History, and never saw it till it was printed. He published a
short vindication of himself, which is a model in its kind,
luminous, temperate, and dignified. A copy of this little work
he sent to the Pretender, with a letter singularly eloquent and
graceful. It was impossible, the old man said, that he should
write anything on such a subject without being reminded of the
resemblance between his own fate and that of Clarendon. They
were the only two English subjects that had ever been banished
from their country and debarred from all communication with their
friends by act of parliament. But here the resemblance ended.
One of the exiles had been so happy as to bear a chief part in
the restoration of the Royal house. All that the other could now
do was to die asserting the rights of that house to the last. A
few weeks after this letter was written Atterbury died. He had
just completed his seventieth year.

His body was brought to England, and laid, with great privacy,
under the nave of Westminster Abbey. Only three mourners
followed the coffin. No inscription marks the grave. That the
epitaph with which Pope honoured the memory of his friend does
not appear on the walls of the great national cemetery is no
subject of regret: for nothing worse was ever written by Colley
Cibber.

Those who wish for more complete information about Atterbury may
easily collect it from his sermons and his controversial
writings, from the report of the parliamentary proceedings
against him, which will be found in the State Trials, from the
five volumes of his correspondence, edited by Mr Nichols, and
from the first volume of the Stuart papers, edited by Mr Glover.