SACHEVERELL, Henry (1674-1724), an English church and state politician of extreme views, was born in 1674, the son of Joshua Sacheverell, rector of St Peter’s, Marlborough, who at his death left a large family in poverty. Henry Sacheverell matriculated at Magdalen College, Oxford, 28th August 1689, and was demy of his college from 1689 to 1701 and fellow from 1701 to 1713. Addison, another Wiltshire lad, entered at the same college two years earlier, but was also elected a demy in 1689; he inscribed to Sacheverell in 1694 his account of the greatest English poets. Sacheverell took his degree of B.A. in 1693, and became M.A. in 1696 and D.D. in 1708. His first preferment was the small vicarage of Cannock in Staffordshire; but he leapt into notice when holding a preachership at St Saviour’s, Southwark. His famous sermons on the church in danger from the neglect of the Whig ministry to keep guard over its interests were preached, the one at Derby, 14th August, the other at St Paul’s Cathedral, 5th November 1709. They were immediately reprinted, the latter being dedicated to the lord mayor and the former to the author’s kinsman, George Sacheverell, high sheriff of Derby for the year; and, as the passions of the whole British population were at this period keenly exercised between the rival factions of Whig and Tory, the vehement invectives of this furious divine on behalf of an ecclesiastical institution which supplied the bulk of the adherents of the Tories made him their idol. The Whig ministry, then slowly but surely losing the support of the country, were divided in opinion as to the propriety of prosecuting this zealous parson. Somers was against such a measure; but Godolphin, who was believed to be personally alluded to in one of these harangues under the ...