Description:

In these days of general tolerance and ecumenism, strident comments and robust criticism of another’s religion is not only considered at the best, uncharitable but at the worst, fanatical. However, it was not always so and for many of our ancestors anti-Catholic sentiments were synonymous with patriotism. This is the biography of a long forgotten Protestant polemicist, known as Ex-Monk Widdows. Although he was a convicted sex-offender, a notorious liar and perfectly happy to exploit the religious prejudices of his times he was able for many years to sustain his masquerade as a victim of religious bigotry whilst himself peddling an odious intolerance, surely speaks eloquently not only of his own gifts of dissimulation in exploiting the credulity of narrow and mean-minded followers but also of a religious climate where sectarianism was endemic and charity absent. His is, at the very least, a cautionary tale.