The Life of King Henry the Eight • Paragraph 632
Stage 1 of 6

Read it through once

The session of Parliament which followed was closely and continuously associated with subjects arising out of the King's accession. An early and prominent topic was the Declaration taken against Roman Catholicism. Under date of February 20th, Cardinal Vaughan issued a letter to his Diocese declaring that "patriotism and loyalty to the Sovereign are characteristic of the Catholics of this country and are to be counted on, quite independently of passing emotions of pain or pleasure, because they are rooted in a permanent dictate and principle of religion;" that Catholics had, however, been made unhappy by the "recent renewal of the national act of apostacy" in the Sovereign's branding by solemn Declaration their religious doctrines as superstitious and idolatrous; that the Catholic Peers had done well in protesting to the Lord Chancellor against the continued use of this Declaration; that British legislators in all parts of the Empire and the twelve million Catholic subjects of the Crown throughout the world should take further measures of constitutional protest; that the evil so greatly deplored was the result of an anachronism and of a barbaric law which had remained accidentally unrepealed; and that there was reason to hope that "this remnant of a hateful fanaticism" would soon be removed from the statute-book.