Series 2 > Origins of the 'Forty-five

CARDINAL YORK’S MEMORIAL TO THE POPE 443
stesso Estensore crede non esservi bisogno di glossa per far
conoscere quanto siano insussistenti, e false le precorse asser¬
tive, e con quanta ragione e fondamento abbia rimostrato
1’Estensore tutta la fiducia e sicurezza nei sentimenti della
Santita sua e quanto li abbia ben compresi il Real Principe di
Galles, giacche unicamente in virtu de’ medesimi si e accinto
alia risoluziona di restituirsi a Roma.
Translation1
Concerning the indispensable necessity of recognition, by the Holy
See, of the Royal House of Stuart, as the sole and legitimate successors
to the Kingdom of England, and concerning the inconsistencies and
incongruities which would ensue, should she follow the contrary course,
being one which would little become the dignity of the Holy See.
He who presents this Memorial wishes to state the case briefly, basing
his reasonings on public and well-known facts. No one in the world is
ignorant of the fact that King James II. was hunted from his throne in
odium Religionis. The very people who were scheming for his expulsion
would have been the last to deny two infallible principles. The first—
that the Kingdom of England was, of its nature, an hereditary one;
the second, that the Royal Person of James II. was the lawful successor.
Wishing therefore to find an adequate pretext for deposing him, without
destroying the right of succession, which is, by law, unalterable, they,
to serve their own ends, brought forward the question of the establish¬
ment in the kingdom, already made by law, of the Anglican Religion ;
and making as their chief complaint, that the fact of the king being a
Catholic placed that law in constant and imminent peril of destruction
and subversion, they made an Act of Parliament in which, while claiming
to explain the spirit of the laws of succession, they declared at the same
time that it was not fitting that any one whosoever should succeed who
was of the Catholic Religion, or who did not conform to the dominant
religion.
By virtue of this Act, then, were James II. and his Catholic offspring
deprived of the throne, and his nearest Protestant relative was called to
succeed to it, whose line has continued to do so even to our own days,
not only in the persons of James n. ’s two daughters, who were Protestants,
but also in those of the Princes of the House of Hanover, these being
the nearest Protestant heirs; in proof of this, any one who has knowledge
of the history of the princes of this century knows that the Princess
Anne, called by them Queen, wishing to show favour to her brother
James III., to the exclusion of the House of Hanover, sent accredited
persons to try to persuade him to declare himself a Protestant, and to
remove, in this manner, the only obstacle that stood in the way of his
possession of his kingdom : but that special grace of God, which gave
1 I am indebted to Miss Nairne, Salisbury, for this translation.