LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP SHARP. 447 



But the grand negotiations of state carried on 

 at this time in Holland, and in the respective 

 courts where the design of introducing the En- 

 glish Liturgy was espoused, took off the atten- 

 tion of the great ministers from ecclesiastical 

 affairs, which if duly prosecuted, would have 

 been much to the honour of our Church of 

 England, and the strengthe7i'mg the Protestant 

 interest in Europe. A correspondence was still 

 carried on between the Archbishop and Dr. 

 Jablouski in the years 1712 and 1713. As also 

 between the Doctor and the Earl of Strafford 

 and the Bishop of Bristol then Plenipotentiaries 

 at Utrecht; into the latter of luhose hands se- 

 veral of the original papers relating to this affair 

 tvere put, which if ever it be thought proper (by 

 the persons into whose hands that prelate's pa- 

 pers are fallen) to publish to the world, will give 

 great light to this whole transaction, and more 

 fully shew that the persons concerned in it had 

 no other views than the honour of the Church of 

 England and the interest of the Protestant reli- 

 gion in general, joined with that of the Protes- 

 tant succession to the House of Hanover, from 

 which that interest is inseparable. 



Nor was the correspondence altogether with- 



niatters, which Madam the Electress once had, but is now some 

 way lost." 



II 



