having once set on a riotous mob to prevent his Whig fellow-
citizens from polling.

After having been long in indirect communication with the exiled
family, he, in 1717, began to correspond directly with the
Pretender. The first letter of the correspondence is extant. In
that letter Atterbury boasts of having, during many years past,
neglected no opportunity of serving the Jacobite cause. "My
daily prayer," he says, "is that you may have success. May I
live to see that day, and live no longer than I do what is in my
power to forward it." It is to be remembered that he who wrote
thus was a man bound to set to the church of which he was
overseer an example of strict probity; that he had repeatedly
sworn allegiance to the House of Brunswick; that he had assisted
in placing the crown on the head of George I., and that he had
abjured James III., "without equivocation or mental reservation,
on the true faith of a Christian."

It is agreeable to turn from his public to his private life. His
turbulent spirit, wearied with faction and treason, now and then
required repose, and found it in domestic endearments, and in the
society of the most illustrious of the living and of the dead.
Of his wife little is known: but between him and his daughter
there was an affection singularly close and tender. The
gentleness of his manners when he was in the company of a few
friends was such as seemed hardly credible to those who knew him
only by his writings and speeches. The charm of his "softer
hour" has been commemorated by one of those friends in
imperishable verse. Though Atterbury's classical attainments
were not great, his taste in English literature was excellent;