part of North America might well have been different, and we
should perhaps find now on the banks of the Hudson what we find
on the banks of the St. Lawrence--villages dominated by great
churches and convents, with inhabitants Catholic to a man,
speaking the language and preserving the traditions of France.
The strip of inviolate sea between Calais and Dover made
impossible, however, an assault on London. Sea power kept secure
not only England but English effort in America and in the end
defeated France.

England had defenses other than her great strength on the sea. In
spite of the docility towards France shown by the English King,
Charles II, himself half French in blood and at heart devoted to
the triumph of the Catholic faith, the English people would
tolerate no policies likely to make England subservient to
France. This was forbidden by age-long tradition. The struggle
had become one of religion as well as of race. A fight for a
century and a half with the Roman Catholic Church had made
England sternly, fanatically Protestant. In their suspicion of
the system which France accepted, Englishmen had sent a king to
the scaffold, had overthrown the monarchy, and had created a
military republic. This republic, indeed, had fallen, but the
distrust of the aims of the Roman Catholic Church remained
intense and burst into passionate fury the moment an
understanding of the aims of France gained currency.

There are indeed few passages in English history less creditable
than the panic fear of Roman Catholic plots which swept the
country in the days when Frontenac at Quebec was working to
destroy English and Protestant influence in America. In 1678,