LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 97 



make a visit (which were not his motive to it 

 known, would appear very unseasonable), to 

 the Lord Chancellor JefFeries in his great dis- 

 grace and distress in the Tower. But the Doctor 

 remembered his Lordship had been a friend to 

 him in his own troubles, and thought proper to 

 acknowledge his sense of his Lordship's kind- 

 ness in this manner. My Lord was not a little 

 surprised at his constancy, as appears by his 

 salutation of him at his first entrance into the 

 room, in these words : *' What, dare yoic own me 

 noivV The Doctor seeing his condition judged 

 he should not lose the opportunity of being ser- 

 viceable to his Lordship as a divine, if it was in 

 his power to be so ; and freely expostulated 

 with him upon his public actions, and particu- 

 larly the affair in the west. To which last 

 charge, his Lordship returned this answer, 

 " that he had done nothing in that affair with- 

 out the advice and concurrence of 



Who now," said he, " is the darling of the 

 people." His Lordship further complained much 

 of the reports that went about concerning him, 

 particularly that of his giving himself up to 

 hard drinking in his confinement ; which he de- 

 clared was grounded upon nothing more than 

 his present seasonable use of punch, to alleviate 

 the pressures of stone or gravel under which he 

 then laboured, 



H 



