, carried in the end, but it
met with a resistance in the House of Lords which certainly would not
have been offered to such a proposal by any member of the hereditary
chamber in our day. Some of the recorded protests of dissentient peers
read more like the utterances of modern Radicals than those of
influential members of the House of Lords. The strongest objection made
to the proposal was that the utmost term for which the Constitution had
previously been suspended was six months, and that the measure to suspend
it for a year would become an authority for suspending it at some future
time for two years, or three years, or any term which might please the
ministers in power. On Monday, October 15th, the Bill was brought down
to the Commons, and was read {214} a first time on the motion of Walpole.
The Bill was passed in the Commons, not, indeed, without opposition, but
with an opposition much less strenuous and influential than that which
had been offered to it in the House of Lords. On October 17th it was
announced to Parliament that Dr. Atterbury, the Bishop of Rochester, the
Lord North and Grey, and the Earl of Orrery, had been committed to the
Tower on a charge of high-treason. A few days after, a similar
announcement was made about the arrest and committal of the Duke of
Norfolk.

[Sidenote: 1722--Proclamation of James]

By far the most important of the persons committed for trial was the
Bishop of Rochester. Francis Atterbury may rank among the most
conspicuous public men of his time. He stands only just beneath
Marlborough and Bolingbroke and Walpole. Steele, in his sixty-sixth
_Tatler_, pays a high tribute to Atterbury: "He has so much regard to his
congregation that he commits to memory what he has to say to them, and
has so soft and graceful a behavior that it must attract your attention.
His person, it is to be confessed, is no slight recommendation; but he is
to be highly commended for not losing that advantage, and adding to a
propriety of speech which might pass the criticism of Longinus, an action
which would have been approved by Demosthenes. He has a peculiar force
in his way, and has many of his audience who could not be intelligent
hearers of his discourse were there not explanation as well as grace in
his action. This art of his is used with the most exact and honest
skill; he never attempts your passions until he has convinced your
reason; all the objections which he can form are laid ope