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 A HISTORY OF LONDON at the time, and present in the abbey, seems to imply that the dean read the Declaration himself. There was, he says, 'so great a murmur and noise that nobody could hear,' and before it was finished no one was left in the church but 'a few prebends in their stalls, the queristers and the Westminster scholars.' Spratt himself could hardly hold the Declaration in his hands for trembling.^'' The early years of the eighteenth century were marred by a somewhat undignified quarrel between the chapter and Francis Atterbury, who was bishop of Rochester and dean from 171 3 to 1723. The first friction arose about the appointment of the vestry clerk of St. Mar- garet's ; this was in August ; by November Atterbury had persuaded some of the prebendaries to join him, and had fallen foul of Canon Only, curate of St. Margaret's, an old man of between seventy and eighty years, whom he is said to have treated worse than he ever treated anyone when he was dean of Christ Church, Oxford. ^'^ Again in June, 1722, the dean seems to have come into collision with his chapter about the appointment of a new receiver in the place of one Battely ; Atterbury wanted the post for his son-in-law Morris, but a majority of the canons were in favour of appointing the nephew of the last occupant of the office. Finding his will opposed, the dean claimed the sole right of appointment, and ordered Battely's nephew to give up all papers relating to the college. The prebendaries on the other hand drew up an order forbidding the surrender of the papers to anyone except such persons as should be appointed by the dean and chapter, while the deputy treasurer threatened to cashier all workmen, and stop the wages of all servants appointed on the dean's sole authority. ^^' This was at the end of June ; on 22 August political suspicion had fallen upon Atterbur}', he was seized * when sitting in the deanery surrounded with books and papers relat- ing to his domestic quarrels,' and was carried off to the Tower,^^* and it may be presumed that during the few remaining months before his final deprivation, he had but little time to quarrel with his canons. In weighing the evidence against him, however, it must be remembered that it rests upon the testimony of Stratford, one of the canons of Oxford, with whom he had quarrelled most bitterly while dean of Christ Church. There can be no doubt that Stratford had always disliked him,^'*' and it is possible that there was more fault on the side of the West- minster canons than these letters allow ; on the other hand, there seems to be ample evidence that in any position of authority he was high- ^ Diet. Nat. Blog. '^ Rep. on MSS. of Duke oj Portland (Hist. MSS. Com.), vii, 165, 172. "' Ibid. 325, 329, 330. •"Ibid. 332. Ibid, preface, p. xii. handed, and quick to avenge himself upon those who withstood him, and that he provoked con- siderable resentment in each of the cathedrals where he held preferment. The succeeding century passed comparatively uneventfully at Westminster. Dean Wilcocks completed the west front of the abbey, and Dean Vincent, who had been master of West- minster School before his promotion to the deanery, joined with the chapter in the restora- tion after the fire in the lantern in 1803, and obtained from Pitt fourteen annual grants for the restoration of Henry VII's chapel between 1807 and 1822. It was during the time that Wilcocks was dean that Widmore, the librarian of the abbey, published his History and Enquiry into the First Foundation of IVestminster Ahbeyy from the publication of which the revived interest in the historic past of the monastery and collegiate church probably dates. Dean Vincent studied the sixteenth and seventeenth-century chapter-books of the foundation, and has left an analysis of Flete's history of the abbey,^*" and it was only three years after his death that Brayley and Neale published the first volume of their large history. It was probably in this movement that the attempt originated to make Westminster a great national church in a sense other than that which had prevailed during the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries. It was not sufficient that the dean and canons should owe their promotion to and be in close connexion with the crown, nor that the church should be the scene of national pageants and ceremonies ; the later deans felt that the great past of the abbey entitled it to a closer connexion with the spiritual and intellec- tual life of the people. This was the meaning of Dean Trench's institution of evening services in the nave, and yet more of Dean Stanley's attempt to make the abbey a great national church, common to men of all shades of opinion, where differences might be forgotten in the memories of a common past. List of Abbots^* Orbrithus, ist abbot, ob. 616 Germanus, ist prepositus Aldred, 2nd prepositus, oh. 675 Syward, 3rd prepositus, oh. 684 Osmund, 4th prepositus, ob. 705 (605 by a mistake in the MS.) Selred, prepositus, ob. 744 Orgar, prepositus, ob. 765 Brithestan, prepositus, ob. 785 Orbrith, 2nd abbot, ob. 797 Alwy, abbot, ob. 820 "" Diet. Nat. Biog. '" The first fifteen names are from Cott. MS. Faust. A. iii. Many of these are probably fabrications of the chronicler, there seems to be no other evidence of their existence. 454