The circumstances of Potter's appointment to the Primacy was one primarily of him being the least objectionable of a number of candidates, as outlined in Rowden's "The Primates of the Four Georges" [404] "When [Horace] Walpole had expressed to Lord Hervey [Hervey's Memoirs, 108] the difficulty of selecting a Primate, the latter, according to his own account, said: " Sure, sir, you have had enough of great geniuses; why can you not take some Greek or Hebrew blockhead that has learning enough to justify the preferment and not sense enough to make you repent of it" ..........."Potter is a man," said Hervey to Walpole about this time, "of undoubted great learning, of as little doubted probity. He has been always, though reckoned a Tory in the Church, uninterruptedly attached to this family without the lure or reward of any preferment but this poor Bishopric of Oxford, where he has stuck for twenty years. The Queen loves him, his character will support you in sending him to Lambeth, and his capacity is not so good nor his temper so bad as to make you apprehend any great danger in his being there."

So Potter got the Primacy. One of Potter's first duties as Archbishop was to attend on her death-bed the illustrious Queen to whom he so largely owed his elevation to the Primacy." [404]

"The excellent Archbishop Potter in his last moments sends an affectionate and touching note to Lady Huntingdon, who, nevertheless, should surely in the eyes of a bishop, and must surely in the eyes of a theologian, have been none other than a heretic and schismatic, whatever private feelings he might have entertained towards her. When Bishop of Oxford, he had an {409} opportunity of witnessing the rise of Methodism in the University; and afterwards ordained the Messrs. Wesley, Ingham, Hervey, Broughton, Clayton, Kinchin, etc., the first members of that Society. On one occasion he treated Mr. Charles Wesley with great severity; but towards the close of his life his sentiments respecting the Methodist preachers seem to have undergone a favourable change. After writing the letter to Lady Huntingdon above referred to, he was walking with it to his scrutoire, when (as his son Mr. Potter acquainted her) he was "seized with a sudden syncope, dropped upon the floor, and expired with the letter in his hand." [179]