Tea at Trianon: The Prayers of King James II

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

Saturday, June 20, 2020

The Prayers of King James II

From Roman Christendom:

King James II, the last reigning Catholic King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, battled with self-sacrificing zeal during his short active reign (1685-1688) to restore his realms peacefully to unity and to free Catholics from persecution and oppression.

For this he was deposed by a treacherous conspiracy of faithless Whigs, claiming to be working for the good of the country but actually lining their own pockets.

James was brought up in the Church of England but he and his wife, Lady Anne Hyde, later converted to Roman Catholicism and ever after regarded it as the true religion, even though Anne Hyde was the daughter of the Earl of Clarendon, a leading light in the Church of England.

However, James was sensible to the dangers and in no way sought to impose his religion on the unwilling. He sought, instead, to free men from religious persecution and oppression, to succour the poor and to unite the country under the banner of freedom and prosperity.

The rich, bloated, Capitalist Whigs would have none of it. Anglicanism imposed on the nation suited them and allowed them to keep their ill-gotten gains and to continue to oppress the poor.

James was defeated by a conspiracy of highly-placed traitors, including John Churchill. He retreated to France where he lived, in the odour of sanctity, a devout Catholic life often visiting the Abbey of La Trappe, where some of his former officers were now Trappist monks.

These prayers below were composed especially for him, and written by hand into his own prayer-book. In to-day's Church, they are especially relevant for those who would remain loyal to orthodox Roman Catholic doctrine and practise in the face of bigoted hostility and an renewed and increasing persecution and oppression, by government and others, on the ground of religion. (Read more.)