Note 195 — Chapter II · NAPLES. (continued 2)

Consulta dalla Real Camera de S. Chiara alla Maestà del Re per il Santo Uffizio (MS. penes me).

That the Neapolitan Government was not actuated by any tenderness towards heresy is manifested in a singular transaction of the period detailed in a letter of which I have copy, of July 11, 1746, from Edward Allen, the British Consul, to the Marchese Fogliani—apparently the foreign secretary. An English girl of 13, named Ellen Bowes, was forcibly abducted from her father’s house, after surrounding it with about a hundred armed men. Against this outrage the consul protested as a violation of the privileges of the English nation, to which Fogliani replied, explaining the reasons which had led the king to do this and what was proposed to do with the child. Apparently she had expressed an intention to join the Catholic Church and had been taken so as to secure her conversion. Allen rejoined in a long argumentative letter and, although he pointed out that a child of such tender age could have no conception of the different religions, he felt himself obliged to disavow asking her return to her parents and limited his request to having her delivered to some one of the English nation, where she could be examined as to her motives. What was the issue of the affair does not appear from the paper in my possession, but evidently the king, after taking such a step and justifying it, could not well retreat.