sums, now augmented to 1,350l., when the several annuities were reduced into one, amounting to 94l. 10s., for which a bond was given. This negotiation had the desired effect, and Bower was readmitted in a formal manner into the order of Jesus by Father Carteret at London some time before the battle of Fontenoy (30 April 1745).
Bower soon again grew dissatisfied with his situation. It has been suggested that he took offence because his superiors insisted on his going abroad, or that he had a prospect of advancing his interest more surely as an avowed protestant than as an emissary of the pope. Whatever motive may have impelled him, it seems certain that when he began his correspondence with Father Sheldon, the successor of Father Shireburne in the office of provincial, he had finally resolved to make a second breach of his vows. To accomplish that object he wrote the famous letters which occasioned a lively controversy. The correspondence answered his purpose, and he received his money back from the borrowers on 20 June 1747.
He received 300l. for revising and correcting the second edition of the 'Universal History,' but he performed the task in a slovenly and careless manner. On 25 March 1747 he issued the 'proposals' for printing by subscription his 'History of the Popes,' describing himself as 'Archibald Bower, esq., heretofore public professor of rhetoric, history, and philosophy in the universities of Rome, Fermo, and Macerata, and, in the latter place, counsellor of the inquisition.' He announced that he had begun the work at Rome some years previously, his original design being to vindicate the doctrine of the pope's supremacy, and that while prosecuting his researches he became a proselyte to the opinion which he had proposed to confute. He presented the first volume to the king 13 May 1748, and on the death of Mr. Say, keeper of Queen Caroline's library (10 Sept.), he obtained that place through the interest of his friend Lyttelton with the prime minister, Pelham. The next year (4 Aug. 1749) he married a niece of Bishop Nicolson and daughter of a clergyman of the church of England. This lady had a fortune of 4,000l. and a child by a former husband. He had been engaged in a treaty of marriage, which did not take effect, in 1745.
The second volume of the 'History of the Popes' appeared in 1751, and in the same year Bower published, by way of supplement to this volume, seventeen sheets, which were delivered to his subscribers gratis. Towards the end of 1753 he produced a third volume, which brought down his history to the death of Pope Stephen in 757. In April 1754 his constant friend Lyttelton appointed him clerk of the buck-warrants. It was in this year that the first serious attack was made upon him on account of his 'History of the Popes' in a pamphlet by the Rev. Alban Butler, published anonymously at Douay under the title of 'Remarks on the two first volumes of the late Lives of the Popes; in letters from a Gentleman to a Friend in the Country.' Meanwhile the letters addressed by Bower to the provincial of the Jesuits had fallen into the hands of Sir Henry Bedingfield, a Roman catholic baronet, who made no secret of their contents. He asserted that the letters clearly demonstrated that while their writer was pretending to have the liveliest zeal for the protestant faith, he was in fact a member of the Roman church, and in confidential correspondence with the head of that body. Bower maintained that these letters were infamous forgeries, designed to ruin his credit with his protestant friends, and brought forward by the Jesuits in revenge for his exposure of the frauds of the priesthood. At this juncture the Rev. John Douglas (afterwards bishop of Salisbury), who had already detected the frauds of Lauder in regard to Milton, determined to expose the duplicity of Bower's conduct, and published in 1756 a pamphlet entitled 'Six Letters from A——d B——r to Father Sheldon, provincial of the Jesuits in England; illustrated with several remarkable facts, tending to ascertain the authenticity of the said letters, and the true character of the writer.' In this tract Douglas proved the genuineness of the letters; showed that want of veracity was not the only defect in Bower's character, but that he was as little remarkable for his chastity as for his love of truth; and brought forward the attestation of Mrs. Hoyles. Bower had converted this lady to Roman Catholicism, and her statement leaves no cause to doubt the historian's zeal to support in secret the church which, for self-interested ends, he was publicly disowning. Douglas's pamphlet elicited a reply from Bower, or one of his friends, under the character of a 'Country Neighbour.' Douglas then published his second tract, 'Bower and Tillemont compared' (1757), in which he demonstrates that the 'History of the Popes,' especially the first volume, is merely a translation of the work of the French historian. In 1757 Bower brought out three large pamphlets, in which he laboured to refute the charges made against his moral, religious, and literary character. Douglas followed with 'A Full Confutation of all the Facts advanced in Mr. Bower's Three Defences' (1757), and 'A Complete and Final Detection of A——d B——r'
