Should they have children, there could be no question but that they would be brought up in the faith of their parents, and that a line of Catholic monarchs would occupy the throne of England.

To the Church, as represented by my mother, and to Nonconformity, in the person of my father, this was an equally intolerable prospect.
I have been telling you all this old history because you will find, as I go on, that this state of things caused in the end such a seething and fermenting throughout the nation that even I, a simple village lad, was dragged into the whirl and had my whole life influenced by it.

If I did not make the course of events clear to you, you would hardly understand the influences which had such an effect upon my whole history.

In the meantime, I wish you to remember that when King James II.

ascended the throne he did so amid a sullen silence on the part of a large class of his subjects, and that both my father and my mother were among those who were zealous for a Protestant succession.
My childhood was, as I have already said, a gloomy one.