I think people of either persuasion are just avoiding it as 50% of marriages now end in divorce and therefore it is like playing Russian roulette with your finances.

For a Protestant nation aware of the religious wars that had devastated Europe for nearly three decades, this was an unforgivable course of action.

Rumours of Charles’s sympathy towards catholicism had been circulating for years, but now Parliament had what they believed to be definitive proof.

They discovered a series of letters that would do irreparable damage to the relationship between the king and his subjects.

Among the correspondence found was a letter from Queen Henrietta Maria to Charles stating her efforts to recruit soldiers from the Catholic powers of Europe.