Revolution he refused to take the oaths to William and Mary, and on Feb. 1, 1699, was deprived of all his preferments, retiring to Chipping Norton and to Kentbury, Bucks. Here this stout old man died, Feb. 10, 1733, at the age of eighty-five. Queen Anne, at the instigation of Sir Simon Harcourt, of the same college, afterwards Lord Chancellor, had offered Mr. Harte a bishoprick, but he declined it. The successive occupants, however, of the see of Bath and Wells, Drs. Kidder, Hooper and Wynne, so respected his piety and learning that they contrived he should receive the profits of his stall at Wells till his death. Walter Harte the son records that he was a most laborious student all his life.

Addison's tutor, while his father was a prebendary of Sarum, was a Rev. Mr. Naish. Mr. Macray thinks this is perhaps THOMAS NAISH,

The parish register says, 'The Right Reverend Father in God Timothy late Lord Bishop of Oxford dyed the 9th and was buried the 13th of April, 1690' (Lysons).

2 The College very nearly had Lord Jefferies—a better lawyer than judge-for its Visitor.

3 Mr. Foster however (Alumni) dates these preferments 1684.

SIR THOMAS COOKES.

311 who entered Pembroke in 1684 (son of Thomas of New Sarum), afterwards Sub-dean of Salisbury and Master of St. John's Hospital at Wilton 1.

I may here mention, as adherents to the exiled King, FRANCIS WOLFERSTON, a lawyer, 'the stiffest of nonjurors' (entered 1657), and WILLIAM SCLATER, Vicar of Brampford Speke (entered 1659). Also NATHANIEL SACHEVERELL (1687), uncle of the famous High Church champion. Hearne notes under Aug. 31, 1711, 'Dr. (or Mr.) Kymberley, Chaplain to ye Ld Keeper, is made Prebendary of Westminster.' This was JONATHAN KIMBERLEY (1667). He had been chaplain to Charles II and canon of Lichfield. Queen Anne further gave him the Deanery of Lichfield.

The founder of Worcester College, Sir THOMAS COOKES 2, entered Pembroke June 7, 1667, aged 17. His father was Sir William, first baronet, of Northgrove Manor, Feckenham, Worcestershire.

Sir Thomas was born at Bentley Pauncefot, in the parish of Tardebigg. He was a liberal patron of Bromsgrove Grammar School, and also endowed the school at Feckenham. Here in 1699 John Baron, fellow of Balliol, preached a sermon before him in the hope of diverting a great expected bounty to that College. In his will, dated three years before, Sir Thomas gave to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of Oxford, Lichfield, and Gloucester, the Vice-Chancellor, and all the Heads of colleges and halls in the University of Oxford, the sum of £10,000 to purchase lands, the profits of which were either to build an ornamental pile of buildings in Oxford, and endow the same with so many scholars' places and fellowships as they should think the revenue would maintain, or to endow such other College or Hall in Oxford with such and so many fellowships and scholars' places as they should think fit, preference being given to persons educated at Bromsgrove or Feckenham. He had originally intended with the £10,000 to build a workhouse in his own county. The hopes and fears of the different rivals in Oxford for Cookes's benefaction are recorded by the Rev. C. H. O. Daniel in Mr. Clark's Colleges of Oxford. It fell finally to the defunct Gloucester Hall, within whose buildings a new College was founded, July 29, 1714, two days before Queen Anne's death. The circumstances recall those of the foundation of Pembroke, though in the case of the latter there was unbroken continuity with the past. Sir Thomas Cookes died June 8, 1701.

The Rev. E. H. Aston, rector of Codford St. Mary, has lent me a book of MS. sermons, in which Naish has transcribed a conversational account of the proceedings ' against Dr Huff in Magd: Colledge Hall Oxon.' This he may have got hold of through Addison. His MS. Diary was in the Phillipps Collection.

Originally Cooksey; Walter de Kokesay was Sheriff of Worcestershire, 19 Edw. II. I have heard the village people speak of Squire 'Cooksey.' This old and honourable family is nearly extinct.

312

LORD CHANCELLOR HARCOURT.

One of the original Fellows of Worcester was Dr. SAMUEL CRESWICKE, who entered Pembroke, Apr. 6, 1709, D.D. 1727. He was Chaplain to George II (1729), Dean of Bristol (1730), and Dean of Wells (1739). Ob. 1766.

SIMON VISCOUNT HARCOURT, Lord High Chancellor of England, belonged to an impoverished cadet branch of the great French house of Harcourt, descended from that Bernard, of the royal blood of Saxony, whom Rollo estated near Falaise. One of his grandfathers was the valiant Sir Simon Harcourt, the first to die for the King in Ireland; the other was Sir William Waller, the parliamentary general, whose daughter, Anne, was taken in marriage by Sir Philip Harcourt. The latter's elder son, Simon, born at Stanton-Harcourt, was at school with Trevor and Harley, under a clergyman named Birch, at Shilton, near Burford, whence he proceeded to Pembroke March 30, 1677, aged 15. At this College, Campbell says, he 'was strengthened in his faith in the divine right of Kings'-in spite of Bishop Hall. At the same time he occupied himself diligently in classical studies, and he acquired a taste for poetry and polite literature which stuck by him through life.' He resided, writes Campbell, three or four years, 'but there is no entry in the Registers of any degree.' Mr. Foster however gives it: 'B.A. Jan. 21, 1678.' So also Wood: B. of Arts of Pembr. Coll.' When Queen Anne visited Oxford in 1702, Harcourt, then Solicitor-General, 'for having so strenuously advocated the orthodox doctrines of the High Church, both ecclesiastical and political, now received amidst tremendous applause the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws' (not LL.D. but D.C.L., Aug. 27, 1702). He was then re-admitted of Christ Church, being described as 'nuper Coll: Pembrok:'

Entered of the Inner Temple in 1683 (bencher 1702), he had been elected Recorder of Abingdon in 1690', 'and had to act the Judge in the presence of the villagers among whom he gamboled as a boy' (Campbell); Member (1690-1702). In and out of Parliament by his wit, eloquence and legal ability he quickly acquired an ascendency. He delivered powerful speeches against the bill attainting Sir John Fenwick, and even refused to subscribe the Association of the Commons on the discovery of the assassination plot. Harcourt had in 1701 the conduct of the impeachment of Lord Chancellor Somers. On Anne's accession Harcourt was knighted and made Solicitor-General, being recognized as the greatest of the Tory lawyers. The bill for the Union with the Kingdom of Scotland

1 But Wood speaks as though Harcourt was Recorder before this, and was ousted in 1687 by Richard Medlicot. He adds later, Harcourt in againe' (Life and Times, iii. 264).

LORD CHANCELLOR HARCOURT.

313

was drawn by him, and in such a manner as to prevent parliamentary discussion of the points on which the Commissioners had agreed. In 1703 he prosecuted Defoe for a blasphemous libel, viz. The Shortest Way with Dissenters. While the author of Robinson Crusoe was in the pillory, the mob drank his health, crowned and pelted him with roses, and cursed Harcourt. Whig writers however allow him to have been untainted by corruption. He was made Attorney-General, Apr. 23, 1707, but resigned on Feb. 12 following, on the formation of a Whig ministry, and singular as it may be,' writes Campbell, 'by a voluntary surrender enrolled in court. This act is unprecedented.' The Queen however recalled him in 1710, and made him Lord Keeper. In that year, in spite of growing blindness (for which he was at this time couched), he was the leading counsel on the high-church side at Sacheverell's trial. He had sate for Bossiney in Cornwall 1705-8, for Abingdon again in 1708, but was unseated by a partisan vote of the Commons, a system he had himself encouraged. The Duke of Marlborough also removed him from being steward of Woodstock Manor. He was elected however for Cardigan in 1710, and again in that year for Abingdon. The Queen created him Baron Harcourt, of Stanton-Harcourt, Sept. 3, 1711. As such he negotiated the Treaty of Utrecht. In Swift's Journal to Stella he writes under April 7, 1713: 'My Lord Keeper Harcourt was this night made Lord Chancellor.' Noble says unaccountably that he presided in the Lords for nearly a year without a peerage. That has frequently happened, but Harcourt was already a baron. As Chancellor he refused to issue a writ of summons to the Elector of Hanover. The hopes of the Jacobites hung on Anne's life; her sudden death found them unready. The Elector, however, 'Lord Harcourt being as eminent a person as ever adorned the high station he filled, prudently made him one of the Lords Justices till his arrival in England,' Sept. 20, 1714; and, though Harcourt was then made to give up the Great Seal, he turned cat-in-pan sufficiently to be created in 1721 a Viscount and a Lord in Regency, and to have his pension doubled. His friend Swift was disgusted :—

'Come, trimming Harcourt, bring your mace,
And squeeze it in or quit your place.'

In 1717 he procured Lord Oxford's acquittal.

Campbell thinks that Harcourt preserved his consistency, and Noble says that 'he preserved his reputation unsullied till his death.' This occurred July 27, 1727, in Cavendish Square. He had been struck with paralysis while visiting Walpole, with whom he was now intimate. He is buried at Stanton-Harcourt, which his family have owned since the seventeenth century. He acquired the Nunenham-Courtenay estate in 1710.

At Cokethorpe, near Stanton-Harcourt, the Queen paid him a State visit. He had given up his own house to Pope. Harcourt and Gay were Pope's only visitors there, and there they witnessed together the tragical fate of John Hewet and Sarah Drewe. On a pane of glass in Pope's Study is inscribed :-' In the year 1718 Alexander Pope finished here the fifth volume of Homer.'