ment to inquire into the evidence and
examine witnesses.

Meantime both Houses of Parliament kept voting address after address to
the Crown at each new stage of the proceedings, and as each fresh
evidence of the conspiracy was laid before them. The King must have
grown rather weary of finding new words of gratitude, and the Houses of
Parliament, one would think, must have grown tired of inventing new
phrases of loyalty and fresh expressions of horror at the wickedness of
the Jacobites. The horror was not quite genuine on the part of some who
thus proclaimed it. Many of those who voted the addresses would gladly
have welcomed a restoration of the Stuarts. Not the most devoted
adherent of King George could really have felt any surprise at the
persistent efforts of the Jacobite partisans. Eight years before this it
was a mere toss-up whether Stuart or Hanover should succeed, and even
still it was not quite certain whether, if the machinery of the modern
_plebiscite_ could have been put into operation in England, the majority
would not have been found in sympathy with Atterbury. It is almost
certain that if the _plebiscite_ could have been taken in Ireland and
Scotland also, a majority of voices would have voted James Stuart to the
throne.

{219}

It was resolved to proceed against Atterbury by a Bill of Pains and
Penalties to be brought into Parliament. The evidence against him was
certainly not such as any criminal court would have held to justify a
conviction. A young barrister named Christopher Layer was arrested and
examined, so were a nonjuring minister named Kelly, an Irish Catholic
priest called Neynoe, and a man named Plunkett, also from Ireland. The
charge against Atterbury was founded on the statements obtained or
extorted from these men. It should be said that Layer gave evidence
which actually seemed to impugn Lord Cowper himself as a member of a club
of disaffected persons; and when Lord Cowper indignantly repudiated the
charge and demanded an inquiry, the Government declared inquiry
absolutely unnecessary, as everybody was well assured of his innocence.
The Government, however, declined to follow Lord Cowper in his not
unreasonable assumption that the whole story was unworthy of explicit
credence when it included such a false statement. The case against
Atterbury rested on the declaration of some of the arrested men that the
bishop had carried on a correspondence with James Stuart, Lord Mar, and