Antonia Fraser - The King and the Catholics: England, Ireland, and the Fight for Religious Freedom, 1780-1829

French engraving of the Gordon Riots

Plaque commemorating the Great Fire of London, 1666

The chapel at Lulworth Castle, Dorset

Charles 11th Duke of Norfolk by Thomas Gainsborough

King George III, 1810-15, by Edward Bird

Robert Edward 9th Baron Petre

A Great Man at his Private Devotion, 1780

Cardinal Ercole Consalvi

Thorndon Hall, Essex

Imaginary scene at Thorndon during the royal visit, 1778

Maria Fitzherbert

Henry Grattan

The Apostates and the Extinguisher, 1829

Bishop John Milner

George IV by Sir Thomas Lawrence

The Coronation of King George IV, 1821

A Voluptuary under the horrors of digestion, 1792

Elizabeth Marchioness Conyngham

George IV in Sackville Street, Dublin, 1821

Sydney Owenson Lady Morgan

Richard Marquess Wellesley

Daniel OConnell, 1820

Daniel OConnells house in Merrion Square, Dublin

How to keep ones place

Thomas 2nd Earl of Longford

Bernard 12th Duke of Norfolk

Daniel OConnells statue in Ennis, Co. Clare

The Field of Battersea, 1829

Arthur 1st Duke of Wellington, 1829, by Sir Thomas Lawrence

The Battle of the Petitions, 1829

No Peel on a door in Christ Church

Sir Robert Peel

John Bull being given his medicine

Leaving the House of Lords Through the Assembled Commons, 1829

The subject of this book is timeless: the rights of people to practise their own religion. There is a side issue concerning the possible duties to the State which exist alongside those rights. It is, however, limited to one particular time in British history: thus the narrative begins with the Gordon Riots against Catholic Relief in 1780 and ends roughly fifty years later with the parliamentary Act for Catholic Emancipation.

During that period the phrase the Catholic Question used by people of very different views on the subject came to dominate British and Irish politics. At one point an exasperated Anglican clergyman even referred to it as the Abominable Cath. Quest. which made it impossible to eat or drink or see or think. There are obvious parallels with other periods of religious dispute and ferment, including the present day, which readers will draw for themselves. During this time the conscience of the reigning monarch played an important part, hence the symbolic use of the word King in the title of this book, although there were two Kings on the throne during this period.

On a personal note, I should say that I am not a Cradle Catholic, as those born into the Catholic Faith are sometimes known; my parents families were Church of England (or Ireland) and Unitarian respectively. Following their conversions to Catholicism, some years apart, I was allowed to make my own choice to convert at the age of fourteen, just when history was beginning to obsess me. The result was a lifelong fascination with Catholic history which found expression in a study of the events leading up to the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, published in 1996. The King and the Catholics is, in one sense, the sequel to that book.

I should add that my direct descent, on my fathers side, from the Irish Protestant Ascendancy, including such characters as Brunswick Tom, 2nd Earl of Longford, gave an added piquancy to my researches.

Antonia Fraser
Feast of All Saints, 2017