Page:Hutton, William Holden - Hampton Court (1897).djvu/307

Rh cold-hearted, without any fixed standard of religion or morals; the Prince dissolute, false, fatuously conceited; the Princesses hypocritical, or weak, or callous. "What a set!" It was a court which the manners of a Chesterfield might adorn, and which certainly his morals did not disgrace.

My Lord Hervey, who writes his "Letter to a Doctor of Divinity from a Nobleman at Hampton Court," was scornful enough against the clergy, contemptuous and bitter by turns, and, like most men of ill life in that age, he professed to hold the most sceptical opinions on religion. But he had at least one Bishop to his friend, and was by no means unconcerned in the matter of ecclesiastical patronage. Here he copied the Queen his mistress, who, says Chesterfield, "after puzzling herself with all the whimsies and fantastical speculations of different sects, fixed herself ultimately in Deism," but who was keenly active in the distribution of Church appointments, and commended Butler on her deathbed. It is not unnatural that he should never give credit for a good motive or hesitate to attribute a bad one. But though he certainly extenuates nothing, he makes of the Queen, after all, not a little of a heroine. Lord Chesterfield in a few words gives a view not dissimilar to the impression that comes from all Lord Hervey's Memoirs: "Upon the whole, the agreeable woman was liked by most people, while the Queen was neither esteemed, beloved, nor trusted by any one but the King"—and, we may add, Lord Hervey.