Religious Oath Quotes
The members of the Ribbon Society were referred to as Ribbonists and they saw themselves as a counterweight to the Orange Order of the extremist Protestants. The Protestants were the “Hereticks”—this was the spelling of the time.
The treaty was actually written in Persian—a “neutral language.” However, what it illustrates is that very complex treaties could be very short. This is half the treaty. The first sentence introduces the representatives of the parties. The last sentence agrees to keep the roads and trade open. That was it. It ended many years of fighting for control of Laddakh. The Tibetans wrote a report describing the negotiations and have always maintained that these verbal side agreements were also binding. Even today diplomats make side agreements that are too hot to be put in the main treaty, albeit no treaty in modern times has been as short.
He was run out of Massachusetts and then founded Rhode Island where the first American concepts of separation of Church and State evolved.
At the time, The Oath of Supremacy, was required to take a seat in the British Parliament. It was specifically written to keep Roman Catholics out of Parliament. O’Connell and his colleagues adopted a political tactic whereby Catholics would run for Parliament, and then if an when they won, refuse to take the oath and hence be unable to take their seat. And that is just what happened. The Duke of Wellington, the Prime Minister, was trying to have Ireland join in union with Great Britain, and he didn’t want Irish Catholic anger and resentment because Irish seats in Parliament were empty by virtue of blatant religious discrimination. King George IV however was a virulent anti-Catholic, but Wellington finally persuaded him to relent and O’Connell and other Irish Catholics finally entered Parliament.
All members of Parliament were required to sign and publicly declare this oath. Two days later the Parliament ordered the oath—then called a “protestation”—printed and distributed throughout the realm. All minor officials and clerics were also required to make their “protestation.” It was excesses like this that created a negative attitude in England regarding loyalty oaths and the American Founding Fathers specifically knew of this—then relatively recent—example when they wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We have left the then English spelling as is.
