ABSTRACT
Our old Hall is to be pulled down, and they are going to build streets on the site. I said to my sister, ‘Ethelinda! if they really pull down Morton Hall, it will be a worse piece of work than the Repeal of the Corn Laws.’ 1 And, after some consideration she replied, that if she must speak what was on her mind, she would own that she thought the Papists had something to do with it; that they had never forgiven the Morton who had been with Lord Monteagle 2 when he discovered the Gunpowder Plot; for we knew that somewhere in Rome there was a book kept, and which had been kept for generations, giving an account of the secret private history of every English family of note, and registering the names of those to whom the Papists owed either grudges or gratitude.
