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 question but that they would be brought up in the faith of their
parents, and that a line of Catholic monarchs would occupy the throne
of England. To the Church, as represented by my mother, and to
Nonconformity, in the person of my father, this was an equally
intolerable prospect.

I have been telling you all this old history because you will find, as
I go on, that this state of things caused in the end such a seething and
fermenting throughout the nation that even I, a simple village lad, was
dragged into the whirl and had my whole life influenced by it. If I did
not make the course of events clear to you, you would hardly understand
the influences which had such an effect upon my whole history. In the
meantime, I wish you to rem