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136 his chaplain, issued pamphlets in her defence, and when the two sisters went to London, she was received with increased affection at Fulham. Bishop Horsley and all the persons most distinguished for their excellence eagerly testified their sympathy and indignation. Alexander Knox, one of the most orthodox of men, spoke of the attack as a national disgrace. The persecution seems to have been directed upon her in consequence of Wilberforce's desire for peace with France, as well as of his great crusade against the Slave Trade. In the temper of the times such sympathies were thought to savour of revolution, and any attempt to improve or elevate the lower classes was held to be suspicious; and thus the Anti-Jacobin Review disgraced itself by personal attacks on two such women as Hannah More and Sarah Trimmer, and on Bishop Porteous as their supporter. The pamphlets were immeasurably scurrilous, one even asserting that the Cheap Repository Tracts ought to be burnt by the common hangman; another declared that Hannah was in love with two officers and an actor, not knowing, perhaps, that she was in her sixtieth year.

Early in 1802 Bishop Moss died, and Hannah took the first opportunity of writing to his successor, Dr. Beadon, a full and dignified statement of her principles and her system, together with a history of the persecution, which she "attributes in great part to the