Note 69 — Chapter II
Reading edition
It is scarcely to be wondered at that men who were familiar with the political methods of the age should see in all this a motive sufficient to explain a great stroke for the destruction of those who appeared to be so formidable, devised by such a minister as was then in power, "the statesman," writes Lord Castlemaine,[69] "who bore (as everybody knew) a particular hatred to all of our profession, and this increased to hear his Majesty speak a little in his first speech to the two Houses against persecution of papists, whereas there had been nothing within those walls but invectives and defamations for above forty years together."