In eighteenth-century law and print, English Catholics were portrayed as entirely untrustworthy, and their exclusion from all aspects of English society encouraged. Yet, as many local studies have shown, there were numerous individual cases of relatively peaceful coexistence between Protestants and Catholics in this period. This article explores why this was the case by examining how Catholics overcame labels of untrustworthiness on a local level. Using the remarkable political influence of one high-status Catholic in the first half of the eighteenth century as a case study, it questions the utility of “pragmatism” as an explanation for instances of peaceful coexistence in this period. Instead it focuses on the role that deliberate Catholic resistance to legal disabilities played in allowing them to be considered as trustworthy individuals in their localities. The resulting picture of coexistence points towards a moderation of the historiographical emphasis on mutual compromise between confessions in favour of attention to the determined resilience of minority groups. In explaining this, this article makes the broader point that the influence of trust, long important in studies of early modern economic, political, and social relationships, is ripe for exploration in the context of interconfessional relations.

中文翻译：

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天主教政治和在 18 世纪的英格兰建立信任

在 18 世纪的法律和印刷品中，英国天主教徒被描绘成完全不值得信任，并且鼓励他们将他们排除在英国社会的各个方面。然而，正如许多当地研究表明的那样，这一时期有许多新教和天主教徒相对和平共处的个案。本文通过研究天主教徒如何克服地方层面的不信任标签来探讨为什么会出现这种情况。以十八世纪上半叶一位地位高的天主教徒的显着政治影响为案例研究，它质疑“实用主义”作为这一时期和平共处事例的解释的效用。相反，它侧重于天主教对法律残疾的刻意抵抗在使他们被视为当地值得信赖的个人方面所起的作用。由此产生的共存图景表明，历史上对供词之间相互妥协的强调有所缓和，有利于关注少数群体坚定的复原力。在解释这一点时，本文提出了更广泛的观点，即长期以来在早期现代经济、政治和社会关系研究中很重要的信任的影响，在宗教间关系的背景下进行探索的时机已经成熟。