Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Condemned to Repeat

My "travel book' for last week's trip to Hong Kong and Tokyo was Alice Hogge's "God's Secret Agents - Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot".

The book tells the story of the deadly (for one side) game between Elizabeth I's government and police against Catholic priests. The priests believed they were sneaking into England in order to save the souls of the citizens from the heresy of Protestantism. The government saw only rebels and fears of Spanish invasion - and so hunted down the priests, tortured, and then executed them in grizzly fashion.

Elizabeth's government played fast and loose with legalities of arrest, imprisonment, and torture. Laws were changed to suit, making torture allowed as necessary (as deemed by the government).

Fortunately, today's governments have learned from such past abuses to fundamental rights ands freedoms.

2 comments:

Pamela said...

They were executed by bears?

Cool! Did they get smeared with honey first?

Paul Madsen said...

actually they were "taken from this place, and made to watch reruns of 'Grizzly Adams' until dead"

Fortunately, this has since been banned by Geneva convention