It wasn't easy being a Roman Catholic in Elizabethan England. It was, in fact, illegal and often downright dangerous. This Jesuit correspondence was particularly intense after the 1611 publication of the King James Version, when Catholics in England needed the help of the French in publishing a Catholic Bible. This correspondence included a lot of details about what life was like for Catholics in England. I mean, you did have Jesuits being hanged, drawn and quartered.
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One children's song may have been part of a dance or a game and focused on the season between Dec. 25 and Jan. 6, the Feast of the Epiphany. The 'me' who receives the presents refers to every baptized person. The partridge in a pear tree is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Christ is symbolically presented as a mother partridge which feigns injury to decoy predators from her helpless nestlings. The turtle doves represented the Old and New Testaments, while the three French hens symbolized the virtues of faith, hope and charity.