entertain him, he
entertained them. He always fixed his headquarters at a market town,
kept a table there, and, by his decent hospitality and munificent
charities, tried to conciliate those who were prejudiced against his
doctrines. When he bestowed a poor benefice, and he had many such to
bestow, his practice was to add out of his own purse twenty pounds a
year to the income. Ten promising young men, to each of whom he allowed
thirty pounds a year, studied divinity under his own eye in the close
of Salisbury. He had several children but he did not think himself
justified in hoarding for them. Their mother had brought him a good
fortune. With that fortune, he always said, they must be content: He
would not, for their sakes, be guilty of the crime of raising an estate
out of revenues sacred to piety and charity. Such merits as these will,
in the judgment of wise and candid men, appear fully to atone for every
offence which can be justly imputed to him. [81]

When he took his seat in the House of Lords, he found that assembly
busied in ecclesiastical legislation. A statesman who was well known
to be devoted to the Church had undertaken to plead the cause of the
Dissenters. No subject in the realm occupied so important and commanding
a position with reference to religious parties as Nottingham. To the
influence derived from rank, from wealth, and from office, he added
the higher influence which belongs to knowledge, to eloquence, and to
integrity. The orthodoxy of his creed, the regularity of his devotions,
and the purity of his morals gave a peculiar weight to his opinions on
questions in which the interests of Christianity were concerned. Of all
the ministers of the new Sovereigns, he had the largest share of the
confidence of the clergy. Shrewsbury was certainly a Whig, and probably
a freethinker: he had lost one religion; and it did not very clearly
appear that he had found another. Halifax had been during many years
accused of scepticism, deism, atheism. Danby's attachment to episcopacy
and the liturgy was rather political than religious. But Nottingham
was such a son as the Church was proud to own. Propositions, therefore,
which, if made by his colleagues, would infallibly produce a violent
panic among the clergy, might, if made by him, find a favourable
reception even in universities and chapter houses. The friends
of religious liberty were with good reason desirous to obtain his
cooperation; and, up to a certain p