n 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
wisely used, might be fatal to them. They had been taught, by a cruel
experience, that the antipathy of the nation to their religion was not
a fancy which would yield to the mandate of a prince, but a profound
sentiment, the growth of five generations, diffused through all ranks
and parties, and intertwined not less closely with the principles of the
Tory than with the principles of the Whig. It was indeed in the power
of the King, by the exercise of his prerogative of mercy, to suspend
the operation of the penal laws. It might hereafter be in his power, by
discreet management, to obtain from the Parliament a repeal of the acts
which imposed civil disabili