284 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 



have been discovered and represented more ex- 

 actly, if the papers relating to this negociation 

 had not been lost or destroyed in great measure. 



Some further instances of his jealousy for the 

 interests of the House of Hanover, and zeal for 

 a Protestant succession, will follow in the course 

 of this narrative*. 



In the meantime, let us attend him into the 

 House of Peers, where we shall find him neither 



* As concerning a passage in a pamphlet entitled A Word 

 of Advice to the Freeholders (and quoted from thence in Togg's 

 Weekly Journal of Saturday, October 13, 1733, number 258,) 

 representing a dialogue between the Marquis of Wharton and 

 the late Archbishop Sharp, upon their happening to meet in 

 the Court of Requests, a.fe7V months before the Queen died, and 

 which the author says, is known but to very few, however justly 

 and truly the Archbishop's abhorrence of entering himself into 

 any measures with the then ministry in favour of the Pretender 

 be represented in it, yet it is plainly, from all the other cir- 

 cumstances therein mentioned, a mere fiction ; so ill calculated 

 in point of time and place as to confute itself. For the Arch- 

 bishop was not at London during the whole session of Parlia- 

 ment before the Queen's death, or for several months before 

 that. Or, if he had been there, and had really believed the 

 Queen's ministry engaged in such a design as is suggested, it is 

 inost improbable he would have moved his suspicion or made 

 his complaint particularly to the Marquis of Wharton, which, 

 if he had done, he had deservedly enough met with the answer 

 said to be given him thereupon. But the whole story seems 

 only contrived to introduce a supposed jest of the marquis's, 

 which, because it is at best but an insipid one, appears, even on 

 that account, to be falsely ascribed to him. 



