were in his brother's own hand. James himself distributed the
whole edition among his courtiers and among the people of humbler
rank who crowded round his coach. He gave one copy to a young
woman of mean condition whom he supposed to be of his own
religious persuasion, and assured her that she would be greatly
edified and comforted by the perusal. In requital of his kindness
she delivered to him, a few days later, an epistle adjuring him
to come out of the mystical Babylon and to dash from his lips the
cup of fornications.48

These things gave great uneasiness to Tory churchmen. Nor were
the most respectable Roman Catholic noblemen much better pleased.
They might indeed have been excused if passion had, at this
conjuncture, made them deaf to the voice of prudence and justice:
for they had suffered much. Protestant jealousy had degraded them
from the rank to which they were born, had closed the doors of
the Parliament House on the heirs of barons who had signed the
Charter, had pronounced the command of a company of foot too high
a trust for the descendants of the generals who had conquered at
Flodden and Saint Quentin. There was scarcely one eminent peer
attached to the old faith whose honour, whose estate, whose life
had not been in jeopardy, who had not passed months in the Tower,
who had not often anticipated for himself the fate of Stafford.
Men who had been so long and cruelly oppressed might have been
pardoned if they had eagerly seized the first opportunity of
obtaining at once greatness and revenge. But neither fanaticism
nor ambition, neither resentment for past wrongs nor the
intoxication produced by sudden good fortune, could prevent the
most eminent Roman Catholics from perceiving that the prosperity
which they at length enjoyed was only temporary, and, unless