As the sickly, solitary, and precocious infant of elderly parents, we may guess that he was not a little spoilt, if only in the technical sense.
The religion of the family made their seclusion from the world the more rigid, and by consequence must have strengthened their mutual adhesiveness.

Catholics were then harassed by a legislation which would be condemned by any modern standard as intolerably tyrannical.

Whatever apology may be urged for the legislators on the score of contemporary prejudices or special circumstances, their best excuse is that their laws were rather intended to satisfy constituents, and to supply a potential means of defence, than to be carried into actual execution.

It does not appear that the Popes had to fear any active molestation in the quiet observance of their religious duties.

Yet a Catholic was not only a member of a hated minority, regarded by the rest of his countrymen as representing the evil principle in politics and religion, but was rigorously excluded from a public career, and from every position of honour or authority.