by fiddlers and singers of the lowest class in Oxford: with one of these fellows, named Laurence, he was in those habits of disgusting intimacy, that their connexion was soon betrayed, and serious consequences likely to ensue. The washerwoman surprised Mr. Fenwick and his musician in bed together, at mid-day, and immediately spread the tale over all the University. Mr. Fenwick was denied admission to the College-Hall, and placed in Coventry; but when his conduct came to be enquired into, the girl denied on oath all she had voluntarily asserted, viva voce: no doubt she had been tampered with, and the miscreant again escaped unpunished. He ventured after this, once to dine in the Hall, where no one spoke to, nor noticed him, but with looks of contempt. Mr. Fenwick had got all he wanted of the College-a degree-and the living of Byall, in his father's gift, becoming vacant, he took possession of a benefice worth 700l. a year.

The elder brother of Mr. Fenwick was drowned, in endeavouring to cross the river Weasbeck, by means of stepping-stones, on a stormy night. He was an amiable young man, and beloved by all who knew him. The news of his fate was brought to the Rev. Mr. Fenwick, as he sat in the reading-desk of his church, whilst his Curate preached the sermon, a duty he never performed but twice during seven years he held the vicarage. When he had perused the note, he left the seat and went home, and the words which he uttered to his housekeeper are fresh in the memory of the inhabitants of the parish he disgraced as a Minister. "Well, Jane, Walter is gone; the devil has only to take the Old Boy, and I shall be a demi-god at Byall." The wish of the villain was soon accomplished, for the father died of a broken heart, occasioned as much by regret for a good son as sorrow for the bad one he left behind. Old Mr. Fenwick willed all his personal property to distant relatives, and the entailed estate alone remained to the Reverend John Fenwick. He refused to have any thing to do with his father's funeral, who was buried by his afflicted tenants, and on the same day his son attended a horse-race at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and in the evening went to the theatre.

'Squire Fenwick, as he was now called, had no one to controul him; his mother, fortunately for her, died in his childhood. He removed

C

to the hall, and placed a Curate in the Vicarage house, named Johnston, who married his housekeeper, a woman every way infamous, and who was openly accused of poisoning her brother to obtain possession of a small annuity.

The Bishop of Durham, who had ordained 'Squire Fenwick, made a proposition to him about surrendering the Vicarage: this he refused to comply with, though the Bishop was his very intimate friend, brother cock-fighter, and horse racer, and imagined he could turn him any way he pleased: his refusal occasioned an order to reside on his benefice; this he easily complied with, by sleeping once a week at the Vicarage house, only distant half a mile from his paternal mansion.

'Squire Fenwick lived in a style of the greatest luxury. He kept no carriage, but a fine stud of hunters, and a pack of hounds: at Newmarket "he kept in play" some of the finest bloods on the turf. He sported high, and was generally very successful: finally he became a complete bero of the turf, and rode supreme on every course; in the northern counties, he has been observed on the ground at Newcastleupon-Tyne, giving and taking small bets of five and ten shillings, and stripping to box for the decision of a wager.

He would, at the same time risk hundreds with those able and willing to stake against him; but he was famed for his dishonesty, and for many seasons previous to his self-exile, no one would bet with him; he had numerous actions at law for gambling debts, many of which he recovered.

A neighbour of his had a small estate of 300l. per annum, which the 'Squire swindled him out of on the course and at the Hazard table. The owner committed suicide, and the 'Squire made his brother huntsman to his pack of hounds, in which situation he lived and died.

About the beginning of the year 1795, 'Squire Fenwick resided, for the benefit of sea bathing, at the village of Newbegin, and there he was arrested and conveyed before a Magistrate, for violating the person of a child, nine years old; he was removed in custody to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where no one appeared to substantiate the charge, nor was the little girl ever heard of more; her mother also removed from the neighbourhood, having received a handsome sum to screen the violator of her daughter's innocence.

'Squire Fenwick, was at this time very active in procuring recruits for the army, and a raw countryman preferred a charge against him similar to that made by Byrne, as to the Bishop of Clogher, with this addition, that Harpell (the name of the recruit) had to jump out of the Squire's library window, and escape through a pond, to avoid his nauseous embraces.

The charge was treated with ridicule by the Magistrate (a brother fox hunter), and the recruit had his bounty given to him, and also his discharge; not satisfied with this seeming generosity, he bent his way to the county town, resolved to appeal to the Judge who was then holding the court of Assize.

A press-gang seized poor Harpell in the street; he was hurried on board a Man of War and fell in battle shortly after: thus perished an innocent man, to save the life of a miscreant, who, under the cloak of his riches, committed crimes every day worthy of the most disgraceful death.

The Reverend 'Squire Fenwick was now suspended from his living, and an enquiry instituted into bis moral conduct; no one doubted but his gown would be pulled over his head, when, by the arts of Johnston, the resident Curate, and his own influence, as landlord of "all the country round," he obtained a good character, signed by 1500 individuals out of a parish only containing 1502 adults: owing to this he was restored to his sacred functions, and preached at a country town, what is termed the visitation sermon before the bishop, and attended him at the confirmation of a hundred innocent children.

To complete this farce, 'Squire Fenwick found a woman possessed of so little delicacy that she married him :--she had no portion save her beauty, and was a reputed neice of a Mr. S. Barrington, though in truth, she was his cast off mistress, and no doubt was entertained, but that the marriage was an agreement made when the Reverend Squire was restored to his vicarage.

At the Races, held near the town of Morpeth, Mr. Fenwick, as usual, had horses which carried the day:-he was known as a cheat, and Mr. Williamson taxed him with tampering with the jockeys : high words ensued; Mr. Williamson called him by the most opprobrious name the lips of man can utter, and then proceeded to horsewhip him before the stand.

Fenwick had always displayed courage as a boxer, and it was be lieved no human danger could appal him; but on this occasion, like Bobadil in the play of "Every man in his Humour," he seemed to be "under a planet," and submitted to be beaten without raising a hand in his own defence-conscious guilt, no doubt, operated on his conscience, and unstrung his nerves: aware that he merited the title given to him, and fearing discoveries, he stood the convicted villain and paltry coward his fame now left him for ever, and his name was echoed with detestation in every part of the county. He had, however, the assurance to attend a Ball at Durham, when Mr. Frank Johnston, master of the ceremonies, politely took him by the collar of his coat and asked him, whether he chose to walk quietly down stairs or to be thrown out of the window ?---used as he was to dangerous leaps in his fox-hunting excursions, he had no inclination to try a leap into the street, and very discreetly took his leave by the way he came. Still he carried on his career at By-all-Hall, and his wife, whatever were her failings before marriage, did ample penance for his sins---he used her like a brute, and has been known, in a state of intoxication, to turn her out of his bedchamber, forcing her to arise at the hour of midnight. and then lock himself and his Curate inside, where they remained till morning, tete-a-tete.

These enormities could not be much longer endured---society called aloud for a termination of such hideous examples as these miscreants held forth to all near them, and a warrant was issued by a bench of Magistrates, for the apprehension of Squire Fenwick and his Curate; the latter was secured---the former made his retreat good into France. Johnston was discharged after a year's confinement in gaol, and now resides near Arbroath, in Scotland, on a pension of 100l. per annum, settled on him by his paramour many years ago. Mrs. Fenwick resides upon the estate, and conducts herself properly---he receives his rents duly, and is so far from having repented of his sins, that he glories in, and practises them in a country where such monsters are tolerated, and even esteemed---Naples.

The Reverend Mr. Fenwick (for very strange as it must appear, he has never been publicly degraded from his dignities as a Clergyman of the Church of England) lives on a fine estate at Ponte de Avernum, and has a town-house near the Castel de Nova, in the city of Naples.

The late Lady Hamilton was partial to this fellow's society---and he, with his bosom friend, Captain Sawyer,* once of the Royal Navy, attended her as cicesbeos almost daily ;---during the revolutions that have affected Naples, he has remained stationary--he visited Murat as a private friend, and as it is supposed, carried on a correspondence for him with England; he is quite Italianized, and so familiarized with crime, that not even a death-bed repentance can be expected from him.

This man bears no inconsiderable share of The Crimes of the Clergy upon his ill-starred head; no one of his stamp was ever more fortunate in carrying on, as it were in the face of the world, and in defiance of the laws, his abominable schemes---his fortune enabled him to bribe his companions in guilt, and his connection with the Church screened him from accusation---respect for "the cloth"--saved the man, and by means of a black coat, he committed with impunity crimes of the blackest complexion, and for which any one in a lighter coloured suit would have expiated their offence on a gibbet.

If the pillars of Priestcraft are not shaken by such details as these, they must have a foundation fixed on another world than that reared by

* Captain Sawyer commanded the Blanche Frigate of 32 guns, and was tried by a Court Martial on the Mediterranean station, in the year 1796; had he been tried for Sodomy, nothing could have saved his life, but by one of those quibbles sea lawyers, as well as those on land, are ready to discover in a rich client's favour, he was found guilty and sentenced to be dismissed from his Majesty's service, for “indecent familiarities with Mankind." The father of Captain Sawyer was a rich Prebendary, and his two brothers also Parsons, one of whom was on board the frigate when these crimes were committed, which the strange sentence so smoothly glossed over: he appeared as the only evidence in his brother's behalf; but the Gourt stopped him in the midst of his depositions, declaring they totally disbelieved every word he said. This man was ordered on shore at Saint Fiorenzo, for he was only a visitor on board his brother's ship; and he carried with him a black servant, who died at Bastia, (where his inhuman master abandoned him ;) he was generally believed to have been poisoned, and on his death bed he accused his master of the same horrible propensities that caused his brother's disgrace. About seven years ago this miscreant, the Reverend H. Sawyer, was a sojourner in the Isle of Man, where his debts and crimes had driven him to seek refuge He probably now administers ghostly comfort to some flocks in the west of Ireland, where the family estates lay, for I have not heard or read that justice has yet put an end to his career of iniquity.