Anti-Catholicism and its most popular expression, anti-Popery, was a common phenomenon in an otherwise tolerant Victorian age. To the average Englishman this distrust of Catholicism merged into broader feelings of xenophobia — Catholicism was considered un-English, the faith of the immoral French, the corrupt Italians and the indolent Spanish. The fact that the Irish, who were currently flooding into England, were Catholic made it easier for normally tolerant and liberal Englishmen to maintain their religious prejudice. This anti-Catholicism was not confined to the lower classes, but rather was a truly popular phenomenon shared by individuals as diverse as Lord John Russell, Lord Palmerston and Lord Derby. Indeed the Queen herself was not above expressing anti-Catholic views. Twice during her long reign there were outbreaks of violence against the Catholics: in 1850 following the restoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in England, and a generation later over William E. Gladstone's pamphlets attacking the Vatican decrees.

John Bullaker, the author of the English Expositor, was the only son of William Bullaker, the noted grammarian and phonetist, and the father of the Venerable Thomas Bullaker, the Franciscan Martyr. Hitherto biographical information relating to John Bullaker has been hard to find, but the fact that he was a Catholic has meant that it has been possible to discover a certain amount about his career and whereabouts from the harassment he received from the ecclesiastical and civil authorities, because of his persistent recusancy. A study of his presentments for recusancy in the Act Books of the Deans of Chichester; the Detection Books; and the Miscellaneous Papers of the Consistory Court, in the Diocesan Record Office at Chichester, has brought to light a great deal of fresh information about the life of John Bullaker.

The Lords Petre were always one of the most prominent of English Catholic families, and they were also one of the richest. Their landed estates had been built up in the middle of the sixteenth century by Sir William Petre, Secretary of State to three Tudor sovereigns. Sir William's son, John, was created a Baron in 1611, but in the early 17th century the family properties ceased to grow in size, partly because Catholicism excluded them from the profits of office, and partly because provision for younger sons offset such new acquisitions as were made. But even so the estates inherited by the third Lord Petre in 1637 were large enough to place him clearly in the ranks of the great landed magnates. In Essex he had a well-consolidated belt of land lying to the west and south-west of Chelmsford, and centred on the two family residences of Ingatestone Hall and Thorndon Hall. Altogether in Essex Petre had about 11,000 acres of freehold land and the lordship of seventeen manors, and these produced some £5,500 per annum or considerably more than half his total income from land. In addition he had a large estate on the opposite side of the country, in Devon. This lay in two distinct areas, one centred on Axminster and extending down the Axe valley and its tributaries, and the other in the southerly projection of the county on the southern edge of Dartmoor, where the principal possession was the vast moorland manor of South Brent. Besides the main estates in Essex and Devon, there were some isolated properties: the manor of Osmington down on the Dorset coast; Toddenham and Sutton in Gloucestershire; Kennett and Kentford on the Cambridgeshire-Suffolk border.