'Well then,' I ventured, 'perhaps he has a fancy to land part of his cargo duty-free.'

'That's likelier,' Billy assented. 'I don't say 'tis the truth, mind you for if 'tis truth, why should the man choose to fetch land by daylight? Fog? A man like Jo Pomery isn' one to mistake a little pride-o'-the-mornin' for proper thick weather-the more by token it's been liftin' this hour and more. But 'tis a likelier guess anyway, the Gauntlet being from foreign. "Lost his bearin's," says you, and come, as you might say, slap through the Manacles; an' by accident, as you might say! Providence has a broad back, my son, but be careful how you dance 'pon it.'

'Where does she come from?' I asked.

'Mediterranean; that's all I know. Four months and more she must ha' took on this trip. Iss; sailed out o' Falmouth backalong in the tail-end o' February, and her cargo muskets and other combustibles.'

'Muskets?'

'Muskets; and you may leave askin' me who wants muskets out there, for in the first place I don't know, an' a still tongue makes a wise head.'

I had slipped on shirt and breeches. 'We'll give him a hail, anyway,' said I, ‘and if there's sport on hand he may happen to let us join it.' The ketch by this time was pushing her nose past the spit of rock hiding our creek from seaward. As she came by with both large sails boomed out to starboard and sheets alternately sagging loose and tautening with a jerk, I caught sight of two of her crew in the bows, the one looking on while the other very deliberately unlashed the anchor, and aft by the wheel a third man, whom I made out to be Captain Pomery himself.

'Gauntlet ahoy!' I shouted, standing on the thwart and making a trumpet of my hands.

Captain Pomery turned, cast a glance towards us over his left shoulder and lifted a hand. A moment later he called an order forward, and the two men left the anchor and ran to haul in sheets. Here was a plain invitation to pull alongside. I seized a paddle, and was working the boat's nose round, to pursue, when another figure showed above the Gauntlet's bulwarks: a tall figure in an orange-russet garment like a dressing-gown; a monk, to all appearance, for the sun played on his tonsured scalp as he leaned forward and watched our approach.

(To be continued.)

ATTERBURY.

A LECTURE BY THE REV. CANON BEECHING.

FRANCIS ATTERBURY was born on March 6, 1663, in the full tide of loyalty that followed the Glorious Restauration, at the village of Milton, in Bucks, of which his father was rector. The Atterburys were a Northamptonshire stock, which had for several generations contributed to the ranks of the clergy, and it was natural that the two sons of the rector of Milton, Lewis and Francis, should expect in due course to take Holy Orders, as they both did. With Lewis Atterbury we shall not be concerned directly; but he comes twice into his brother's history in so interesting a manner that it is worth while turning out of our course, even at the start, to say what has to be said about him. While his brother was Bishop of Rochester the archdeaconry of that diocese fell vacant, and Lewis Atterbury, then Rector of Hornsey, made solicitation for the post. Indeed, in order to lose no time, he asked for it a month before it was vacant. The bishop, who knew that his elder brother would make an insubordinate junior, demurred. 'I protest to you,' he writes, 'I cannot help thinking it the most unseemly thing in the world, and I am very sure the generality of those whose opinions I regard will be of that opinion.' . . . 'It had been a much properer post for my nephew [i.e. his brother's son]-if God had pleased to spare his life.' But Lewis Atterbury did not agree that his being older than the bishop was a disqualification for serving under him. He replies:

I have since considered all that you said to me yesterday; and both from reason and matter of fact still am of opinion that there can be no just matter of exception taken. I shall only lay down two or three instances which lie uppermost in my thoughts. Your lordship very well knows that Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, had a brother for his archdeacon; and that Sir Thomas More's father was a puisne judge when he was Lord Chancellor. And thus, in the sacred history, did God himself appoint that the safety and advancement of the patriarchs should be procured by their younger brother.

The bishop, however, was not convinced by these precedents, and gave the office to Dr. Henry Brydges, brother of the Duke of

Chandos. The final letter of the would-be archdeacon is worth reading in full.

I am obliged to you for the favour of your last, and more particularly for giving me a reason for your disposal of the archdeaconry and prebend annexed, when you was not obliged to give any reason at all. I cannot yet imagine what indecency there can be to have raised your elder brother in place under you, which doth not bear more hard supposing the person to be the brother of a Duke There is some show of reason, I think, for the non-acceptance, but none for the not giving it. And since your lordship was pleased to signify to me that I should over-rule you in this matter [that was in the first letter], I confess it was some disappointment to me; though since you did not think fit to bestow it on me, I think you have given it to one of the most deserving persons I know of, who will add more to the honour of the place than I could have received from it. I hope I shall be content with that meaner post in which I am; my time at longest being but short in the world [he was sixty-four and lived eleven years longer], and my health not suffering me to make those necessary applications others do. I did not think that Dr. Brydges would have taken up with an archdeaconry, when his brother can make him a Bishop when he pleases.

The other matter in which the brothers clashed was a temporal matter. The father by will had divided his landed property between the two sons, and given Francis a contingent issue in the whole, should Lewis die without issue. Lewis thereupon tried to set the will aside on some informality, and failing to do so, bequeathed by his own will to a third person the property already entailed on his brother. So much for Lewis Atterbury; these two slight glimpses of whom are enough to convince one that there was character in the family.

When Francis was of fit age he was sent to what, at that epoch, was the first school in England, the foundation that flourished in the Westminster cloisters under the rod of the renowned Richard Busby, then in his prime. From Westminster he passed in May 1681 to Christ Church, and found himself in congenial society. The Dean of Christ Church at the time was Dr. Fell of dubious memory; but among the canons and soon to be dean was the celebrated Henry Aldrich, eminent for his genius alike in logic, architecture, and music. The society of the House at that period was spoken of commonly as 'the Christ Church wits,' on account of their general turn for epigram. But while cultivating the sprightlier muses over their port and tobacco, a few of them did not altogether neglect more serious studies; and Atterbury, on being appointed censor in 1698, determined to set the House in order. In a letter from his friend Smalridge, who had followed him from Westminster, we have this sentence: 'You are resolved to bestir yourself, you

say, in your office in the House; foresee some trouble and ill-will and are yet resolved for the good of the House. A hero! I suppose you expect to do little good but upon the Westminsters. No gruffness I beseech you; use them civilly, and stick to your point.' The passage is worth notice, because it shows thus early the stuff of which Atterbury was made. He was by temperament a reformer; a man of strong principles and earnest zeal; and a little disposed to carry through his reforms without much thought for the human feelings of the objects of his reformation. There is some evidence that the experience Christ Church had of his censorship made them a little reluctant to welcome him afterwards as dean; and there is a sentence attributed to his friend Smalridge, who wrote this warning letter, and who oddly enough succeeded him in the deaneries of Carlisle and Christ Church, which shows that the warning had not much effect on his dictatorial temper : Atterbury goes before and sets everything on fire, and I come after him with a bucket of water.'

In the year of his censorship Atterbury became tutor to a gentleman, who some years later made a figure in the world of scholarship, the Hon. Charles Boyle, son of the Earl of Orrery. Mr. Boyle,' he writes to his father, 'takes up half my time, and I grudge it him not, for he is a fine gentleman, and while I am with him I will do what I can to make him a man.' Atterbury did what he could also to make Mr. Boyle a scholar. It was the excellent custom of the Deans of Christ Church to keep the younger graduates at their desks by setting them to edit a classical text; and it so happened, when Mr. Boyle was ready for this exercise, that Sir William Temple, the diplomatist, in a literary essay (1692) had praised the Epistles of Phalaris (which, it is said, he had not Greek enough to read) as having 'more race, more spirit, and more force of wit and genius, than any others I have ever seen either ancient or modern.' Accordingly, Mr. Boyle was set to edit these racy epistles. What followed is well known, but not perhaps the share in it that belonged to Atterbury. Boyle had applied to Bentley, who was King's librarian, through a bookseller, for the loan of a manuscript, and by some misunderstanding it was not lent him long enough for complete collation. Boyle thereupon in his preface spoke of Bentley as having refused its sufficient use pro singulari sua humanitate. Bentley, seeing the complaint, explained and apologised, but Boyle did not withdraw the offensive expression. So Bentley took the opportunity of a friend's book

to add a dissertation, proving the letters to be spurious. This was resented by the Christ Church dons as a public affront, and they put their heads together to concoct a reply to Bentley's dissertation, to which that scholar made rejoinder by expanding his treatise with notes. The Christ Church examination bears the name of the Hon. Charles Boyle, but his share in it becomes plain from the following letter addressed to him by Atterbury.

Sir! You might have sent these papers to anybody better than me, whose opinion all along in the controversy you have not seemed very willing to take, and whose pains in it, I find, have not pleased you. In laying the design of the book, in writing above half of it, in reviewing a great part of the rest, in transcribing the whole, and attending the press, half a year of my life went away. What I promised myself from hence was that some service would be done to your reputation, and that you would think so. In the first of these I was not mistaken; in the latter I am.

One feels that in those days there was some advantage in being a person of quality, if you were allowed to put your name to works of learning which your tutors composed. It was this Boyle controversy, as it is called, which first made Atterbury known in London; for, oddly enough, the fashionable world was interested in it. It formed an incident in the literary debate between Ancient and Modern learning, which Temple's essay had set going, and Temple's secretary, Dr. Swift, had continued in his 'Battle of the Books.' And we must recollect that, though everybody to-day knows that Bentley was right, at the time the current opinion went with Boyle. Garth, for example, in his 'Dispensary,' writes:

So diamonds take a lustre from their foil,
And to a Bentley 'tis we owe a Boyle;

and Swift, in the Battle of the Books,' represents Boyle as advancing against his trembling foe, clad in a suit of armour given him by all the Gods, i.e. the Christ Church wits, as the representative of the two noblest of things, sweetness and light.'

The Boyle controversy, then, first brought Atterbury into notice; but it was a theological controversy that first showed his capabilities and temper as a Churchman. The centre of the Romanising party in Oxford at this time was the Master of University College, Obadiah Walker, who kept a private printing press from which he issued many books and pamphlets, for the most part written by an old tutor of the College, Abraham Woodhead. One of these was called 'Considerations on the Spirit of Martin Luther.' This Atterbury replied to with a great deal of sense, and in a