The Catholic Families

This is the story of the great Catholic families of England, a remarkably high proportion of whom still inhabit their ancestral seats in spite of much suffering and persecution over several centuries. The persecution of English Catholics during the 16th and 17th centuries, and the penal anti-Catholic legislation of the Test Acts, had at times made life for Catholics almost unendurable. Added to this was the conflict of divided loyalty between the House of Stuart, which subsequently lost the support of the Pope at the death of the Old Pretender in 1765, and the House of Hanover. Prior to the Catholic Relief Act of June 1778, it was illegal for Catholics to buy or inherit land. The book illustrates the significance of the Act with the story of the two-day visit of George III and Queen Charlotte to Lord Petre in October 1778, and the elaborate and costly preparations undertaken for this visit. The significance is that, to this nobleman, the visit was of far greater importance than it would have been to most other peers, because he was a Catholic. Mark Bence-Jones is the author of "Twilight of the Ascendancy" and "Guide to the Country Houses of Ireland".