Note 200 — PART II.

Lord John Russell’s vehement letter on Papal Aggression in November 1850 to the Bishop of Durham, provoked by the Papal Bull creating Catholic bishops in England, and the angry controversy to which it led, were followed by the passing of the Ecclesiastic Titles Bill in 1857. Aytoun was not alone in thinking that Cardinal Wiseman, the first to act upon the mandate from Rome, was more than a match for Lord John, and that the Bill would become a dead letter, as it did. The controversy was at its hottest when Aytoun expressed his view of the probable result of the conflict in the preceding ballad.