letter from Faction, as he styles himself, to Sir Geo. Saville and others in the Opposition, as follows: "The dismission of Lord Camden, who uniformly abetted our cause, and did his utmost to take off the wheels from the chariot of Government, that they might drive heavily, was a severe stroke upon our party; and as misfortunes are said never to come alone, this has been doubled, by the unexpected manner in which his successor accepted the Seals; without any conditions of a Reversion of a Tellership of the Exchequer for his son, or of a pension, fixed, or floating, for himself. Indeed, I could not believe that any man in his senses would act in such a patriotic manner; (particularly at this crisis, when Government is so weakened by party and faction, that he had nothing to do but to propose his own terms) and accordingly, I considered the conditions upon which a man of our own would have accepted the Seals, and I ventured to publish these as the very terms Mr. Yorke had made. They were generally looked upon as pretty moderate, every thing considered, and consisted only of the Reversion of a Tellership of the Exchequer, a pension of 3000l. per annum, (just what my favourite Chatham enjoys) and a Peerage. How was I amazed, how thunderstruck, to find, that on his part no terms were proposed at all; and that he accepted of the Seals (to the great joy of the Long Robe, as well as of every man of property in the kingdom) with a full intent of doing his duty in that exalted station, without the least attachment to any party whatever! The stability which the acquisition of so able and upright a man would have given to Government is now blasted by his untimely death; a misfortune, which will be severely felt and lamented by the public, as long as politeness, good nature, consummate abilities, and unblemished integrity, claim the least share of their reverence and respect! As for you, my friends, moderate, if possible, your joy, and let not that inhuman miscreant Junius draw his savage pen to aggravate the feelings of the widow and the fatherless upon this mournful occasion. Nay, I would even have you give yourselves the lie, and publicly contradict that infamous paragraph, which you have inserted in the public papers-That Mr. Yorke made terms with the Ministry before he would accept of the Seals. Such a recantation is but common justice to the ashes,' &c. "He was of a lathy, thin, meagre, disjointed habit of body, and had a particular, disagreeable motion with his head and body. "His death will be regretted by numbers in the University, who depended on his advancement to rise with him, and by none more than by Dr. Rutherforth the Divinity Professor, who courted him much; by Dr. Plumptre, Master of Queen's College; by Dr. Bernardiston, Master of Bene't College; by the Bishop of Lincoln, Dr. Green, who would have hoped for a translation, to have made room for his brother, the Dean of Lincoln, to have succeeded him in that church; by Dr. Gordon, the impudent Archdeacon of Lincoln; by Dr. Robert Richardson, son to the Master of Emanuel, and Chaplain at the Hague to his brother, Sir Joseph Yorke; by my namesake, Charles Cole, Deputy Recorder of Cambridge; by Archdeacon Plumptre, his most intimate friend; and by that bawling fiend, Dr. Samuel Salter, Master of Charter House; with numbers more of the same kidney; Dr. Bernardiston only excepted, who had no other expectations from him than being his tutor; for he is a contented, easy, and unambitious man. "In May, 1755, he married Catherine Freeman, who died July 10, 1759; by whom he had Philip, born May 29, 1757; Margaret and Catherine, who died infants. December 25, 1762, he married Miss Agnes Johnson of Berkhamsted, by whom he has Charles, Philip, * and Caroline. † "Mr. Yorke's illness began with a fainting fit on the Friday, during the time of his holding the first General Seal. Cambridge Chronicle and Journal, Saturday, Jan. 27, 1770. "In the Gentleman's Magazine for January 1770, p. 38, is a specimen of Mr. Charles Yorke's abilities as a poet, in three little pieces composed by him." Joseph, (not Philip,) now an Admiral, and Lord of the Admiralty. 51. William Sancroft, D. D. of Emanuel College, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. "In an excellent little poem, called Fashion Displayed, printed soon after the death of King William, and by some supposed to have been written by Wm. Shippen, Esq. and republished in 1774, in the third volume of Miscellaneous and Fugitive Pieces, printed by T. Davies, in Russel Street, at p. 254 is this apostrophe, after having severely and justly characterised Tenison, Lloyd of Worcester, and Burnet, Unhappy Church, by such usurpers sway'd! How are thy prelates chang'd from what they were, (Whilst Patriarcho* is despis'd and scorn'd) In its own heavenly innocence secure, The teeth of Time, the blasts of Envy shall endure! "He was born at Fresingfield, Jan. 30, 1616. Fellow of Eman. much esteemed by the learned of his time, particularly by Bishop Cosin, who not only made him his Chaplain, but his friend and confident, and Prebendary of his Cathedral. When dispossessed of his Fellowship he travelled and spent much of his time in France and Italy, and returned rather before the Restoration. Elected Master of Emanuel Aug. 14, 1662. "Notwithstanding his abuse of Archbishop Sancroft, in his Own Times, yet Burnet owns, in his Preface, p. iv. of his third volume of the Reformation, That he had the free use of every thing in the Lambeth Library by order of that Archbishop.' But this he said in 1715, when his passions were cooled, and he going out of the world; and especially to abuse Bishop or Mr. Collier for his remarks on his History of the Reformation • Tenison. 52. Nicholas Saunderson, Christ College, LL.D. Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, and Fellow of the Royal Society. "The Elements of Algebra. In ten Books. By N. S. &c. Camb. 4to. vols. 1740. "To this is prefixed an account of the author's life and character, collected from his oldest and most intimate acquaintance, His son John of Christ's College, A. B. and now in orders, 1748; and now, 1749, Fellow of St. Peter's College, dedicated his father's book to John Earl of Radnor, his first pupil. His print before it. Ob, 19 April, 1739, æt. 56. "It is worth observing, that they threw out an Arian to take in a professed Deist: it marks however the taste of the times. In Queen Anne's reign Arianism in Will. Whiston was a species of religious fanaticism: in the reign that followed, a loose from all shackles of religion was the fashion," 53. Sir John Skeffington, Knt. and Bart, "In 1652 he translated into English The Hero of Lorenzo, or the Way to Eminence and Perfection, Lond. 12mo. 1652. In the Preface it is said that Sir John S. one of his late Majesty's servants, and a stranger to no language of Christendom, did about forty years ago bring this Hero out of Spain into England: but about a year since, in a retirement of that learned Knight's, by reason of a sequestration for his Mistress's cause, a friend visiting him, entreated Sir John to translate the whole, which he did in a few weeks, and for that time proved an excellent relief to his sad thoughts: but he is now incapable of any more sadness, being buried in the silent grave.” ́ See a full account of Sir John Skeffington, and his family, in the ample pedigree and notes, in Nichols's Leicestershire. Editor. 54. John Savage, M. A. Emanuel College. Chaplain to James, Earl of presented to Clothall. Lec "Rector of Bygrave in Herts. Salisbury. Resigned Bygrave, and turer of St. George, Hanover Square. Ob. March 22, 1746-7, by a fall down the stairs belonging to the scaffolding for Lord Lovat's trial. "He was a stately man, rather corpulent. I used to see him at Cambridge when I first came to the University; when I remember to have heard say, that on some promise or expectation of going Chaplain with the King to Hanover, he bought himself a black velvet coat, and other accoutrements accordingly; but being set aside, it was a great mortification to him. He was the only clergyman that was ever admitted of the Royston Club, where they drank nothing but French wine. His picture hangs to this day in that Club-room, 1777.” 55. Sir Edward Stanhope, LL. D. Trinity College, Chancellor of London. "He seems to have been Chancellor from 1585 to 1608, though as he was Vicar General of Canterbury Diocese, I presume he resigned it in 1603. I meet with one Edward Stanhope, who was Canon of Botevant in the Cathedral of York, which he resigned in 1591: but will not pretend to say it means our Chancellor here; who seems however to be of so heterogeneous a sort, as might well entitle him to a stall in that or any other church at that time. However it is certain, notwithstanding his knighthood, that he was Prebendary of Kentish Town, in St. Paul's Cathedral, in 1591, which he held to his death in 1608., But what seems to be the most singular part of his character, according to our present ideas of consecration, is, that, supposing him to have been no Knight, and even in priest's orders, he should take upon him the character of a Bishop: for we are informed by Mr. Newcourt, vol. i. p. 279, that the church or chapel of St. Anne, in Blackfriars, was, Dec. 11, 1597, consecrated by Dr. Edward |