Quotes from Antonia Fraser

Prince James was duly christened according to the full Catholic rite, except that the queen refused to let the priest spit in his mouth as the custom then was, saying according to a later story, that she was not going to have 'a pocky priest' spitting in her child's mouth.

One feature of the trial – as with all other trials – was of course the fact that the jury consisted entirely of Protestants, Catholics being debarred from jury service.

The King's response was unequivocal: any proposition which tended to destroy the maxim that employees of the State must be members of the Established Church could not be discussed.

But from the point of view of Catholic Emancipation, it was Pitt's resignation which was the important, inexorable fact. This was the monarch who had agreed to the rights of the French Canadians to their own religion, and was the genuine personal friend of Lord Petre and Thomas Weld. What had happened? The answer was in two parts. Partly he had been preyed on for political reasons by members of his court opposed to Pitt.

La regina avrebbe dovuto sapere come comportarsi: in fondo era già stata sposata con un uomo anziano in cattivo stato di salute. La sua abilità di infermiera costituiva parte del fascino che esercitava su Enrico VIII.

In 1775 Louis XVI had been faced with his own Coronation Oath crisis. His chief minister, Turgot, wanted the King to drop the King's pledge to extirpate heretics, which had actually been inserted in the thirteenth century to deal with the Albigensian heresy of the Cathars, but was now applied to Protestants.

in England after 1815 a general atmosphere of relaxation towards the Catholic community, even if it was for the time being unaccompanied by any positive legal results.

THE FIRST DAY OF FREEDOM!': this was how Daniel O'Connell headed one letter on 14 April 1829, the day after Catholic Emancipation became law in Britain and Ireland.

A crucial speech stressed the active tyranny of Catholicism: if the new Bill was passed, the result would be the creation of a Catholic state in Ireland hostile to Protestantism. This speech was regularly reprinted as a body blow to the hopes of Catholic Emancipation.

O'Connell, an Irish Roman Catholic, had been duly elected for Co. Clare nine months earlier.

Catholic Emancipation, that appalling prospect which would cause him to be damned for breaking his sacred vow, was prominent among them. This malevolent obsession itself was at the time more relevant to the Catholic Question than what the nature of the King's madness actually was.

In the meantime, the question could not even be discussed in the Cabinet, by agreement of the Prime Minister with the King.

On 18 April, five days after the passing of the bill, he took his seat in the House of Lords, with Lord Dormer and Lord Clifford, the first Catholics to do so since the reign of Charles II. There were in fact only eight Catholic peers available – one duke, one earl and six barons – whereas 200 years earlier there had been at least twenty-two. The rest of the titles had one way or another slipped out of Catholic hands.

the new oath which was the prelude to taking his seat; the hateful declarations against Transubstantiation, adoration of the Virgin Mary and the 'superstitious and idolatrous' Mass of the Church of Rome were no longer demanded.

The need for labour, combined with the sheer poverty of Ireland, inspired that despairing urge for emigration in search of a better life which is universal to history. St Patrick's Day began to be celebrated in Manchester. By 1821 there was said to be an Irish Catholic population in Liverpool of 12,000, which would rise to 60,000 in the next ten years.

In 1825 the Bishop of Chester estimated that there were now about half a million Catholics in England, risen from 67,000 in 1750, while in Glasgow the figure had leaped from 300 to 25,000, almost entirely imported from Ireland.

Daniel O'Connell had to wait until Parliament reassembled to commence his parliamentary career. He finally took his seat on 4 February 1830.

In the 1820s there was prejudice, but there was also progress.

It was not until the reign of his son George V (who took the oath in its old form) that a bill was passed in both Houses which abolished the old declaration of 1689 and substituted the positive for the negative: a declaration 'that I am a faithful Protestant' who would maintain the enactments which secured the Protestant Succession to the throne as well as the throne itself. The Coronation Oath taken by Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953 consisted of a similar positive statement.

Neither the Lord Chancellor specifically nor, by implication, the Prime Minister could be Roman Catholics. The latter would be precluded by the clause which forbade any Catholic to advise on ecclesiastical appointments, a duty which comes to the Prime Minister of a country in which there is an officially Established Church.

Catholic priests could not be Members of Parliament.

Nuns evidently did not evoke the same primitive angry dread as monks.

the Duke of Wellington placed the peace and welfare of that actual United Kingdom above religious scruples and decided that Emancipation was necessary to secure it. The religious scruples included those of the sovereign, swept aside at the end in a masterly way that only Wellington could manage.

Peel was certainly no Judas: he was a man of honest conviction who had honestly changed his mind and had the courage to say so. Nevertheless, the slur would affect his standing in the Tory Party and the next great campaign for Reform.