English Anti-Catholic legislation reached its climax in the first year of the reign of William and Mary, when it provided that, in future, all recruits, before enlistment in the army, should be forced to take the attestation oath forswearing the Catholic religion. This stupid piece of bigotry prevented Catholics from engaging in the defence of their native land, and drove many ardent young spirits amongst English, Scottish, and Irish Catholics into foreign military service. Thus England was robbed of men who would have led her armies with the same brilliant success that attended them in their foreign commands. Every student of European history is confronted, from time to time, with the names of Brown, O’Donnell, Blake, MacMahon, to mention but a few. Perhaps the best known of these were the two Browns, Count George Brown, who held a high command in the Russian army, and his brilliant nephew, Ulysses Maximilian Brown, Count of the Holy Roman Empire and Field Marshal of Austria, who, after checking the victorious Frederick the Great on the field of Lobositz, 1756, fell in the battle of Prague (1757).