Page:A political romance (IA politicalromance00sterrich).pdf/15

 Bishopthorpe, two miles south of York. With the Dean—Dr. John Fountayne—Sterne had been acquainted since their college days together at Cambridge. They were fast friends. The Dean spent much of his time at Melton Manor, the family seat in South Yorkshire, and so could not always know, any more than the Archbishop, what occurred at York. He was a colorless, good-natured ecclesiastic, inclined, however, to insist upon his prerogatives.

The diocese had an arch intriguer in Dr. Francis Topham, the leading ecclesiastical lawyer at York, the official adviser to the Archbishop, to the Dean, and to many of the minor clergy. Never satisfied with the positions that he held, he was always scheming for more. In the autumn of 1748, he fomented a quarrel between Archbishop Hutton and Dean Fountayne over the appointment of preachers to the Cathedral. The Dean, it was averred, ordered the pulpit locked against a prebendary chosen for the day by the Chancellor of the diocese. For his defence of the Archbishop's rights on this and other occasions, Dr. Topham was appointed, in 1751, Commissary and Keeper-General of the Exchequer and Prerogative Courts of the Archbishop of York,—the most comfortable legal office within the gift of his Grace. Near the same time, the Commissaryship of the Dean and Chapter, worth twenty