daches from his mother, and a crooked
figure from his father. A nurse who shared their care, lived with him
for many years, and was buried by him, with an affectionate epitaph, in
1725. The family tradition represents him as a sweet-tempered child, and
says that he was called the "little nightingale," from the beauty of his
voice. As the sickly, solitary, and precocious infant of elderly
parents, we may guess that he was not a little spoilt, if only in the
technical sense.

The religion of the family made their seclusion from the world the more
rigid, and by consequence must have strengthened their mutual
adhesiveness. Catholics were then harassed by a legislation which would
be condemned by any modern standard as intolerably tyrannical. Whatever
apology may be urged for the legislators on the score of contemporary
prejudices or special circumstances, their best excuse is that their
laws were rather intended to satisfy constituents, and to supply a
potential means of defence, than to be carried into actual execution. It
does not appear that the Popes had to fear any active molestation in the
quiet observance of their religious duties. Yet a Catholic was not only
a member of a hated minority, regarded by the rest of his countrymen as
representing the evil principle in politics and religion, but was
rigorously excluded from a public career, and from every position of
honour or authority. In times of excitement the severer laws might be
put in force. The public exercise of the Catholic religion was
forbidden, and to be a Catholic was to be predisposed to the various
Jacobite intrigues which still had many chances in their favour. When
the pretender was expected in 1744, a proclamation, to which Pope
thought it decent to pay obedience, forbade the appearance of Catholics
within ten miles of London; and in 1730 we find him making interest on
behalf of a nephew, who had been prevented from becoming an attorney
because the judges were rigidly enforcing the oaths of supremacy and
allegiance.

Catholics had to pay double taxes and were prohibited from acquiring
real property. The elder Pope, according to a certainly inaccurate
story, had a conscientious objection to investing his money in the funds
of a Protestant government, and, therefore, having converted his capital
into coin, put it in a strong-box, and took it out as he wanted it. The
old merchant was not quite so helpless, for we know that he had
investments in the Fren