Susanna Wesley

124 SUSANNA WESLEY.
failed to visit her when any fresh trouble was
coming."
This, then, is the history of the Ep worth
ghost. It reads rather puerile and silly,
and perhaps
would have been so regarded by the family, had not
the rappings of the spirit appeared to justify
or chime
in with the Jacobite prejudices of Mrs. Wesley. She
had implanted them very deeply in the mind of her
eldest son; and his
connection with and friendship for
Dr. Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, fostered them.
A few years later, in 1722, Atterbury, who was a distinguished
High Churchman, and indulged in implacable
animosity towards the House of Hanover, was
implicated in a conspiracy which had for its object the
placing of the Chevalier de St. George, that is to say
the " Old Pretender," on the English throne, and was
consequently tried at the Bar of the House of Lords,
deprived of his see, and banished the kingdom for
ever. He was a restless spirit
and unpopular among
his brother bishops, and, as Samuel Wesley was a
writer of squibs and invectives, both in prose and
rhyme, against the Whig party, there is no doubt
that he did so with his patron's approval and at his
instigation. Samuel was also on intimate terms with
the Earl of Oxford, Pope, Swift, and Prior, all of whom
.were of Jacobite proclivities. The fall of Bishop
Atterbury did not make any immediate difference to
the Westminster usher ;
but when changes took place
in the great school, and he looked for promotion, he
was simply
left out in the cold. The Earl of Oxford
used his influence and procured for him the headmastership
of
the Tiverton Grammar School, where he
the remainder of his life. He maintained a
spent
close correspondence with the exiled bishop and his