Such a system naturally tended to foster a false estimate of their duties on the part of those who were promoted.  If the dispenser of Church preferment was too apt to regard merely political ends, the recipient or expectant was on his part too often ready to play the courtier or to become the mere political partisan.  Whiston complains that ’the bishops of his day were too well known to be tools of the Court to merit better bishoprics by voting as directed.’[672] Warburton owns that ’the general body of the clergy have been and (he is afraid) always will be very intent upon pushing their temporal fortunes.’[673] Watson considered ’the acquisition of a bishopric as no proof of personal merit, inasmuch as they are often given to the flattering dependants and unlearned younger branches of noble families.’  Nay, further, he considered ’the possession of a bishopric as a frequent occasion of personal demerit.’  ‘For,’ he writes, ’I saw the generality of bishops bartering their independence and dignity of their order for the chance of a translation, and polluting Gospel humility by the pride of prelacy.’[674] Lord Campbell informs us that ’in spite of Lord Thurlow’s living openly with a mistress, his house was not only frequented by his brother the bishop, but by ecclesiastics of all degrees, who celebrated the orthodoxy of the head of the law and his love of the Established Church.’[675] If one might trust two memoir writers who had better opportunities of acquiring correct information than almost any of their contemporaries, inasmuch as one was the son of the all-powerful minister, and the other was the intimate friend and confidential adviser of the chief dispenser of ecclesiastical patronage, the sycophancy and worldliness of the clergy about the Court in the middle of the eighteenth century must have been flagrant indeed.  The writers referred to are, of course, Horace Walpole and John, Lord Hervey.  Both of them, however, are so evidently actuated by a bitter animus against the Church that their statements can by no means be relied upon as authentic history.

Let us take another kind of evidence.  Several of the Church dignitaries of the eighteenth century have been obliging enough to leave autobiographies to posterity, so that we can judge of their characters as drawn, not by the prejudiced or imperfect information of others, but by those who ought to know them best—­themselves.  One of the most popular of these autobiographies is that of Bishop Newton.  A great part of his amusing memoirs is taken up with descriptions of the methods which he and his friends adopted to secure preferment.  There is very little, if anything, in them of the duties and responsibilities of the episcopal office.  Where will they be most comfortable?  What are their chances of further preferment?  How shall they best please the Court and the ministers in office?  These are the questions which Bishop Newton and his brother prelates, to whom he makes frequent but never