4 BIOGRAPHY. 



the Great, called S. Wladimir of Russia, and Anne, called 

 S. Anne of Eussia. Through his grandmother he was 

 ninth in descent from Sir Thomas More." 



The Watertons fared but badly in the stormy times of 

 the Eeformation, and, preferring conscience to property, 

 they retained their ancient faith, but lost heavily in this 

 world's goods. The many coercive acts against the Eoman 

 Catholics naturally had their effect, not only on those 

 who actually lived in the time of the Eeformation, but 

 upon their successors. A Eoman Catholic ^ould not sit in 

 parliament, he could not hold a commission in the army, 

 he could not be a justice of the peace, he had to pay 

 double land-tax, and to think himself fortunate if he had 

 any land left on which taxes could be demanded. He was 

 not allowed to keep a horse worth more than five pounds, 

 and, more irritating than all, he had either to attend the 

 parish church or to pay twenty pounds for every month of 

 absence. In fact, a Eoman Catholic was looked upon and 

 treated as a wholly inferior being, and held much the same 

 relative position to his persecutors as Jews held towards 

 the Normans and Saxons in the times of the Crusades. 



Within the memory of many now living, the worst of 

 the oppressive acts have been repealed, and Eoman Catholics 

 are now as free to follow their own form of worship as 

 before the days of Henry VIII. They have seats in 

 parliament and on the bench, they hold commissions both 

 in the army and navy, and all the petty but galling inter- 

 ferences with the details of their private life have been 

 abolished. 



Still, Waterton was, during some of his best years, a 

 personal sufferer from these acts, and they rankled too 

 deeply in his mind to be forgotten. Hence, the repeated 

 and mostly irrelevant allusions in his writings to Martin 

 Luther, Henry VIII., Queen Bess, Archbishop Cranmer, 



