Henry Sacheverell. Born at Marlborough, England, 1672; died at London, June 5, 1724. An English clergyman and Tory politician. He studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, and was associated there with Addison, with whom he shared his rooms. He came into notice as preacher of St. Saviour’s, Southwark. For two sermons criticizing the Whig ministry, preached Aug. 14 and Nov. 5, 1709, he was prosecuted at the instigation of Godolphin, and March 23, 1710, suspended for three years. He was reinstated by the Tory ministry, April 13, 1713.

Personal

  Dr. Sacheverel came this morning, to give me thanks for getting his brother an employment. It was but six or seven weeks since I spoke to lord-treasurer for him. Sacheverel brought Trap along with him…. Trap is a coxcomb, and the other is not very deep; and their judgment in things of wit and sense is miraculous.

  An ignorant and impudent incendiary, the scorn of those who made him their tool.

  On Friday, June 5, in the evening, Dr. Henry Sacheverell, rector of St. Andrews, Holburn, (worth about 700 libs. per an.) departed this life at Highgate…. He was a bold man, and of a good presence, and delivered a thing better than a much more modest man, however preferable in learning, could do. He was but an indifferent scholar, but pretended to a great deal of honesty, which I could never see in him, since he was the forwardest to take the oaths, notwithstanding he would formerly be so forward in speaking for, and drinking the health of, king James III. He hath printed several things; but that which is really good, viz. his speech at his tryal, was none of his own, but was penned by Dr. Francis Atterbury, the deprived bishop of Rochester. He died very rich. He had a complication of disorders.

  Was bred at the public school at Marlborough, at the charge of one Edward Hearst, an apothecary, whose wife surviving him, continued his charity to Sacheverell, and sent him to Oxford…. He had not been long at Oxford before she discovered his turbulent, violent, and imperious temper,—the more ill-becoming in him, because he subsisted by charity. He was remarkable for his disrespectful behaviour to his superiors and his insolence to his equals. The very make and look of him were an index to his character…. Having a small benefice given him in Staffordshire, he gave great scandal to the sober and religious people in his neighbourhood by his immoralities, which are set forth in a treatise entitled “Peril of being zealously, but not well-affected,” written by a minister of the Church of England, one of the brotherhood of St. Katharine’s. While he was at his parish, or Oxford, he fell in with the most furious of the Jacobite party, made scurrilous reflections on the death of King William and the Hanover succession; and when the queen appeared against the High-Church memorial, he had the impudence to call her a “waxen queen,” “whereby,” says the annalist, “he alluded to or gave the hint of the tacit jest that was put upon her at Oxford, by those who put her motto of semper eadem on the vane of a weathercock.”

  Dr. Henry Sacheverell was a man of a large and strong make, with a good symmetry of parts, of a livid rather than a ruddy complexion, and an insolent overbearing front, with large staring eyes, but no life in them,—a manifest indication of an envious, ill-natured, proud, sullen, and ambitious temper.

  It is difficult to say which is most worthy of ridicule—the ministry, in arming all the powers of government in their attack upon an obscure individual, or the public in supporting a culprit whose doctrine was more odious than his insolence, and his principles yet more contemptible than his parts.

  His enemies triumphed, yet dared not venture abroad. He was disgraced by the legislature; but tens of thousands bent as lowly before him, as the Thibetians to the Grand Lama. He went on a tour of triumph through the country; and was received with splendid, respectful pomp, at every place he visited: magistrates, in their formalities, welcomed him into their corporations; and his guard of honour, was frequently, a thousand gentlemen on horseback. At Bridgenorth he was met by Mr. Creswell, at the head of four thousand horse; and the same number of persons on foot, wearing white knots edged with gold, and three leaves of gilt laurel in their hats. The hedges, for several miles, were dressed with garlands of flowers; and the steeples covered with flags. In this manner he passed through Warwick, Birmingham, Bridgenorth, Ludlow, and Shrewsbury, on his way to his Welch living, with a cavalcade better suited to a prince than a priest. Ridiculous as this farce was, it did some good; as it kept up the respect due to the national church, by engaging the voice of the people at large in its favor; and discouraging any attempts to lower or innovate upon it, in the smallest degree. After the three years suspension had expired, a printer gave him £100 for his first sermon; and the house of Commons, his prosecutors, ordered him to preach before them; thanked him for his discourse; and he was presented to the valuable rectory of St. Andrew’s, Holborn. Had the ministry remained in power, he might, probably, have been honoured with a mitre.

  It is a strange conclusion to the enthusiastic championship of Sacheverell in his day, that he stands alone among the objects of great popular contests, as one who has had no historical vindicator. Whatever may be said of the folly, the tyranny, or the dishonesty of his opponents, no one has a good word to say for Sacheverell himself. Nay, he gets wounded in the assault on his enemies; for a chief characteristic in their offences is that they should have made war on a creature so despicable. This view of his character and position is perhaps the reason why there seems to have been a reluctance to open up the question, by a search through the rich and curious materials left in the impeachment and the controversy. The story as it was originally told by Burnet and Tindal has been repeated over and over. And yet writers who have thus carelessly dealt in it, have attributed to Sacheverell alone the great events of the later years of Queen Anne’s reign—events produced by operative causes of which the Sacheverell affair was a mere superficial phenomenon.

  He had a fine presence and dressed well. He was an indifferent scholar and had no care for learning, was bold, insolent, passionate, and inordinately vain. His failings stand in a strong light, because the whigs, instead of treating him and his utterances with the contempt they deserved, forced him to appear as the champion of the church’s cause, a part which, both by mind and character, he was utterly unfitted to play even respectably, yet the eager scrutiny of his enemies could find little of importance to allege against his conduct, though the charge that he used profane language when irritated seems to have been true.

General

  Nay, the Tatler, the immortal Tatler, the great Bickerstaff himself was fain to leave off talking to the ladies, during the Doctor’s trial, and turn his sagacious pen to the dark subject of death, and the next world; though he has not yet decided the ancient debate, whether Pluto’s regions were, in point of government, a kingdom or a commonwealth.

  So superior was this speech [before the Lords] in composition to any thing which Sacheverell had hitherto produced, that it was well understood to be no offspring of his brain. Its merit was in general and probably with reason ascribed to Atterbury.

  His literary skill was of the most mechanical kind.