commenced in August, 1713, and continued till the August following; but I am afraid that, according to the usual fate of greatness, it was attended with some perplexities and mortifications. He had not all that is customarily given to ambassadors: he hints to the queen in an imperfect poem that he had no service of plate; and it appeared by the debts which he contracted that his remittances were not punctually made.
On the 1st of August, 1714, ensued the downfall of the Tories and the degradation of Prior. He was recalled, but was not able to return, being detained by the debts which he had found it necessary to contract, and which were not discharged before March, though his old friend Montague was now at the head of the Treasury. He returned, then, as soon as he could, and was welcomed on the 25th of March by a warrant, but was, however, suffered to live in his own house, under the custody of the messenger, till he was examined before a committee of the Privy Council, of which Mr. Walpole was chairman, and Lord Coningsby, Mr. Stanhope, and Mr. Lechmere were the principal interrogators, who, in this examination, of which there is printed an account not unentertaining, behaved with the boisterousness of men elated by recent authority. They are represented as asking questions sometimes vague, sometimes insidious, and writing answers different from those which they received. Prior, however, seems to have been overpowered by their turbulence; for he confesses that he signed what, if he had ever come before a legal judicature, he should have contradicted or explained away. The oath was administered by Boscawen, a Middlesex justice, who at last was going to write his attestation on the wrong side of the paper. They were very industrious to find some charge against Oxford, and asked Prior, with great earnestness, who was present when the preliminary articles were talked of or signed at his house? He told them that either the Earl of Oxford or the Duke of Shrewsbury was absent, but he could not remember which, an answer which perplexed them, because it supplied no accusation against either. “Could anything be more absurd,” says he, “or more inhuman, than to propose to me a question, by the answering of which I might, according to them, prove myself a traitor? And notwithstanding their solemn promise that nothing which I should say should hurt myself, I had no reason to trust them, for they violated that promise about five hours after. However, I owned I was there present. Whether this was wisely done or no I leave to my friends to determine.” When he had signed the paper, he was told by Walpole that the committee were not satisfied with his behaviour, nor could give such an account of it to the Commons as might merit favour; and that they now thought a stricter confinement necessary than to his own house. “Here,” says he, “Boscawen played the moralist, and Coningsby the Christian, but both very awkwardly.” The messenger, in whose custody he was to be placed, was then called, and very indecently asked by Coningsby “if his house was secured by bars and bolts.” The messenger answered, “No,” with astonishment. At which Coningsby very angrily said, “Sir, you must secure this prisoner; it is for the safety of the nation: if he escape, you shall answer for it.”
They had already printed their report; and in this examination were endeavouring to find proofs.
He continued thus confined for some time; and Mr. Walpole (June 10, 1715) moved for an impeachment against him. What made him so acrimonious does not appear; he was by nature no thirster for blood. Prior was a week after committed to close custody, with orders that “no person should be admitted to see him without leave from the Speaker.” When, two years after, an Act of Grace was passed, he was excepted, and continued still in custody, which he had made less tedious by writing his “Alma.” He was, however, soon after discharged. He had now his liberty, but he had nothing else. Whatever the profit of his employments might have been, he had always spent it; and at the age of fifty-three was, with all his abilities, in danger of penury, having yet no solid revenue but from the fellowship of his college, which, when in his exaltation he was censured for retaining it, he said he could live upon at last. Being, however, generally known and esteemed, he was encouraged to add other poems to those which he had printed, and to publish them by subscription. The expedient succeeded by the industry of many friends, who circulated the proposals, and the care of some who, it is said, withheld the money from him lest he should squander it. The price of the volume was two guineas; the whole collection was four thousand; to which Lord Harley, the son of the Earl of Oxford, to whom he had invariably adhered, added an equal sum for the purchase of Down Hall, which Prior was to enjoy during life, and Harley after his decease. He had now, what wits and philosophers have often wished, the power of passing the day in contemplative tranquillity. But it seems that busy men seldom live long in a state of quiet. It is not unlikely that his health declined, he complains of deafness; “for,” says he, “I took little care of my ears while I was not sure if my head was my own.”
Of any occurrences of his remaining life I have found no account. In a letter to Swift, “I have,” says he, “treated Lady Harriet, at Cambridge (a Fellow of a College treat!) and spoke verses to her in a gown and cap! What, the plenipotentiary, so far concerned in the damned peace at Utrecht; the man that makes up half the volume of terse prose, that makes up the report of the committee, speaking verses! Sic est, homo sum.”
He died at Wimpole, a seat of the Earl of Oxford, on the 18th of September, 1721, and was buried in Westminster; where on a monument, for which, as the “last piece of human vanity,” he left five hundred pounds, is engraven this epitaph:—
Sui Temporis Historiam meditanti,
Paulatim obrepens Febris
Operi simul et Vitæ filum abrupit,
Sept. 18. An. Dom. 1721. Ætat. 57.
H.S.E.
Vir Eximius Serenissimis
Regi Gulielmo Reginæque Mariæ
In Congressione Fœderatorum
Hagæ anno 1690 celebrata,
Deinde Magnæ Britanniæ Legatis
Tum iis,
Qui anno 1697 Pacem Ryswicki confecerunt,
Tum iis,
Qui apud Gallos annie proximis Legationem obierunt
Eodem etiani anno 1657 in Hiberniâ
Secretarius;
Necnon in utroque Honorabili consessu
Eorum,
Qui anno 1700 ordinandis Commercii negotiis,
Quique anno 1711 dirigendis Portorii rebus,
Præidebant,
Commissionarius;
Postremo ab Anna,
Felicissimæ memoriæ Reginâ,
Ad Ludovicum XIV. Galliæ Regem
Missus anno 1711
De Pace stabiliendâ
(Pace etiam num durante
Diuque ut boni jam omnes sperant duraturâ),
Cum sunmâ potestate Legatus;
MATTHÆS PRIOR Armiger
Qui
Hos omnes, quibus cumulates est, Titulos
Humanitatis, Ingenii, Ereditionis laude
Superavit;
Cui enim nascenti faciles arriserant Mesæ.
Hunc Puerum Schola hîc Regia perpolivit;
