Page:Hannah More (1887 Charlotte Mary Yonge British).djvu/147

Rh Bishop Moss, on the exposure of Bere's behaviour, with the full concurrence of the rector, withdrew his licence, and requested Miss More to restore the school, which she did; but though Bere was only a curate, there was no displacing him. He would not resign house or church, threatened a law-suit, and an appeal to the Archbishop; and Dr. Moss, who was timid and feeble, actually yielded to the storm and let the man remain, so that the school was again broken up, and Blagdon soon fell back into its previous habits.

There was all the time a war of pamphlets between the curate and the baronet. The silence of Miss More having been mentioned as a sign that she had no defence to make, Sir Abraham cited the famous silence of Scipio when accused of treason to the Commonwealth. Bere's rejoinder was: "You have prostituted the name of Scipio and rendered that of Hannah More supremely ridiculous. In sooth, Sir, the queer and humorous figure your Scipio in petticoats offers to the mind's eye mocks gravity into hysterics. You are not made for sportive tricks. You have done your cause no good by your disgraceful freak." Again, he boasted, "Look ye, Sir Abraham, I am descended in direct line from Gwyn ap Glendour ap Cadwallader ap Styfimog—and so on up to Adam, sound men and true."

Nine clergymen, among them the Bishop's son and