Page:Dean Aldrich A Commemoration Speech.djvu/17

 Church party has had to assert the apostolical authority of Bishops in the abstract by means of a war with Bishops in the concrete. 'The hostility of the two parties,' says Cardwell of this session, 'became fixed and embittered, and the whole kingdom partook in the strife.'

On February 23, 1703, in a lull of the firing, Mr. Prolocutor Aldrich attended Mr. Speaker to thank Queen Anne for her unexampled bounty to the Poor Clergy.

But by March he was presenting a strong representation to the Archbishop, and his Grace explains, 'Mr. Prolocutor, it hath pleased God to afflict me with a very severe fit of the gout, so that I am unable to attend to your humble representation.'

In 1704, Aldrich demands reparation for a 'grievous and groundless aspersion wherewith the Right Rev. Bishop of Old Sarum hath thought fit to treat us.' 'We have been taught,' reports the Dean to his Grace, 'from our very infancy to reverence your Order, and do reverence even the Lord Bishop of Sarum for its sake.'

In October, 1705, he presents the new Prolocutor to the Bishops in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, 'in a speech,' says White Kennet, 'full of angry reflections, but seeming to wish that the controversy might sleep.' Then it all ends with a vote of thanks to him, carried unanimously, only with a protest from the minority, that 'though they had very great esteem for that worthy person, this vote must not be taken to approve of all he did.'

Through all this Aldrich passes, the centre of the bitterest strife, the point at which all movements cross and crowd and jostle each other, yet himself calm, dignified, gentle,