At last rose the Bishop of Gloucester. If provocation often sharpens the genius, it did not in his case. Yet he was not confused, he was insolent: he spoke like a man that had governed children,[227] not like one fit to govern them. His language and circumstances were vulgar and trivial; he dwelt more on his housemaid letting in Mr. Fawcett when he came to him, than on any part of his defence. He said, he did not doubt but their Lordships would treat this accusation with the abhorrence it deserved. That for himself, he yielded to many on the Bench for capacity, he would not to any in loyalty. That he had had promises of favour formerly from his Grace of Bedford, and hoped he had not forfeited them: that it was not true that there had long been a scheme of making him Preceptor; that [he] himself had never heard of it till he was at the Hague, and then he was told of such a design by a noble Duke, who had heard it from a noble Lord, who had heard such a report--but not one of his own friends had thought of it for him: that if his Majesty had designed it, he did not know it. That in the Roman state, when informers were most rife, yet nothing had happened of this kind. He insisted on the badness of Fawcett, and affirmed that he did not dictate to him the letter for himself, though he owned he stood by while Fawcett wrote it; and that two days afterwards, when he desired Fawcett to add some words to it, they were not, _This is all I can say consistent with truth_, but, _This is the truth_.
Lord Ravensworth entirely acquitted the Bishop, and added this extraordinary problem, that Fawcett’s character was so bad only from its being so good. He desired to know of all the Lords, whether they did not acquit him; and whether they did not believe that Fawcett had told him all he had announced.
Of the Duke of Newcastle’s speech, an hour in length, I shall touch but a few of the most remarkable passages, such as, after acquitting Lord Ravensworth, were his panegyric on Harry Vane, _who never said a false thing, or did a bad one_! and another, scarce less exaggerated, on the Duke of Devonshire’s _sagacity_, for which his Majesty had ordered him to be added to the Council. Of his own immediately going to the King, and saying, “Sir, I am come to keep my promise; that you should be the first to hear any complaints against Stone; if he is a Jacobite, he is a greater traitor to me than to you.” How Stone, who had had the fate of kingdoms in his breast, had desired to have the accusation examined, and to be sequestered from his attendance on the Prince of Wales, till he should be acquitted; and lastly, how these stories had been propagated by cabal and intrigue, and by the anonymous Memorial sent assiduously all over the kingdom, full of falsities and irreverence to the King; and which General Hawley, as was his duty, had brought to him within an hour after receiving it.