The Catholic World, Vol. 11, April, 1870 to September, 1870Various
Religion
The Catholic World, Vol. 11, April, 1870 to September, 1870
Various
Catholic Church -- Periodicals
Two additional lives of Mary, by Heywood (1725) and Freebairn, were
little more than translations from the French. In 1726, Edward
Simmons published Mary's forged letters as genuine. Anderson's
voluminous collection of papers (four large volumes) appeared in
1727 and 1728. Meantime, from the accession of a new dynasty and the
rebellion of 1715, there arose in Edinburgh a sort of society having
for its principal object the work of supporting Buchanan's credit and
vilifying the Scottish queen. Later came the well-known and widely
published histories of Scotland and of England by Robertson and Hume,
which, read wherever the English language was known, may be said to
have popularized the culpability of Mary. Until within comparatively
few years, Hume's work was the only history of England generally read
in the United States. Then came Malcolm Laing, who imagined he had
closed the controversy against Mary in his bitter _Dissertation_.
Mignet, in France, went further than Laing, while Froude, in his
history of England, distancing all previous writers, portrays Mary
in the blackest colors as one of the most criminal and devilish of
women. For his material there is no statement so absurd, no invention
so gross, no lie so palpable, no calumny so vile, provided only that
it be to the prejudice of Mary Stuart, that does not find favor in
his eyes. In his blind hatred of the Catholic queen, forgetting all
historic dignity and even personal decency, he showers upon her such
epithets as "panther," "ferocious animal," "wild-cat," "brute;" her
persecutors being white-robed saints, such as "the pious Cecil,"
and "the noble and stainless Murray," and the virgin Queen Elizabeth
appearing "as a beneficent fairy coming out of the clouds to rescue
an erring sister."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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