sed, and by the hope which he held out that, under his
administration, no member of their Church would be molested on account
of religion.

It is probable that the Pope himself was among those who read this
celebrated letter with pleasure. He had some months before dismissed
Castelmaine in a manner which showed little regard for the feelings of
Castelmaine's master. Innocent thoroughly disliked the whole domestic
and foreign policy of the English government. He saw that the unjust and
impolitic measures of the Jesuitical cabal were far more likely to make
the penal laws perpetual than to bring about an abolition of the test.
His quarrel with the court of Versailles was every day becoming more and
more serious; nor could he, either in his character of temporal prince
or in his character of Sovereign Pontiff, feel cordial friendship for
a vassal of that court. Castelmaine was ill qualified to remove these
disgusts. He was indeed well acquainted with Rome, and was, for a
layman, deeply read in theological controversy. [275] But he had none of
the address which his post required; and, even had he been a diplomatist
of the greatest ability, there was a circumstance which would have
disqualified him for the particular mission on which he had been sent.
He was known all over Europe as the husband of the most shameless of
women; and he was known in no other way. It was impossible to speak to
him or of him without remembering in what manner the very title by which
he was called had been acquired. This circumstance would have mattered
little if he had been accredited to some dissolute court, such as that
in which the Marchioness of Montespan had lately been dominant. But
there was an obvious impropriety in sending him on an embassy rather
of a spiritual than of a secular nature to a pontiff of primitive
austerity. The Protestants all over Europe sneered; and Innocent,
already unfavourably disposed to the English government, considered the
compliment which had been paid him, at so much risk and at so heavy a
cost, as little better than an affront. The salary of the Ambassador was
fixed at a hundred pounds a week. Castelmaine complained that this was
too little. Thrice the sum, he said, would hardly suffice. For at Rome
the ministers of all the great continental powers exerted themselves to
surpass one another in splendour, under the eyes of a people whom the
habit of seeing magnificent buildings, decorations, and ceremonies had
ma