Atterbury, Francis, bishop of Rochester, was born March 6th, 1GC2, at Milton-Keynes, Bucks, where his father was rector. See Atterbury, Lewis, be- low. He began his studies at Westminster, and fin- ished his course at Christ Church, Oxford. He first distinguished himself by the publication, at Oxford, in 1687, of a "Reply to some Considerations on the Spirit of Martin Luther, and the Original of the Ref- ormation," a tract written by Walker, master of Uni- versity College. In the same year he took the degree of Master of Arts, and became tutor to the earl of Or- rery's son. In 1630 he married, and soon after went to London, and established so high a reputation by his preaching that he was made almoner to the king. In 1700 he published a vindication of the rights, powers, and privileges of the Lower House of Convocation, which occasioned a warm controversy with Archbish- op Wake and others, and raised up a host of adver- saries (see Hook, Ecclesiastical Biography, i, 358, and Lathbury, History of Convocation). The University of Oxford, however, testified its approval of his work by granting him the degree of D.D. without the usual fees. In 1704 he became dean of Carlisle. In 1706 he had a controversy with Hoadley as to "the ad- vantages of virtue with regard to the present life." In a funeral sermon he had asserted that, " if the ben- efits resulting from Christianity were confined to our present state, Christians would be, of the whole hu- man race, the most miserable." Hoadley, on the con- trary, maintained, in a printed letter to Atterbury, that it was a point of the utmost importance to the Gospel itself to vindicate the tendency of virtue to the temporal happiness of man. In 1707 he had an- other controversy with Hoadley concerning "passive obedience." Under Queen Anne, Atterbury was in high favor, and in 1713 was made bishop of Roches- ter and dean of Westminster, and was on the point of being made archbishop of Canterbury, when George I, who had justly conceived a strong prejudice against him, came to the throne. From this time he op- posed the house of Hanover, and used all his ener- gies to secure the return of the Stuarts. In 1715, when an attempt was made to restore the Stuarts, the archbishop of Canterbury drew up an address to the bishops of his province, exhorting them to ex- cite the devotion of the clergy of their dioceses to- ward the house of Brunswick. This address Atter- bury, and Smalridge, the bishop of Bristol, refused either to sign or to publish in their dioceses; and this conduct rendered him suspected at court. In 1722 he was accused of being in correspondence with " the Pretender," and was seized and sent to the Tower. No proof was alleged sufficient to warrant the charge ; but, on the Oth of April, 1723, a bill of attainder was introduced into the House of Lords, and he was called upon to make his defense, which he did in the most admirable manner, in a speech abounding in eloquence. The court influence, however, was too great: a special law was introduced against him and passed, and he was condemned to be stripped of all his places and dignities, and to be banished from his country forever. On the 18th of June he left England for Calais. He retired first to Brussels, and afterward to Paris, where he died, February 15th, 1731.
The fame of Atterbury rests chiefly on his sermons, which are both argumentative and unaffectedly elo- quent, and on his epistolary correspondence with Pope. His familiar letters, for their ease and elegance, are preferred to the more labored efforts of his corre- spondent, Tope. As a controversialist, his parts were splendid ; but his prejudices were too strong, and his judgment not sufficiently cool to entitle him to a high rank among the inquirers after truth. It was, how-
ATTERBURY