For the Catholic Church in England the year 1829 stood perceptibly for the opening of a new epoch. For the Catholic Church in Europe at large, on the other hand, it meant (although not so realised at the time) the closing of an old one. 1830 indeed was to usher in an era of Revolution. Thrones were to be shaken and dynasties disappear, wild political theories were to be acted on, the map of Europe re-arranged, and the balance of power shifted. Religion was to be insulted, cathedrals sacked, monasteries burned, priests attacked, the Church plundered and cast from her high estate. But in 1829 there was as yet little thought of all this, and on the surface of things there was only an ordered tranquillity. Yet 1829 was to be the very last of those fifteen years of peace which followed on the downfall of Napoleon, and were the outcome of that European settlement so skilfully and (as it was vainly hoped) so lastingly engineered by the statesmen of the Congress of Vienna.