Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Note on spellings and dates
- Introduction
- 1 The Catholic laity
- 2 England and Rome: the Catholic clergy
- 3 The penal laws and their enforcement
- 4 The development of the anti-Catholic tradition
- 5 The Restoration settlement and after
- 6 The French alliance and ‘Catholicity’
- 7 York and Danby
- 8 The Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis
- 9 The Tory reaction
- 10 James II and the Church of England Men
- 11 James II and the Dissenters
- 12 James II and Rome
- 13 The missionary effort under James II
- 14 The opposition to James II
- Appendices
- Select Bibliography
- Index
13 - The missionary effort under James II
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Note on spellings and dates
- Introduction
- 1 The Catholic laity
- 2 England and Rome: the Catholic clergy
- 3 The penal laws and their enforcement
- 4 The development of the anti-Catholic tradition
- 5 The Restoration settlement and after
- 6 The French alliance and ‘Catholicity’
- 7 York and Danby
- 8 The Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis
- 9 The Tory reaction
- 10 James II and the Church of England Men
- 11 James II and the Dissenters
- 12 James II and Rome
- 13 The missionary effort under James II
- 14 The opposition to James II
- Appendices
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
James II's efforts to convert England to Catholicism were doomed to failure. He did not have the resources to convert a Protestant kingdom and anyway, quite apart from the anticipation of a Protestant successor, it became clear that after over a century of Protestantism Englishmen simply did not want to turn Catholic and James had no means of coercing them. As Halifax pointed out, the whole scheme was impossible:
The great design cannot be carried on without numbers; numbers cannot be had without converts, the old stock not being sufficient; converts will not venture till they have such a law to secure them as hath no exception to it; so that an irregularity, or any degree of violence to the law, would so entirely take away the effect of it that men would as little run the hazard of changing their religion after the making it as before.
Terriesi reported on several occasions that although many converts were being made among the lower classes, there were very few among the nobility and gentry, except for courtiers anxious to curry favour with the king. The Franciscans' figures for reconciliations to Catholicism in Worcestershire and at Birmingham do not suggest that the number of conversions was very large even among the poor, although it was higher than it had been during the last two decades of uncertainty and intermittent persecution. In Worcestershire there were twelve reconciliations in 1685, eleven in 1686, four in 1687 and two in 1688, a total of twenty-nine in four years.
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- Information
- Popery and Politics in England 1660–1688 , pp. 239 - 249Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1973