The Sun.
London, England, 1848-03-29 00:00:00

" Bedford-row, Sept. 22.
"Sir,—l beg to acknowledge the receipt of your favour,
which, with your request of a plan, &c., I will immedi-
ately communicate to his Grace, and I doubt not I shall
be commissioned to return his Grace's thanks to the
Bishop and yourself for your obliging attention. I
write, however, in consequence of some expressions in
your letter, and to prevent all possibility of any future
misunderstanding, unlikely as it may be to arise. I
think that the communication of the Bishop's consent to
license is accompanied by words from you, that, if un-
qualified and unexplained, would amount to an implied
engagement on the part of the Duke, at all events, and
under any circumstances, and with whatever inconve-
nience attended, still peremptorily to endow and convey
the chapel for consecration. As the Duke is a man
who would be scrupulous to the letter in the perform
ante of every iota of what he could be considered, either
directly or by implication, to have ezigaged for, it
becomes the more necessary for me to take care hat
his Grace does not lay himself unier any obligation
calculated, by any posslbility, to bring him into a
dilemma. s It is his Grace's most serious and deter-
mined intention and wish to do his best, through
the medium of the Church Commissioners or otherwise,
to procure the consecration of this chapel, and t) make
for it a per :element regular endowment of proper amount.
With the expression of this intention the Bishop will, I.
doubt not, knowing his Grace's attachment to the Eeteb-
iishinent, feel! satisfied end rest content. But it is pos-
sible that there may be impediments, unlocked-for
requisitions, objections made, interference with pa-
tronage, or the like, that may make it unadvisable, in
the view of his Grace, or of any reasonable man, to
proceed to the conveyance and consecration, and may
rather induce his Grace to wish to wait till some further
Legislative regulations afford better facilities, and remove
difficulties that may in the present state of the law QXiSt.
I should, therefore,: claim for his Grace a discretion in
these matters beyoild what your words convey. Thet
the Bishop is content that the Duke should have this 1
do not doubt, nor do I think that you meant to imply to
the con trary - hut if you read again your words I
think you will find that the qualification is necessary
which I have here taken the liberty to make. I will
send you the plan, &c., as soon as I shall receive it, and
shall be obliged by the form of the petition you propose
to send me.—l am, &c., "JOSEPH BIABERLY."
To this the following was in answer:—
"Exeter, Sept. 25, 1832.
"Sir,—l have consulted the Bishop upon your letter
of the 22d. The Bishop's authority, as stated in your
letter of the 12th, was founded correctly, his Lordship
thinks, on the previous communication; but the Bishop
on perusing your letter, authorises me to say that he is
content: to license the building on the declaration therein
contained. I shall be glad to give every dispatch to the
business on your furnishing me with the matter men-
gonad in your former letter.—l am, &c.,
"RALPH BARNES."
In accordance with the practice, therefore, a petition was
filled up and signed by the Duke, stating that he had
built a place of worship, and was desirous of having a
license, at the same time agreeing to devote the chapel
for ever for the performance of service according to the
rites and ceremonies of the Church of England. This
was a formal petition, and the license was granted in the
terms of the petition. • These letters and the petition
were put in on the part of the prosecution, to show that
the Duke of Somerset had broken his engagement to keep
the chapel for ever for divine service according to the
rites of the Church of England, in allowing it to be re.
gistered for Dissenting worship.
The article in the newspaper was also put in and read
as follows. It was inserted in the Western Times of
July 25, 1846 :
" Bisuor Pn

♦ID TKE DUKE OP SO3IER

sar.—lf there are in existence any two individuals
totally opposite to each other in all the great and dis-
tinctive peculiarities and traits of human nature, most
assuredly we may say as much of the two distinguished
personages whose names head this article. The Bishop
is an adroit man, knowing rather than intelligent, and
cunning rather than clever. Everlastingly in hot water,
but never clean withal. Some characters are celebrated
for their freedom from stain and reproach ; no matter
who may be their assailants, there is an innate purity in
their composition which bids defiance to the shafts of
calumny and the assaults of envy. Others there are, on
the contrary, whose reputation is of that description,
that anything whatever said to their disparagement is
sure to gain credence. Our Bishop's character is one of
this description. He is so notorious as a brawler, that any
story respecting his rule and discipline provided it de not
contain the imputation of any of the milder:virtues, is re-
ceived without question, and circulated from mouth to
mouth as gospel. This is a melancholy statement, but,
alas! a true one! a:.d that is why we say he is not
clever, for no man can be at all times and under all pos-
sible circumstances in the wrong—and yet no one ever
believes the Bishop to be in the right. Take the last
case which
.we have to recorde—his reply to Mr. Shore's
petition, presented by Lord Brougham, and which is so
forcibly exposed by Lord Seymour in our paper of this
week. Lord Brougham gave the Bishop an opportunity
of knowing, beforehand, the contents of the petition.
He had plenty of time to refer to facts, in order to for-
tify himself with a true ans er. Bat, unfortunately, he
goes quite the other way, and his reply is so directly the
opposite of the truth, that he stands branded as a conse-
crated, careless pet vert, r of tects, ued one who does no
credit to the mitre, which he is paid 200/. a week, or
thereabout, to sear. Tills view of the case before us is
not ours—it is nut even Lori Seymour's; but it is the
constr.ined conclusion drawn from the Bishop's
reported statement in the House of Lords, and
:he contrary statement in the Bishop's secretary's
letter, which is quoted by Lord Seymour, and
given at length in the report of his speech. We started
with the idea of drawing a contrast between his Grace
of Somerset and the old gentleman in question—(indeed,
he is always an old gentleman in question, because no
one ever takes for granted all he says)—but we shall
not pursue it, because the statement of the names con-
tains the whole of the parallel. The Duke's word %yak
never questioned, and we shall not do that estimable
nobleman the disservice of even stating the fact, neces-
sary to be stated where any word of Bishop Phillpotts' is
in dispute. We almost regret that his Grace's son,
Lord Seymour, has felt it necessary to waste so much
virtuous indignation upon the old gentleman. It is
throwing away a good commodity. The censure which
would touch a right-minded man to the quick, glide; off
from his impenetrable mind, even as water rolls down a
duck's beet. There is no harm in stating any particular
fact illustrative of his nature, because we have other
bishops coming after him, and we want posterity to
understand the sort of man that is not very con-
venient to society, nor creditable to the Church, to have
for a bishop ; but words of censure or blame should
never be applied to the old gentleman, because he is
what he is, and at seventy years of age we do not look
for violent reformations of character, save on the death-
bed. If, therefore, we must draw attention to the adroit
attempt to pledge his Grace impliedly to an endowment,
it is not because we wish to reprehend the old gentle-
man, but because we desire to point out something essen-
tially Phillpottic. The Noble Lord will, we trust, par-
don the familiarity with which we address hint, and over-
look the presumption in which- we lay down the' law of
the Bishop's nature; but, if we have a weakness, it is
embodied in the belief that we do, in some measure,
comprehend the old gentleman and his psychological
manifestations. We have studied him long, and, we
trust, not altogether in vain. To the remaining portion
of Lord Seymour's address we would wish to direct the
serious attention of our readers, especially to that por-
tion which refers to sugar, in which will be found argu-
ments that supply a manifest deficiency.in our own hasty
observations upon this question."
This was the case for the prosecution.
Mr. COCKBSJRN addressed the jury on behalf of the
defendant, and said that the real question in this case
was not between Mr. Latimer and our Sovereign Lady
the Queen, but between his grace the Duke of Somerset
and the Bishop of Exeter. It appeared that the Bishop
of Exeter had made certain observations respecting a
transaction, charging the Duke of Somerset with having
violated his engagement. This had been repelled by the
' Duke as being false; and Mr. Latimer, having supported
the view taken by the Duke of Somerset, and commented
in his paper upon the transaction, had brought upon him-
, self the present prosecution. He said that the attack of