Tea at Trianon: Lord Nicholas Windsor Speaks

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Lord Nicholas Windsor Speaks

The Queen's cousin speaks about the struggles of English Catholics. To quote:

It is a story of love for the Church, love of others and love of the truth, during a time when a 1,000-year-old tradition was at risk of being uprooted. These men and women were determined that their culture would continue, though it was very nearly destroyed.

During that period, the Jesuits wanted to educate young Englishmen who couldn’t receive a Catholic education in England, and they set up schools in France. The English boys were sent with items that had been preserved and saved from the officers of King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth, who sought to destroy every physical trace of Catholic culture: from the art to vestments. These Jesuit schools became a depository of sacred history, and the boys were taught to venerate the relics and the memory of the martyrs.

Many became priests and martyrs. They suffered the most appalling deaths. We cannot forget these people; they intercede for us still. (Read more.)