A Summary of all the Religious Houses in England and Wales

Book Description

London: Printed for James Knapton, 1717. Together with an Appendix Concerning the several Religious Orders that prevail’d in this Kingdom. xxiv, 100, [4]pp., 8vo. With two leaves of publishers’ advertisements at end. A good large copy in contemporary calf, gilt arms on sides, old reback with a gilt label, but the upper cover now nearly detached. First edition of a ferocious anti-Catholic diatribe, full of satiric and often quite funny anecdotes, told with the purpose of entreating the people of England and Scotland “to consider, whether it can be the Interest of our Laity to hazard the Ruin both of their Bodies and Souls by a Rebellion, which, if attended with success,” would result in the reconstitution of the Catholic hierarchy and the appropriation of seventy percent of all the country’s wealth. Every Catholic order in England is considered, vilified, and dismissed, right down to the poor nuns, who are described as “a Set of silly superstitious Women, who thought it a piece of spiritual Devotion to be subservient to the Monks, though it were in gratifying the Lusts of the Flesh. . . like a Turkish Seraglio.” Sir Thomas Burnet is sometimes credited with having a hand in the book; he and Duckett were active scribblers, and authors, among other things, of more than one attack on Alexander Pope.

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