Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/94

 leading whigs were threatened, and the mob was only kept in check by the horse and foot guards. After Sacheverell's counsel had spoken, he read his own defence, which was very ably written, and was generally believed to have been composed for him by Atterbury. On 20 March the lords declared him guilty by 69 to 52, the thirteen bishops who voted being seven for guilty to six for acquittal. Sentence was given on the 23rd. It was merely that he should be suspended from preaching for three years; he was left at liberty to perform other clerical functions, and to accept preferment during that period. His two sermons were ordered to be burnt by the common hangman. Such a sentence was felt to be a triumph for him and the high-church and tory party, and the news of it was received with extraordinary enthusiasm throughout the kingdom; great rejoicings being made in London, Oxford, and many other towns, and continued for several days. The ladies were specially enthusiastic, filled the churches where he read prayers, besought him to christen their children, and called several after him. During the progress of the trial he had been presented by Robert Lloyd of Aston, Shropshire, one of his former pupils, to the living of Selattyn in that county, said then to be worth 200l. a year. On 15 June he set out for that place. His journeys there and back were like royal progresses. A large party on horseback accompanied him to Uxbridge, and he was received with great honour at Oxford, Banbury, and Warwick, and at Shrewsbury, where the principal gentry of the neighbourhood and some fifty thousand persons assembled to meet him. On his way back he reached Oxford on 20 July, and was escorted into the city by the sheriff of the county and a company of five hundred, having arranged his coming at the same time as the visit of the judges, in order, it was believed, to secure a large attendance. In August Godolphin was dismissed, the remaining ministers were turned out of office in September, and at the general election in November the tories gained an overwhelming victory. It was recognised at the time that the transference of power from the whigs to the tories was largely due to the ill-judged impeachment of Sacheverell. Much, however, as they owed to him, the leading tories disliked and despised him (, Works, ii. 340). William Bisset (d. 1747) [q. v.], who had previously replied to his sermon (Remarks, &c., 1709), made a violent attack upon him in 1710 in a pamphlet entitled ‘The Modern Fanatick,’ which contains several rather trumpery charges. Among these he was accused of unkindness to his relatives and specially to his mother, who, after her husband's death, became an inmate of Bishop Ward's foundation for matrons at Salisbury. An answer to Bisset's pamphlet was published in 1711 by Dr. William King (1663–1712) [q. v.], probably with some help from Sacheverell; but Bisset renewed the attack. Sacheverell expected immediate preferment as a reward for his championship of the tory cause, and it was thought likely that he would receive a ‘golden prebend’ of Durham, and a rich living in the same diocese, but the bishop bestowed them elsewhere. Partly by Swift's help he obtained from Harley a small place for one of his brothers in 1712. This brother had failed in business, and Sacheverell declared that he had since then maintained him and his family.

Sacheverell's term of punishment having expired, he preached to a large concourse at St. Saviour's, Southwark, on Palm Sunday, 1713, on the ‘Christian triumph and the duty of praying for enemies,’ from Luke xxiii. 34, and sold his sermon for 100l.; it was believed that thirty thousand copies were printed (4to, 1713). On 13 April the queen presented him to the rich living of St. Andrew's, Holborn, and his acceptance of it vacated his fellowship at Magdalen. He preached before the House of Commons in St. Margaret's, Westminster, on 29 May, on ‘False notions of liberty,’ and his sermon was printed by order. In 1715 George Sacheverell, the former high sheriff of Derbyshire, left him a valuable estate at Callow in that county, and in June 1716 he married his benefactor's widow, Mary Sacheverell, who was about fourteen years his senior. He thus became a rich man. He had some quarrels with his Holborn parishioners, and notably in 1719 with William Whiston, whom he ordered not to enter his church. On 7 Jan. 1723, during a sharp frost, he fell on the stone steps in front of his house, hurting himself badly and breaking two of his ribs. He died of a complication of disorders on 5 June 1724 at his house, where he habitually resided, in the Grove, Highgate, Middlesex, and was buried in St. Andrew's, Holborn. On 26 July 1747 the sexton of that church was committed to prison for stealing his lead coffin. He left a legacy of 500l. to Bishop Atterbury. He had no children. His widow married a third husband, Charles Chambers, attorney, of London, on 19 May 1735, and died, aged 75, on 6 Sept. 1739.

Sacheverell is described by Sarah, duchess of Marlborough, as ‘an ignorant and impudent incendiary, the scorn of those who made him