and critic, Sir George Baker, having been among his pupils. When, some years afterward, he became a candidate for the provostship of King's College, it seems to have afforded no indifferent evidence of his popularity and merits, that it was only after a severe contest that he was defeated, notwithstanding his rival competitor was no other than the famous scholar, Doctor George.

The powerful friend to whom Mr. Chapman was mainly, if not entirely, indebted for his promotion in the Church was Doctor Potter, Archbishop of Canterbury, by whom he was not only appointed to be his domestic chaplain, but was presented to the rectories of Mersham, in Kent, and of Alderton, with the chapel of Smeeth. In 1741 he was instituted Archdeacon of Sudbury, about which time also the University of Oxford, in acknowledgement of his literary labours in the cause of religion, conferred on him a diploma of D. D. Another Church preferment which he held, though only for a short time, was that of Precentor of Lincoln, to which, as executor to Archbishop Potter, he had considered he was entitled to present himself. A decision, however, of the House of Lords, after a hearing which lasted three days, deprived him of the preferment.

The literary work by which Doctor Chapman seems to have been best known to his contemporaries was his "Eusebius," published in two volumes octavo, in which he attacked the deistical

principles of Morgan and Tindal. In addition to this, and to other publications enumerated in Watt's "Bibliotheca Britannica," he wrote against Anthony Collins, on the Prophecies of Daniel, and against Dr. Conyers Middleton in defence of Doctor Waterland, besides entering into a controversy with Doctor Sykes on the subject of the celebrated eclipse recorded by Phlegon. Notwithstanding, however, Doctor Chapman's acknowledged talents and learning, the circulation of his works would seem to have been less extensive than either their merits deserved or than their author perhaps had anticipated. "I remember," writes his old pupil, Horace Walpole, "a story of poor Doctor Chapman, one of Doctor Middleton's antagonists, but I have so entirely forgotten his works that I shall tell it very tamely. He went to his bookseller, and asked how his last work had sold. Very indifferently indeed, sir.' 'Ah! why, how many copies are gone off?' 'Only five, sir!' 'Alack! and how many of my "Eusebius" (I think it was) have you left?' Two hundred, sir!' Indeed! well, but my book on (I don't know what), how many have you of them?' 'Oh! the whole impression, sir!' 'Good now! good now! that is much. Well, Mr., I cannot help it; I do my duty, and satisfy my conscience.""

Doctor Chapman died at Mersham on the 14th of October, 1784, in the eightieth year of his age.

CHAPTER VIII.

DR. JOHN SUMNER, HEAD MASTER OF ETON, AND PROVOST OF KING'S COLLEGE.

ABLY and zealously as Doctor Sumner may very possibly have discharged the arduous duties of head master of Eton School, we miss in the story of his career those incidents of interest and those talents of a high order which would otherwise have ensured him a more prominent place in our gallery of Eton worthies. He was born at Windsor about the year 1704. In 1723 he was elected from the foundation at Eton, to King's College, Cambridge, and, having obtained his fellowship at that college, returned to Eton as an assistant master. In 1734 he became lower master, and in January, 1745, on the resignation of Dr. William Cooke, was elected to succeed him in the head-mastership, which he filled till 1754. In the meantime, in 1750, he had been appointed a canon of Windsor; the same year he was presented by Lord Edgecombe to the rectory of Berwick

in-Elmet, Yorkshire, and in 1753 to the living of Castleford, in the same county. On the 18th of October, 1756, he was elected Provost of King's College, and in 1772, about the age of sixty-eight, he died.

CHAPTER IX.

HENRY FOX, LORD HOLLAND.

WHEN, on the memorable 30th of January, 1649, Charles I. stepped through the broken wall of his own beautiful banqueting-room at Whitehall upon the fatal scaffold, there is said to have been in attendance upon him, besides two of his gentlemen of the bedchamber, Harrington and Herbert, a young page in waiting, whose name, as Sir Stephen Fox, subsequently became a familiar and an honoured one during the reigns of four successive monarchs. Three years after the tragical fate of his royal master, we find the young man attaching himself to the almost ruinous fortunes of his exiled sovereign, Charles II., at whose small court in the Low Countries he faithfully and ably filled the unremunerative post of cofferer of the household. He returned with Charles to England at his restoration, and, after having there filled with great credit a succession of honourable and lucrative public employments, married in 1703, at the mature age of seventy-six, a second wife, by whom he became the father of two sons, Stephen, subsequently