regarded as a fair
representative of a type of bishop now extinct. He was distinguished as
a scholar, a divine, and a courtier. When, however, it is said that Hurd
was a courtier, it is not meant to imply that he was servile or in any
way unduly complaisant to the King or the Court. There is no evidence of
anything of the sort. Neither does he appear to have been, like some of
his contemporaries, unduly intent upon advancing his own selfish
interests. His preferments came apparently unsought, and he refused the
Primacy, although it was pressed upon him by the King on the death of
Archbishop Cornwallis in 1783. Although he rose from a comparatively
humble origin, 'his parents,' he tells us, 'were plain, honest, and good
people' (his father was, in fact, a farmer); he seems to have been
gifted by nature with great courtliness of manner, and with aristocratic
tastes. On his first introduction at Court he won by these graces the
heart of the King, who remarked that he thought him more naturally
polite than any man he had ever met with. Hurd subsequently became the
most trusted friend and constant adviser of George III. There is a very
touching letter extant, which the King wrote to Hurd in one of his great
sorrows, expressing most feelingly the value in which George held the
religious ministrations of his favourite bishop, and the high opinion he
had of his piety and worth. The mere fact that Hurd won the affectionate
respect--one might almost say veneration--of so good a Christian as King
George, furnishes a presumption that he must have been a man of some
merit; and there is nothing whatever in any of his writings, or in
anything we hear of his life, that should lead us to think otherwise.
Nevertheless, it was just such men as Hurd who tended to keep the Church
of the eighteenth century in its apathetic state. Hurd was a
religious-minded man; but his religion was characterised by a cold,
prim propriety which was not calculated to commend it to men at large.
Like his friend Warburton, he could see nothing but folly and fanatical
madness in the great evangelical revival which was going on around him,
and which he seems to have thought would soon be stamped out. He only
emerged from his stately seclusion on great occasions; but when he did
go forth, he was surrounded with all 'the pomp and circumstance' which
might impress beholders with a sense of his dignity. 'Hartlebury Church
is not above a quarter of a mile from Hartlebur