" But from the point of view of Catholic Emancipation, it was Pitt’s resignation which was the important, inexorable fact. This was the monarch who had agreed to the rights of the French Canadians to their own religion, and was the genuine personal friend of Lord Petre and Thomas Weld. What had happened? The answer was in two parts. Partly he had been preyed on for political reasons by members of his court opposed to Pitt. "
― Antonia Fraser , The King and the Catholics: The Fight for Religious Liberty in Georgian England