Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 14, 2025
The court at Brussels, as well as the three councils, not only divided by internal dissensions, but in the highest degree venal and corrupt; the regent without full powers to act on the spot, and the king at a distance; his adherents in the provinces few, uncertain, and dispirited; the faction numerous and powerful; two-thirds of the people irritated against popery and desirous of a change such was the unfortunate weakness of the government, and the more unfortunate still that this weakness was so well known to its enemies!
And let me say, sir, that the modes of control in the resources of this insidious society, notorious for its political arts and intrigues, are more numerous, more powerful, and more various than an unsuspicious people are at all conscious of.... "Mr. Y. falls into the common error and deprecates what he calls a religious controversy, as if the subject of Popery was altogether religious.
He publicly disclaimed all thought of calling in foreign aid against his people: he privately solicited aid from France, from Denmark, and from Lorraine. He publicly denied that he employed Papists: at the same time he privately sent to his generals directions to employ every Papist that would serve. He publicly took the sacrament at Oxford, as a pledge that he never would even connive at Popery.
But perhaps we do not know it in our hearts too well, to profit by even so humble an example as the 'No Popery' riots of Seventeen Hundred and Eighty.
Bridgenorth, though strong-minded and sagacious, is haunted by the fears of Popery, which are the bugbears of his sect. My residence in the family of the Countess of Derby is more than enough to inspire him with suspicions of my faith, from which, thank Heaven, I can vindicate myself with truth and a good conscience."
He was secretly suspected too of the crime of Popery; and it was known that, from complaisance to the queen, and indeed in compliance with the king's maxims of government, he had granted many indulgences to Catholics, and had signed warrants for the pardon of priests, and their delivery from confinement.
In this retirement a Patmos amid the howling ocean of popery that surrounds us a letter from England has reached me at last. I find my insignificant existence suddenly remembered by Mr. Franklin Blake. My wealthy relative would that I could add my spiritually-wealthy relative! writes, without even an attempt at disguising that he wants something of me.
The commons voted a provision for the half-pay officers; and abolished pensions to the amount of seventeen thousand pounds a-year, as unnecessary branches of the establishment. They passed an act settling the succession of the crown after the pattern set them by England; but the most important transaction of this session was a severe bill to prevent the growth of popery.
They were chiefly farmers fat, very well-to- do folk, who had come some of them with their wives and children from outlying farms two and three miles away; haters of popery and of anything which any one might choose to say was popish; good, sensible fellows who detested theory of any kind, whose ideal was the maintenance of the status quo with perhaps a loving reminiscence of old war times, and a sense of wrong that the weather was not more completely under their control, who desired higher prices and cheaper wages, but otherwise were most contented when things were changing least; tolerators, if not lovers, of all that was familiar, haters of all that was unfamiliar; they would have been equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practised.
The Magazine of Scandall, speaking of Lowes and another man, says: "Their Religion is either none, or else as the wind blows: If the ceremonies be tending to Popery, none so forward as they, and if there be orders cleane contrary they shall exceed any Round-head in the Ile of great Brittain." See also above, pp. 175-177.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking