Nantes, he showed his intolerant spirit towards the faith which we held
dear. The narrow Protestantism of England was less a religious
sentiment than a patriotic reply to the aggressive bigotry of her
enemies. Our Catholic countrymen were unpopular, not so much because
they believed in Transubstantiation, as because they were unjustly
suspected of sympathising with the Emperor or with the King of France.
Now that our military successes have secured us against all fear of
attack, we have happily lost that bitter religious hatred but for which
Oates and Dangerfield would have lied in vain.

In the days when I was young, special causes had inflamed this dislike
and made it all the more bitter because there was a spice of fear
mingled with it. As long as the Catholics were only an obscure faction
they might be ignored, but when, towards the close of the reign of the
second Charles, it appeared to be absolutely certain that a Catholic
dynasty was about to fill the throne, and that Catholicism was to be the
court religion and the stepping-stone to preferment, it was felt that a
day of vengeance might be at hand for those who had trampled upon it
when it was defenceless. There was alarm and uneasiness amongst all
classes. The Church of England, which depends upon the monarch as an
arch depends upon the keystone; the nobility, whose estates and coffers
had been enriched by the plunder of the abbeys; the mob, whose ideas of
Papistry were mixed up with thumbscrews and Fox's Martyrology, were all
equally disturbed. Nor was the prospect a hopeful one for their cause.
Charles was a very lukewarm Protestant, and indeed showed upon his
deathbed that he was no Protestant at all. There was no longer any
chance of his having legitimate offspring. The Duke of York, his
younger brother, was therefore heir to the throne, and he was known to
be an austere and narrow Papist, while his spouse, Mary of Modena, was
as bigoted as himself. Should they have children, there could be no