Elizabeth I Quotes

There are genuine concerns about the status of children to be sent to Malaysia and also there are genuine concerns about the human rights record in Malaysia.

Foreigners from all Protestant countries and too many Papists come to London constantly ... two thirds or the normal persons come from distant ports.

No religious education may be imparted without the consent of the Government.

We hereby prohibit the Passage of all Manner of People… except only the Lords and other great men of the Realm, and true and notable merchants and the Kings soldiers … out of the said Realm without the King’s special license.

Neither experience nor improvement can root out the inveterate prejudices of the Roman Catholics, or render them less cruel or inexorable to Protestants.

I am an Englishman by birth, a Protestant by religion, and a merchant by occupation. What I have done is not out of contempt to your royal person, God forbid it should, but out of an honest indignation, to see the ridiculous superstitious and gross idolatries practiced here….My own conscience alone. I would not hazard what I have done for any man living, but I owe that and all other services to God

We also forbid all our subjects, of whatever quality and condition, from carrying off by force or persuasion, against the will of their parents, the children of the said religion, in order to cause them to be baptized or confirmed in the Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church; and the same is forbidden to those of the said religion pretended Reformed, upon penalty of being punished with especial severity.

Be it known that for these causes and others us hereunto moving, and of our certain knowledge, full power, and royal authority, we have, by this present perpetual and irrevocable edict, suppressed and revoked, and do suppress and revoke, the edict of our said grandfather, given at Nantes in April, 1598, in its whole extent, together with the particular articles agreed upon in the month of May following, and the letters patent issued upon the same date; and also the edict given at Nimes in July, 1629; we declare them null and void, together with all concessions, of whatever nature they may be, made by them as well as by other edicts, declarations, and orders, in favor of the said persons of the R.P.R., the which shall remain in like manner as if they had never been granted; and in consequence we desire, and it is our pleasure, that all the temples of those of the said R.P.R. situate in our kingdom, countries, territories, and the lordships under our crown, shall be demolished without delay. We forbid our subjects of the R.P.R. to meet any more for the exercise of the said religion in any place or private house, under any pretext whatever, ...

Far from protecting children, the abuse of Article 8 risks making them pawns - subject to coercion or worse - as part of a criminal's desperate struggle to stay in Britain.

It is an insult to reason and the laws to pronounce the words, 'Civil and Ecclesiastical Government.' … no regulation should be made save by the civil power.

A good king, though he be above the law, will subject and frame his actions thereto, for example's sake to his subjects, and of his own free will, but not as subject or bound thereto ...

English merchants were responsible for shipping over three million slaves (half the total) from Africa to the slave plantations of the Caribbean and southern USA, before their trade's abolition by parliament in 1807

As to the matter of relics, it is almost incredible how impudently the world has been cheated. I can mention three relics of our Saviour's circumcision; likewise fourteen nails which are exhibited for the three by which he was fixed to the cross; three robes for that seamless one on which the soldiers cast lots; two inscriptions that were placed over the cross; three spears by which our Saviour's side was pierced, and about five sets of linen clothes which wrapped his body in the tomb. Besides, they show all the articles used at the institution of the Lord's supper, and an infinite number of similar impositions. There is no saint of any celebrity of whom two or three bodies are not in existence. I can name the place where a piece of pumice stone was long held in high veneration as the skull of Peter

For the better discovering and avoiding of all such traitorous and most dangerous conspiracies and attempts as are daily devised and practiced against our most gracious sovereign lady the queen's majesty and the happy estate of this commonweal, by sundry wicked and seditious persons, who, terming themselves Catholics, and being indeed spies and intelligencers, not only for her majesty's foreign enemies, but also for rebellious and traitorous subjects born within her highness's realms and dominions, and hiding their most detestable and devilish purposes under a false pretext of religion and conscience, do secretly wander and shift from place to place within this realm, to corrupt and seduce her majesty's subjects, and to stir them to sedition and rebellion …

Whereas the number of papists are very considerable in this kingdom, and it has been found that they have occasioned frequent rebellions, papists shall pay double the sum paid by protestants for support of the militia.

We are not ready to accede to a principle of legislation by which the State shall take into its own hands the valuation of rent throughout Ireland.

First, that the recollection of everything done be one party or the other, between March, 1585 and our accession to the crown, and during all the preceding period of troubles, remain obliterated and forgotten, as if no such things had ever happened.... We forbid on all our subjects, of some state and quality that they are, to renew the memory, to attack, to feel, to scold, nor to provoke each other by reproach of what took place, for some cause and excuse whether it is, to compete for it, to dispute, quarrel nor offend itself or take offence actually or at word, but contain itself and live peacefully together as brothers, friends and fellow countrymen, on punishment to the offenders to be punished as infracteurs of peace and troublemakers of the public rest.

And in order to leave no occasion for troubles or differences between our subjects, we have permitted, and herewith permit, those of the said religion pretended Reformed to live and abide in all the cities and places of this our kingdom and countries of our sway, without being annoyed, molested, or compelled to do anything in the matter of religion contrary to their consciences

Of course in 1789 to have killed three Protestants was counted a passport into heaven in the vicinity of Vinegar Hill [Ireland].

Numbers of starving Catholics had gone to Protestant clergymen and offered to become converts in return for food, and when some of these sickened with the fever, the priests declared it was a judgment on them, and religious hostility became intensified.

… the strangest sight in the world—two races hating one another for the love of God

Die, or be Catholics!

The chief cause that I fell out with the pope was this: the pope boasted that he was the head of the Church, and condemned all that would not be under his power and authority …. If the pope were the head of the Christian Church, then the Church were a monster with two heads, seeing that St. Paul says that Christ is her head. The pope may well be, and is, the head of the false Church.

The Romanists have affirmed and maintained that the temporal power has no jurisdiction over them, but, on the contrary, that the spiritual power is above the temporal.

Proceed not to the solemnization of the marriage without the consent of the parents or governors