Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Recantation   Listen
noun
Recantation  n.  The act of recanting; a declaration that contradicts a former one; that which is thus asserted in contradiction; retraction. "The poor man was imprisoned for this discovery, and forced to make a public recantation."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Recantation" Quotes from Famous Books



... in the light of the actor's previous history and training; and perhaps the atonement Teddy now contemplated was for him as heroic as that of the martyred bishop who held the hand that had signed the recantation steadily in the flame until ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin

... him as an open heretic. Luther, therefore, had to renounce at once all hope of having the truth touching his articles of faith tested fairly at Worms by the standard of God's word in Scripture. Spalatin indicated to him the points on which he would in any case be expected to make a public recantation. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... the liberal principles of his youth; and, no doubt, he was careful, in the later editions of the Essays, to expunge everything that savoured of democratic tendencies. But the passage just quoted shows that this was no recantation, but simply a confirmation, by his experience of one of the most debased periods of English history, of those evil tendencies attendant on popular government, of which, from the first, he ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley

... faithfully, but perhaps a little flippantly, with this or that person, thing, nation, subject, doctrine. Afterwards he is brought into a relation with the person or nation, into a position as regards the thing, subject, or doctrine, which necessitates, if not exactly a distinct recantation in the humiliating sense attached to the Latin, yet a more or less graceful and ingenious palinode in the more honourable one which we allow to the Greek equivalent and original. Mr Arnold could never be lacking in grace or in ingenuity; but he certainly had, in ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... me, indeed. Whimsical enough, faith! My father wants to force me to marry the very girl I am plotting to run away with! He must not know of my connection with her yet awhile. He has too summary a method of proceeding in these matters. However, I'll read my recantation instantly. My conversion is something sudden, indeed—but I can assure him it is very sincere. So, so—here he comes. He looks plaguy gruff. ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan

... driven from Naples to Vienna, from Vienna back to Venice, and at length, at the prompting of the Holy See, lured across the Piedmontese frontier by Charles Emmanuel of Savoy, and imprisoned for life in the citadel of Turin. The memory of his tragic history—most of all, perhaps, of his recantation and the "devout ending" to which solitude and persecution had forced the freest spirit of his day—hovered like a warning on the horizon of thought and constrained political speculation to hide itself behind the study ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... that end, it was politically done in me to over-pass, and make no mention of merit which, could you think me capable of overlooking, might reasonably damn for ever in your judgment all pretensions in me to be critical. There, I will be judged by Lloyd, whether I have not made a very handsome recantation. I was in the case of a man whose friend has asked him his opinion of a certain young lady; the deluded wight gives judgment against her in toto—don't like her face, her walk, her manners—finds fault with ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... Cicero's Recantation (palindia). The time for the struggle between the Senatorial party (the Optimates) and the Triumvirs, weakened by their mutual jealousy, seemed to have come. Accordingly Cicero proposed in a full house ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... Master Philologus, go with me to my palace, And I shall set down the form of recantation, Which you shall read on Sunday next in open place. This done, you shall satisfy our expectation, And shall be set free from all molestation: Into the bosom of the Church we will you take, And some high officer therein ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley

... please a fickle Woman, which might have been employed much more to my Credit and Advantage in other Pursuits. I shall therefore take the Liberty to acquaint you, however harsh it may sound in a Lady's Ears, that tho your Love-Fit should happen to return, unless you could contrive a way to make your Recantation as well known to the Publick, as they are already apprised of the manner with which you have treated me, you shall never ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... that what he demanded was retraction, not dispute. This Luther refused to give. The emperor insisted on a simple recantation, which Luther declared he could not make. For several days the hearing continued, ending at length in the threatening declaration of the emperor, that "he would no longer listen to Luther, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... Aurelius became emperor he inaugurated a new system of persecution. Instead of at once consigning to death those who boldly made a profession of Christianity, as had heretofore been customary in times of trial, he employed various expedients to extort from them a recantation. He threw them into confinement, bound them with chains, kept them in lingering suspense, and subjected them to sufferings of different kinds, in the hope of overcoming their constancy. It would seem that Ignatius, Zosimus, Rufus, and their companions were dealt with after this fashion. ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen

... the people; and each day brought to him fresh accessions of influence and authority. The kirk delivered Strachan as a traitor and apostate to the devil; and the parliament forefaulted his associates, of whom several hastened to make their peace by a solemn recantation. Deprived of their support, the Campbells gradually yielded to the superior influence of the Hamiltons. Vexation, indeed, urged them to reproach the king with inconstancy and ingratitude; but Charles, while he employed every art to lull the jealousy of Argyle, steadily ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc

... of the accursed speech," while they styled themselves "the beloved of the Great Spirit." The Canadian and other northern nations, however, were less intolerant, and at any time easily induced to profess the recantation of their heathen errors for some small advantage. Among these latter, the hare was deemed to possess some mystic superiority over the rest of the animal creation; it was even raised to be an object of worship, ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton

... these Islands brought forth"; and, with this renewed conviction, and remembering also their former confidence in himself, especially in the Salmasian controversy, he could now congratulate them and the country on their return to power. But is not the Address also a recantation of his Oliverianism? To some extent, it must be so interpreted. It seems utterly impossible, indeed, that the phrase "a short but scandalous night of interruption" was intended to apply to the entire six years of the Cromwellian Dictatorship ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... Benarage, and vpon one priest of Striueling called Duncane Sympson, and one Gentleman called Robert Foster in Striuelyng, with other three or foure, with them of the towne of Striuelyng: who at the day of their appearaunce after their summonyng, were condemned to the death without any place of recantation, because (as was alleged) they were heresiarkes or chiefe heretikes and teachers of heresies, and especially because many of them were at the bridal and marriage of a Priest, who was vicar of Twybodye beside Striuelyng, and dyd eate fleshe in ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... possible suppositions, that a young girl wonderfully similar in feature and voice to Jeanne d'Arc was palmed off upon the English by Duke Philip, and afterwards, on her trial, comported herself like the Maid, trusting in this recantation to effect her release. But we consider such an hypothesis extremely far-fetched, nor does it accord with the events which immediately followed. It seems hardly questionable that it was the real Jeanne who publicly recanted on the 24th of May. This was only six days before ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... from the office of the Lieutenant-Governor, requesting them to state the grounds of their complaints more specifically. The recipients responded by preparing and forwarding a stronger case than before. A recantation was then drawn up by a skilful hand, and presented to each individual member of the Jury, a reward being at the same time offered as an inducement to sign it. The jurymen, however, were not prepared ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... in reorganizing. The result of King Alfonso's accession caused many of the supporters of Don Carlos, who were fighting chiefly against the Republic, to become lukewarm. The war continued to drag on. Finally, weakened by the desertion of some of his chief supporters and the recantation of the famous Cabrera, and being completely outnumbered by the Royalist forces, Don Carlos, accompanied by a few of his staunchest friends and one battalion of men from Castile, crossed over the border into France. The second Carlist war was over ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon

... adds that there is nothing in the archives to prove that he was executed; but there is also nothing to show that his sentence was commuted. Two other persons involved in this trial, viz. Nic. Bucello of Padua and Alessio of Bellinzona, upon recantation, were subjected to public penances and confessions for different terms of years. Sega's fate must, therefore, be considered doubtful; since the fact that no commutation of sentence is on record lends some weight to the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... example of the gravity and formality with which proceedings in matters of this nature were conducted, even as late as the end of the sixteenth century, take the subjoined palinode or recantation of a Flemish ecclesiastic, who had been guilty of the offence of doubting the evection, or bodily transport through the air, of witches and wizards. The original may be found in Delrio, at the end of the Appendix, in ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... school, and this recommended him to the lady. He had always been an opponent of free trade as long as free trade was an open question, and now that it was no longer so, he, being a clergyman, had not been obliged, like most of his lay Tory companions, to read his recantation. He could therefore be regarded as a supporter of the immaculate fifty-three, and was on this account a favourite with Mr. Thorne. The little bell was tinkling, and the rural population of the parish were standing ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... out over their heads, "All that I did was done for good, and it was well to do it:"—her last cry. Then she would seem to have recovered in some measure her composure. Probably her agitated brain was unable to understand the formula of recantation which was read to her amid all the increasing noises of the crowd, but she had a vague faith in the condition she had herself stated, that the paper should be submitted to the Church, and that she should at once be transferred to an ecclesiastical prison. Other ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... alack! Letters of a lover in an extremity of love, crying for help, are as curious to cool strong men as the contortions of the proved heterodox tied to a stake must have been to their chastening ecclesiastical judges. Why go to the fire when a recantation will save you from it? Why not break the excruciating faggot-bands, and escape, when you have only to decide to do it? We naturally ask why. Those martyrs of love or religion are madmen. Altogether, Nevil's adjurations and supplications, his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... recantation," replied Bias importantly. "Yet you may believe my experience, it is Myrtilus. Fame inspires love, and what the world will not grant my master, in spite of his great talent, it conceded to the other ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... have a story to tell you of his Grace the Duke of Richmond.(205) Lord Rawdon, I hear, came over from Ireland for no earthly reason but to oblige his Grace to a recantation of what he had said in the H(ouse) of L(ords) about Haines. He wrote to him here a very civil but a very peremptory letter, and at last Lord Ligonier(206) went to him, at Lord Rawdon's request, with the words wrote ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue

... Amoris, written next, while professing to be a recantation of the last-named work, exhibits, if possible, a more ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... 109. Krauth's Manly Recantation.—During the first half of his ecclesiastical activity C.P. Krauth was a pronounced unionistic theologian. He fully endorsed the indifferentistic principles of the General Synod, whose champion he was till 1864. During the Platform controversy Krauth was zealous to settle ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente

... A Gentile, a heathen, ought, no doubt, to begin at the beginning, give up all his old opinions, and be born of water by being baptized. He should begin by a recantation. I suppose that is what you mean by being born again. But I ought not, for I am a Jew, grown up in the true knowledge of God, learned from Moses and the prophets. So I need not begin my ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... of Ancyra from Seleucia to the conferences at Constantinople, and on his return home came forward as a resolute enemy of Arianism at Caesarea. The young deacon was soon recognised as a power in Asia. He received the dying recantation of Dianius, and guided the choice of his successor Eusebius in 362. Yet he still acted with the Semiarians, and helped them with his counsel at Lampsacus. Indeed it was from the Semiarian side that he approached the Nicene faith. In his own city of ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin

... all abasement beseech you to put to your hand, if it is possible, and impose a curb to those flatterers who are enemies of peace, while they pretend peace. But there is no reason, most blessed Father, why any one should assume that I am to utter a recantation, unless he prefers to involve the case in still greater confusion. Moreover, I cannot bear with laws for the interpretation of the word of God, since the word of God, which teaches liberty in all other things, ought not to be bound. Saving these two things, there is nothing ...
— Concerning Christian Liberty - With Letter Of Martin Luther To Pope Leo X. • Martin Luther

... decided by the Council That you to-day should read your recantation Before the people in St. Mary's Church. And there be many heretics in the town, Who loathe you for your late return to Rome, And might assail you passing through the street, And tear you piecemeal: so ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... dear friend, I could not bear to let that frigid, rigid exercise, called a version and called mine, cold as Caucasus, and flat as the neighbouring plain, stand as my work. A palinodia, a recantation was necessary to me, and I have achieved it. Do you blame me or not? Perhaps I may print it in a magazine, but this is not decided. How delighted I am to think of your being well. It ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... Sir J——s M——h. Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832), the philosopher, whose apostasy consisted in his public recantation of the opinions in favour of the French Revolution expressed in his Vindiciae Gallicae, published in 1791. In 1803 he accepted the offer of the Recordership of Bombay. Lamb's epigram, which, as has been ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... Among these he gives one illustrating the suspension of a martyr in a pit on the 16th of August, 1633. The victim is swathed in a covering which confines all parts of the body except one hand with which he can make the signal of recantation. A post is planted by the side of the pit, with an arm projecting out over it. The martyr is then drawn up by a rope fastened to the feet and run over the arm of the post. He is then lowered into the pit to a depth of five or six feet and there suffered ...
— Japan • David Murray

... catastrophe, a petty mean creature, snarling and spiteful and passionate for trivialities—just like Geoffrey, just such a creature as she hated most. Pride and honour instantly demanded that she must seek Harry, indict herself and read her recantation. She needed that, longed for it, and to satisfy herself, not him. It is possible that she ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... his whole life was a continued struggle between his will and reason, as he was always violating his duty to the one, while he fell under the subjection of the other. It was in consequence of this war in his mind, that he wrote a beautiful poem called The Recantation. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... Now, in this difficult moment, every one who was sincerely ready to help the working masses of Russia in their struggle had the right to be given a place in the ranks of the fighters. The Social Revolutionaries should be allowed to prove in deeds the sincerity of their recantation. The resolution which was passed recapitulated the recantations, mentioned by name the members of the party with whom discussions had been carried on, withdrew the decision of June 14th (excluding the S.R.'s from the Executive Committee on the ground of their ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome

... describe. The churches of the diocese held public prayers for this calamity, and every one expected to see the devil tumble into his house by the chimney. But the truth of it is that the good Master Hierome had a fever, and saw cows in his room, and then was this recantation obtained of him. The access passed, the poor saint wept copiously on learning this trick from me. In fact, he died in my arms, assisted by his physicians, heartbroken at this mummery, telling us that he was going to the feet ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... the President, that threatened any limitation of his efficiency, had the slightest chance of Abolitionist support. The one dread that alarmed the whole Abolitionist group was a possible change in the President's mood, a possible recantation on January first. In order to hold him to his word, they were ready to humor him as one might cajole, or try to cajole, a monster that one was afraid of. No time, this, to talk to Abolitionists about strictly constitutional issues, or about questions of party leadership. Away ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... opposition to Mr. Gladstone's own wishes as to Egypt had in the least impaired his standing, and promotion was felt to be his due. The old difficulties, however, were still in the way, and Sir Charles refused to buy his way into the Cabinet by a sham recantation. The matter accordingly stood over, as appears from ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... last agonies shall be upon that man—when, sick with weariness, pain, disease, hunger, he lies down to die—when the death-gurgle is in the throat, and the eye swims beneath the last dull film—when remembrance peoples the chamber with Hell, and his cowardice would falter forth its dastard recantation ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... desire was given her. She lived long enough to read a firm recantation of her former self, to show the world a great repentance, and to leave upon indelible record one more proof, what alone is true wisdom, and where alone true joys are ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade

... blow was so unexpected that he felt in a sense numbed. His speech only a few hours ago had made large inroads upon his powers of endurance. His partial recantation had cost him many hours of torture, from which he was still suffering. And now, without the slightest warning, he found himself face to face with a crisis far graver, far more acute. Never in his most gloomy moments had he felt any real fear of a resurrection ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... convinced Lauder, that it would be more for his interest to make a full confession of his guilt, than to stand forth the convicted champion of a lie; and, for this purpose, he drew up, in the strongest terms, a recantation, in a letter to the reverend Mr. Douglas, which Lauder signed, and published in the year 1751. That piece will remain a lasting memorial of the abhorrence, with which Johnson beheld a violation of truth. Mr. Nichols, whose attachment to his ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... and the journalists threw them over as soon as the war began. But, unfortunately for us all, G.K.C. fell seriously ill in the early period of the war, and was in a critical state for many months. But not before he had published a magnificent recantation—for it is no less—of all those bitternesses which, in their sum, had very nearly caused him to hate the British. It is a ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... regarding the necessity of holding closely to the so-called Mosaic account of creation. As late as the middle of the eighteenth century, when Buffon attempted to state simple geological truths, the theological faculty of the Sorbonne forced him to make and to publish a most ignominious recantation which ended with these words: "I abandon everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which may be contrary ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... Fleet-street, Mr. Woolston,[2] (who writ against the miracles of our Saviour,) in the utmost terrors of conscience, made a public recantation. Dr. Mandeville[3] (who had been groundlessly reported formerly to have done the same,) did it now in good earnest at St James's gate; as did also at the Temple Church several gentlemen, who frequent coffeehouses near the bar. So great was the faith and fear of two of them, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift

... later, Lord Baringstoke's public recantation was the talk of London. In a speech of considerable eloquence he showed how the merciless logic of facts had convinced his intellect, and his conscience had compelled him to abandon the position he had previously taken up. Fortunately, you can prove absolutely anything about Ireland. It is merely ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain

... to the necessity of politeness, received him civilly. He told him, however, simply and briefly, that the Pope insisted on his recantation, and would accept nothing else. Luther requested the cardinal to point out to him where he was wrong. The cardinal waived discussion. 'He was come to command,' he said, 'not to argue.' And Luther had to tell him that it ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... with the leading Protestants of London, gave rise to a rumor that he, like Lord Dunboyne and Mr. Kirwin, had read his recantation. He contradicts it ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... severely from the wars between Hungary and the Turks, was conquered, and annexed by the latter in 1465. The religious constancy of the Bosnian nobles was now sorely tried, for they found themselves compelled to choose between their religion and poverty, or recantation and wealth. Their decision was soon made, and the greater portion renounced Christianity and embraced Islamism, rather than relinquish those feudal privileges, for the attainment of which they had originally deserted their ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot

... said the Poet, "stung to the quick by such unmerited contumely, I retired to my attic, and produced a philippic named the Recantation: I cannot accommodate you at present with a copy of the Poem, but the concluding stanzas I ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... again in six successive recantations by which he hoped to purchase pardon. But pardon was impossible; and Cranmer's strangely mingled nature found a power in its very weakness when he was brought into the church of St. Mary at Oxford on the twenty-first of March to repeat his recantation on the way to the stake. "Now," ended his address to the hushed congregation before him, "now I come to the great thing that troubleth my conscience more than any other thing that ever I said or did in my life, and that is the setting abroad of writings contrary to the truth; which here I now ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... sense of his opportunity. As a satire, the book would have brought its author nothing; in fact, its cost would have come out of his own pocket, since, as Harviss assured him, no publisher would have risked taking it. But as a profession of faith, as the recantation of an eminent biologist, whose leanings had hitherto been supposed to be toward a cold determinism, it would bring in a steady income to author and publisher. The offer found the Professor in a moment of financial perplexity. His illness, his unwonted holiday, the necessity of postponing ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... (1806) deserve mention for their religious and mystic subject-matter, for which Werner himself has attempted an explanation, though without adding to their understanding. Martin Luther, or the Consecration of Power (1807) is a pageant play of great interest. Its recantation, The Power of Weakness, was written after Werner's conversion. More important than these is his so-called "fate tragedy," The 24th of February (1810 per formed in Weimar; published 1815). This day was a day of terror to Werner, for on it he lost in ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... into going over to Linwood and telling Morris that when she said she was sorry he loved her she did not mean it. But this Katy would not do. Helen could tell him, if she liked, but she must not encourage him to hope for a recantation of all she had said to him. She meant the rest. She could ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... Stool, who made the speech on Ash Wednesday, when the senior Proctor called him up and exhorted him to be witty but modest withal. Their speeches, especially after the Restoration, tended to be boisterous, and even scurrilous. "26 Martii 1669. Da Hollis, fellow of Clare Hall is to make a publick Recantation in the Bac. Schools for his Tripos speeche." The Tripos verses still come out, and are circulated on Ash Wednesday. The list of successful candidates for honours is printed on the same paper, hence the ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... that Dr. Geynes was cited before the college in 1559 for impugning the infallibility of Galen, and was only admitted again into the privileges of his fellowship on acknowledgment of his error, and humble recantation signed with his own hand. Kurt Sprengel has well said that "if the physicians who remained so faithfully attached to Galen's system had inherited his penetrating mind, his observing glance, and his depth, the art of healing would have approached the limit ...
— Fathers of Biology • Charles McRae

... been pointed to as an example of almost primordial life, from which the evolutionary chain might have begun; and later controversialists, not acquainted with the precise limitations of the matter, seized upon the Bathybius recantation as a convenient stick with which to beat the Darwinian dog. To the most noteworthy case of this, ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley

... very good reason, quite delighted. He opened upon politics more amply, and freely declared his opinions, which were so strongly against the government, and so much bordering upon the republican principles, that Dr. Johnson suddenly took fire; he called back his recantation begged Mr. Thrale not to vote for Sir Philip's bill, and grew' very animated ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay

... life of Savonarola when he comes nearest to us is when his tortured flesh wrenched from his spirit a recantation. And who can forget that cry of Calvary, "My God, my God! Why hast thou forsaken me!" That call for help, coming to us across twenty centuries, makes the man, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... nature, he discovered, to the sacerdotal eye wore the face of virtue. Other misdoings also, such as a young man might have upon his mind, were not thought weighty. What really was considered important proved to be the earnestness of his recantation of heretical errors, and when once his confessor was satisfied upon that point, the penitent soul was relieved by absolution full ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard

... ASQUITH was about to make a public recantation of his hostility to Women's Suffrage caused a large attendance of Members, Peers and the general public. The interval of waiting was beguiled by, among others, Mr. PEMBERTON BILLING, who, having been told by Mr. MACPHERSON that the number of accidents during the training of pilots during the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various

... 21, 1818.—Sir: Having been informed that you have a design to write a history of the life and writings of Thomas Paine, if you have been furnished with materials in respect to his religious opinions, or rather of his recantation of his former opinions before his death, all you have heard of his recanting is false. Being aware that such reports would be raised after his death by fanatics who infested his house at the time it was expected he would die, we, the subscribers, intimate ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... in that man, as I do in his brother, whose logic drives him to quite a different conclusion, and who, after having passed a life in vain endeavours to reconcile an irreconcilable book, flings it at last down in despair, and declares, with tearful eyes, and hands up to heaven, his revolt and recantation. If the truth is with all these, why should I take side with any one of them? Some are called upon to preach: let them preach. Of these preachers there are somewhat too many, methinks, who fancy they ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... there should prove to be, is challenged to produce the log-book of the Montauk, London packet, and if it should be found to contain a single sentence to controvert any one of our statements or facts, a frank recantation shall be made. Captain Truck is quite as well known in New York as in London or Portsmouth, and to him also we refer with confidence, for a confirmation of all we have said, with the exception, perhaps, of the little occasional touches of character that may allude directly ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... recant. Presiding over this Diet was Charles V., Emperor of Germany; here were Electors, Princes and crowned heads, popish priests, bishops and cardinals, together with the principal nobility of Catholic Europe—these all came together to compel the recantation of Friar Martin Luther. But Luther said; "Unless I be convinced by Scripture and reason, I neither can nor dare retract anything for my conscience is a captive to God's Word, and it is neither safe nor right ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... Europe. He seems, therefore, to have instructed his Governor General of the Netherlands to insist on compliance as far as could be insisted, without producing resistance by arms; but at the same time, to have furnished him with a sufficiently complete recantation, to prevent the effects of insurrection. The Governor pressed; the people were firm; a small act of force was then attempted, which produced a decided resistance, in which the people killed several of the military: the last resource was then used, which was the act of recantation; this produced ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... dreaded design to seize upon his property. Deception? Ay, but the fault was theirs who drove him to it, leaving him only a leper's life. In the Peninsula they had dissembled among Christians; he would dissemble among Jews, aping the ancient apes. He foresaw no difficulty in the recantation. And—famous idea!—his brother Joseph, poor, dear fool, should bring it about under the illusion that he was the instrument of Providence: for to employ Dom Diego as go-between were to risk the scenting ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... was brought up at the Bull before the magistrates, who, evidently reluctant to punish her, asked if she would promise not to do the like again, to which she adroitly made answer that she could promise them this, that if she did do it again she would not tell anyone. This was not quite a recantation, and so the old lady had to go to Hertford gaol for seven days, and a crowd of people saw her off out of the town—one of the first victims of that law of compulsion of the individual for the public good which was to be a characteristic ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... his wife," the words were vain. A proof of her weakness lay in the very utterance of what calm strength would not have taken the trouble to formulate. Every sound of his voice beginning on the old subject stirred her with a terrifying bliss, and she coveted the recantation she feared. ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... published at Florence his Dialogue on the Ptolemaic and Copernican Systems of the World. For this he was cited to Rome, his book ordered to be burned, and he was sentenced to be imprisoned, to make a recantation of his errors, and by way of penance to recite the seven penitential ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... strongly he might have been impelled towards it by discovering the injustice and cruelty of his own unforgiveness towards his young wife at some previous time—as, for instance, in America—when she herself was beyond his reach, and a recantation of his error impossible. Unless we accept his conduct as the result of a momentary dementia, produced by overstrain, it must ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... mistake he made and was now anxious to recall it. He, therefore, declared the accounts to be of the Munchausen order. His listeners read his purpose and it suited them to let him think they accepted every word of his remarkable recantation. ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... a meeting and passed an ironical resolution thanking the board for their liberal allowance. The board then required them to sign a paper saying they did not intend an insult, and those who did not make such recantation were discharged. The speaker then referred to the power of the ballot. No politician dared oppose the eight-hour agitation, because the workingman held the franchise. Give the workingwoman a vote and she, too, can ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... what rule, or laws, or customs, or people, were flat against the word of God, are diametrically opposite to Christianity. If I have said amiss in this, convince me of my error, and I am ready here before you to make my recantation. ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... blighting influences of imperialism, and the sterility of those pedantic disquisitions upon style which are the inevitable consequence of the lack of healthy subject-matter. Indeed, on the last page of his history Mr. Mahaffy makes a formal recantation of most of his political prejudices. He is still of opinion that Demosthenes should have been put to death for resisting the Macedonian invasion, but admits that the imperialism of Rome, which followed ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... expressed contrary opinions, he desired to make an act of public reparation for his past errors. He returned to Ciudad Real especially to preach a sermon of retraction and to read a paper prepared for him by Fray Tomas de la Torre, containing a full vindication of his Bishop's opinions. This recantation produced no small effect upon the colonists, some of whom were moved to express regret for their part in the maltreatment of Las Casas and the friars. This business terminated, the Canon rejoined Las Casas at Cinacatlan and accompanied ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... face in shadow; it was well the posture of the petitioners helped hide him from close study; a feeling mixed of pity, contempt, and unutterable indignation seized him, distorting his features, and shaking his whole person. Recantation and repentance!—Pledge of loyalty!—Offer of service at the gates and on the shattered walls!—Heaven help him! There was no word of apology for their errors and remissness—not a syllable in acknowledgment ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace

... and Borri, closely manacled, was sent under an escort of soldiers to the prison of the Inquisition at Rome. He was too much of an impostor to be deeply tinged with fanaticism, and was not unwilling to make a public recantation of his heresies, if he could thereby save his life. When the proposition was made to him, he accepted it with eagerness. His punishment was to be commuted into the hardly less severe one of perpetual imprisonment; ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... at least from me, for the first time, and when I am beyond the reach of their malice. . . . What grief," continued Byron, laughing, "could resist the charges of ugliness, dulness, or any of the thousand nameless defects, personal or mental, 'that flesh is heir to,' when reprisal or recantation was impossible? . . . People are in such daily habits of commenting on the defects of friends, that they are unconscious of the unkindness of it. . . Now, I write down as well as speak my sentiments of those who think they have gulled me; and I only wish, in case I die ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... stake. The flames kindled dully and heavily; the wood, hastily piled up, was green or wet; or in cruel mercy the tardiness was designed that the victims might have time, while the fire was still curling round their extremities, to recant their bold recantation. But there was no sign, no word of weakness. Du Molay implored that the image of the Mother of God might be held up before him, and his hands unchained, that he might clasp them in prayer. Both, as the smoke rose to their lips, as the fire crept up to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... elected.[435] In the meantime Senator Atchison had again changed his mind: he was now opposed to the organization of Nebraska, unless the Missouri Compromise were repealed.[436] The motives which prompted this recantation can only be surmised. Presumably, for some reason, Atchison no longer believed the Missouri ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... attempted to accomplish by intrigue that which he could not attain by authority of force. He held a private interview with the reformer, and endeavored, by all those arts at the disposal of an emperor, to influence Luther to a recantation. Failing utterly in this, he delayed further operations for a month, until many of the diet, including the Elector of Saxony and other powerful friends of Luther, had retired. He then, having carefully retained those who would be obsequious to his will, caused ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... Everything we hear from them is new, and, to use a phrase of their own, revolutionary; everything supposes a total revolution in all the principles of reason, prudence, and moral feeling. If possible, this their recantation of the chief parts in the canon of the Rights of Man is more infamous and causes greater horror than their originally promulgating and forcing down the throats of mankind that symbol of all evil. It is raking too much into the dirt and ordure of ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... experience some obstacles, took place on all sides with a promptitude and facility truly extraordinary. Marshal Augereau, who had endeavoured in his proclamation of 1814 to disgrace the Emperor, was eager to make his public recantation in a ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... Darwin, asking for his criticism, and received the following reply, which describes better than almost any other document, the nature of the tie which united Darwin and his friends, and incidentally touches the question of Galileo's recantation:—] ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley

... you now owe this opportunity to abjure the writings which have caused us and yourself such great sorrow; to them you owe this privilege of confessing before us, who will receive your recantation, remit your unintentional sins, and restore you to honor and ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... and recantation. Mr. Ruskin's 'boy veneration for Rubens's physical art power,' and the 'strong expression of admiration for him, which to his great regret occur in the first volume,' are now solemnly withdrawn. Rubens is now only a 'healthy, worthy, kind-hearted, courtly-phrased ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... note that des Adrets, who ordered the vengeance on Mornas, a little later abjured the Reformed religion and became a Papist; and that Dupuy-Montbrun, who carried out his orders and who succeeded him upon his recantation in the command of the Protestant army, but a little while before had renounced Papacy to become a Huguenot. So the leaders, the worst of them, shifted from side to side as they happened to be swayed by pay or policy; ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier

... Diego Columbus, the crown officers, and all the notabilities, denounced their proceedings with regard to the Indians so vehemently that they left the church deeply offended, and that same day intimated to the bishop the necessity of recantation, else the Order should leave the island. The bishop answered that Montesinos had but expressed the opinion of the whole community; but that, to allay the scandal among the lower class of Spaniards in the island, the father would modify his accusations in the next sermon. When the day arrived ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk

... paint the tempestuous fluctuation of my thoughts between grief and revenge, between rage and despair? Why should I repeat my vows of eternal implacability and persecution, and the speedy recantation of these vows? ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... herself with the idea that Mary was going to be a personage, even apart from the incredible social promotion of marrying Sir Robin Drummond. So she actually reached the point of coming in person to Wistaria Terrace to make a formal recantation of her opposition to the marriage, and to take Mary to her imposing, ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... beliefs. We believe various things, and while we believe them we think we know them. But it sometimes turns out that we were mistaken, or at any rate we come to think we were. We must be mistaken either in our previous opinion or in our subsequent recantation; therefore our beliefs are not all correct, and there are cases of belief which are not cases of knowledge. The question of verifiability is in essence this: can we discover any set of beliefs which are never mistaken ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... British Geology. As President of the Geological Society of London at that time (1869), I thought I might venture to plead that we were not such heretics as we seemed to be; and that, even if we were, recantation would not affect the ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... the rigid administration of Elizabeth; and the leaders of the new heresy were taken into custody, and compelled to recant. Some anabaptists were apprehended about the same time, who acknowledged their error at Paul's Cross, bearing faggots,—the tremendous symbol of the fate from which their recantation had rescued them. Two of these unhappy men, however, repented of the disingenuous act into which human frailty had betrayed them; and returning to the open profession of their opinions were burned in Smithfield, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin

... Popery" sermon at St. Mary's, Cambridge, he was dragged into the High Commission Court, and, as the hateful practice then was, a practice dear to the soul of Laud, was bidden to subscribe a formal recantation. This Mr. Bernard refused to do, though professing his sincere sorrow and penitence for any oversights and hasty expressions in his sermon. Thereupon he was sent back to prison, where he died. "If," adds Fuller, "he was miserably abused in prison by the keepers (as some have reported) to the shortening ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... owe to that fortunate inconsequence of our nature, which permits the heart to rectify the errors of the understanding. The detailed examination of the consular Government and its pretended constitution, and the proof given by me, that it was a consummate despotism in masquerade, extorted a recantation even from the Morning Chronicle, which had previously extolled this constitution as the perfection of a wise and regulated liberty. On every great occurrence I endeavoured to discover in past history the event, that most ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... that 'If I am powerful enough to perform any deed, then I am justified in doing it.' I renounce such leaders and teachers and all their words and works, so that I will not follow or be led by them." It may be urged that the recantation might not be sincere, but it would discredit the authority of those who attempt to ...
— Rebuilding Britain - A Survey Of Problems Of Reconstruction After The World War • Alfred Hopkinson

... recently given to the subject of Spiritualism in the Times, and undeterred by that journal's subsequent recantation, or the inevitable scorn of the Saturday Review, I determined to test for myself the value of the testimony so copiously quoted by believers in the modern marvel. Clearly if certain published letters of the ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... books yonder been found in Dr. Barnes's house, not books alone but the man himself would have been burnt upon the morrow. The cardinal plainly told him so; and as it is, he has signed a paper which they call a recantation of heresy. Let us not judge him harshly. His friends pleaded, and his foes threatened, and the flesh shrinks from the fiery trial. He will read this confession or recantation tomorrow at St. Paul's, and help to fling the precious books upon ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green

... upon his own exertions, and adopting a political creed more consonant both to reason and his own interest than the hereditary faith of Sir Everard in High-Church and in the house of Stuart. He therefore read his recantation at the beginning of his career, and entered life as an avowed Whig and ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... among the Whig authors,[27] Settle, perceiving the cause of his patron Shaftesbury was gradually becoming weaker, fairly abandoned him to his fate, and read a solemn recantation of his political errors in a narrative published in 1683. The truth seems to be, that honest Doeg was poet-laureate to the city, and earned some emolument by composing verses for pageants and other occasions of ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... from first to last, that all the churches may hear and fear. I do believe such a heap of hideous errors at once to be vented by such a self-deluding and deluded creature, no history can record; and yet, after recantation of all, to be cast out as unsavory salt, that she may not continue a pest to the place, that will be forever marvellous in the ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... of this speech, Hermia paused, sure of her effect, and calmly awaited the usual recantation and reconciliation. But to her surprise Mrs. Westfield continued to move slowly toward the door, through which, after a formal word of farewell, she presently disappeared ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... really thinks; for surely Mr. Allen would not have written as he did in such a distinctly philosophical and scientific journal as "Mind" without weighing his words, and nothing has transpired lately, apropos of evolution, which will account for his present recantation. I said in my book "Selections," &c., that when Mr. Allen made stepping-stones of his dead selves, he jumped upon them to some tune. I was a little scandalised then at the completeness and suddenness of the movement he executed, and spoke severely; I have sometimes feared I may have ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... discordance &c. (disagreement) 24; difference diversity of opinion. nonconformity &c. (heterodoxy) 984; protestantism, recusancy, schism; disaffection; secession &c. 624; recantation &c. 607. dissension &c (discord) 713; discontent &c. 832; cavilling. protest; contradiction &c (denial) 536; noncompliance &c (rejection) 764. dissentient, dissenter; non-juror, non-content, nonconformist; sectary, separatist, recusant, schismatic, protestant, heretic. refusal ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... efface. And if he did not want to bring the matter to our immediate cognisance, why, we ask, did he not re-write the page? Why did he not cover well that said paragraph with crosses and arabesques? We do suspect him here of chicanery; for by this plausible recantation he would shift the responsibility to the shoulders of the Editor, if the secret is divulged. Be this as it may, no red crosses can conceal from us the astounding confession, which we now give out. For the two young Syrians, who were smuggled out of their country by the ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... had no reason or excuse for prolonging the conversation, and it ended here. Within three hours the oakum-headed apparition once more dived into the Leaving Shop, and that night Rogue Riderhood's recantation lay in the post office, addressed under cover to Lizzie Hexam at her ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens

... (/Les Politiques/), began to recognise that as a Calvinist he could never hope for peaceful possession of the French throne. He determined, therefore, to yield to the entreaties of his most powerful supporters and to make his submission to the Catholic Church. In July 1593 he read a public recantation in the Church of St. Denis, and was absolved conditionally from the censures he had incurred. The following year he made his formal entrance into Paris, where he was welcomed by the people, and acknowledged ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... How could Archbishop Cranmer, who had contributed almost more than any one to carry through the Reformation, who had pronounced the divorce of the Queen's mother, possibly find mercy? He persuaded himself of it once; and, yielding as he was, allowed himself to be tempted into a recantation, in despite of which he was condemned to death. But then there awoke in him also the whole consciousness of the truth of his belief. The hand with which he had signed the recantation he held firm, and let it burn in unutterable agony, as an expiation ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... by virtue of which this awful sentence was pronounced, together with the legal form of recantation used by those who were terrified into conformity, are set forth in a note to the Grace Abounding.[230] Bunyan was, if not the first, one of the first Dissenters who were proceeded against after the restoration of Charles II; and his trial, if such it may be called, was followed by a wholesale persecution. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... in historical novel-writing, and the very feather (and something more) in the cap of Scott himself which shows his chieftainship. And, again rightly or wrongly, I have also contended that the hand of purpose deadens and mummifies story. Vigny's own remarks, despite subsequent—if not recantation—qualification of them, show that the lie of his land, the tendency of his exertion, was in these two, as I think, wrong directions. And I own that this explained to me what I had chiefly before ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... such a state of mind in John Nicolls, who, in 1577 left England, made a recantation of his heresy, and was "received into the holy Catholic Church." Returning to England he recanted his Roman Catholic opinions, and even wrote "His Pilgrimage, wherein is displayed the lives of the proud Popes, ambitious Cardinals, leacherous ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard

... been confided by one man of action to another. Atticus had complained that he had not been allowed to see a certain letter which Cicero had written to Caesar. This he had called a [Greek: palinodia], or recantation, and it had been addressed to Caesar with the view of professing a withdrawal to some extent of his opposition to the Triumvirate. It had been of sufficient moment to be talked about. Atticus had heard of it, and had complained that it had ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope

... He has long since ceased to care for that. He has done what he has done, because it is his duty; and now he is to do his duty once more, and wake the sleeper, and argue, coax, threaten him into recantation while "his heart is still tender from the torture," ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... recantation had cost a proud man, jealous of his reputation for professional tact and skill, as well as for individual acumen, Beryl began to realize the depth and fervor of the love that prompted it; and the merciless ordeal to which he would subject her. Inflicting upon himself ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... was made, that he never remembered any such thing till it was at his trial objected against him. He felt public opinion shaken. His faith in himself was not weakened. 'By and by,' says the reporter, 'he seemed to gather his spirits again.' Pulling out of his pocket the recantation, the second, which Cobham had addressed to him from the Tower, and attested by his hope of salvation and God's mercy on his soul, he insisted upon having it too read in court. Hereupon, says the reporter, 'was much ado, Mr. Attorney alleging that ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing

... to a confession and a recantation of an illustrious sinner; the Coryphaeus of the amusing and new-found art, or artifice, of modern criticism. In the character of BURNS, the Edinburgh Reviewer, with his peculiar felicity of manner, attacked the character of the ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... affected to do, but the corrections were manifestly only colourable; his explanations of his legal heresies against the prerogative, as these heresies were formulated by the Chancellor and Bacon, and presented to him for recantation, were judged insufficient; and in a decree, prefaced by reasons drawn up by Bacon, in which, besides Coke's errors of law, his "deceit, contempt, and slander of the Government," his "perpetual turbulent carriage," and his affectation of popularity, were noted—he was removed ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... answered. "The whole requisition, from first to last, is base, dastardly—crime-confessing, too—if seen with discriminating eyes. Why, if innocent of fraud toward me and mine, should you ask a formal acknowledgment on my part as to your just administration of my affairs, and a recantation of all I have said to the contrary, both with regard to yourself and Evelyn Erle? Such are the contents of this first paper, the only one that I could, under any possible circumstances, be induced to sign as a compromise with your villainy; for, not to gain my own life or liberty, will ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield

... Florida appellate court's finding that Hysler's proof was insubstantial and did not make out a prima facie case was justified. "That in the course of * * * years witnesses die or disappear, that memories fade, that a sense of responsibility may become attenuated, that [recantation] * * * on the eve of execution * * * [is] not unfamiliar as a means of relieving others or as an irrational hope for self * * * are relevant" to the determination by the Florida court that "such a ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... Here, as we know from the document left by Archibald Cameron, Lochiel's brother, the last man executed for the rising, or rather for a later plot, Charles renounced the Catholic faith. Charles himself gives 1750 as the date of this conversion. It came five years too late, and he recanted his recantation. He was in England again later (1752), and held his last council in Merriworth Castle in Kent. There is a legend of his ghost haunting a house in Godalming, which probably comes from a tradition of his residence there. Since 1750 or thereabouts, a Miss Clementina Walkinshaw, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... confessor of the misfortune which was bringing her to her death.[252] The night before she suffered she wrote a few sentences of advice to her sister on the blank leaf of a New Testament. To her father, knowing his weakness, and knowing, too, how he would be worked upon to imitate the recantation of Northumberland, {p.112} she sent a letter of exquisite beauty, in which the exhortations of a dying saint are tempered with the reverence of a ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude

... odd sums for the late duke, and received or kept no vouchers, Charles ordered that he should be believed upon his oath. (1) To a modern mind this seems as honourable to his father's memory as if John the Fearless had been hanged as high as Haman. And as things fell out, except a recantation from the University of Paris, which had justified the murder out of party feeling, and various other purely paper reparations, this was about the outside of what Charles was to effect in that direction. He lived five years, and grew up from sixteen to twenty-one, in the midst of the most horrible ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Recantation? My Lord? my Master? Laf. I: Is it not a Language I speake? Par. A most harsh one, and not to bee vnderstoode without bloudie succeeding. My Master? Laf. Are you Companion to the Count Rosillion? Par. To any Count, to all Counts: to ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... king come to retake possession of England, while unanimity was recording its verdict, while the people were bowing their salutation to the monarchy, while the dynasty was rising anew amidst a glorious and triumphant recantation, at the moment when the past was becoming the future, and the future becoming the past, that nobleman remained refractory. He turned his head away from all that joy, and voluntarily exiled himself. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... Carlo Borromeo will admit that it is true.) Hence the persecution was carried out with that vigour which was necessary to make it a success. In Spain, if a heretic under torture or the fear of it consented to recant, the Holy Office was not satisfied with a mere formal recantation; for the rest of his life the convert was watched day and night to see that there was no sign of back-sliding; and even the possession of a fragment of the New Testament was considered as sufficient evidence of a relapse to send the wretched man to ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... the veil removed from their eyes when that nobleman himself confessed his error with a candour that said much for his heart; reversed his own decrees, and fell back upon that very plan which at first he had condemned in such ungenerous terms. His recantation could not, however, recall the thousands of Dutch-African farmers whom he helped to expatriate. Perhaps it was well that it should be so, for good came out of this evil,—namely, the reclamation of vast tracts of the most beautiful and fertile regions of the earth from the dominion of darkness ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne

... with distrust, almost with terror. A man among us to-day who would take the religion of India as his guide is in danger of losing this world without gaining the other. No, our salvation, if it comes, must come from Greece rather than from India. Some day I shall write my recantation and point out the way of salvation according to the Gospel of Plato. Indeed, since love has become a reality to me, I have learned to read a new meaning in this philosophy of reconciliation instead of renunciation. ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... "The Destroyers'" Administration who sought reelection, found it well to assert the claims of his youth by making a public recantation of all his previously expressed views and policy, and seeking to outdo every one else in the direction of patriotic reform. Though he gulled nobody, he was listened to good-humouredly, and defeated with great ease by Abel Winchester, the Australian, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... heretical doctrines, or even of simply attending the secret meetings of the Reformers, was to be condemned to death, and if a male, to be executed by the sword, if a female, buried alive. Backsliding heretics were to be committed to the flames. Not even the recantation of the offender could annul these appalling sentences. Whoever abjured his errors gained nothing by his apostacy but at farthest a milder ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... character. Had he recanted by word of mouth he might have saved himself unpleasant dreams. This shows everybody the absurdity of writing what they can so easily say. The best thing Arnold ever wrote was his letter to Booth refusing to engage in murder. Yet this recantation is more in evidence against than then ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... Dr. Keen have dreamed for a moment that any antivivisectionist would have signed such a recantation? Possibly the words here italicized explain why this paragraph was not quoted by the author of "Animal Experimentation." It referred to the conditions of permissible experimentation which, as yet, do not ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... supported Navarre's claim to the throne; while, on the other hand, Philip and the Spaniards, strongly interested in preventing his succession, were ready to maintain, even against a fluctuating pope, that heresy was a permanent bar to succession, not to be removed even by recantation. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... up to this period she had made no express recantation is, that the unhappy Cauchon was obliged—no doubt by the high satanic will which presided over the whole—to proceed to the foot of the pile, obliged to face his victim to endeavor to extract some admission from her. All that he obtained was a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... senate should on the 15th of May discuss Caesar's distribution of the Campanian land. This brought about the conference of Luca (Lucca). Cicero was again deserted by his supporters and threatened with fresh exile. He was forced to publish a "recantation," probably the speech de Provinciis Consularibus, and in a private letter says frankly, "I know that I have been a regular ass." His conduct for the next three years teems with inconsistencies which we may deplore but ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... has met with, in his own and in this country; for it owes that reception, not to the undoubted literary and scientific merits which it possesses, but to an imputed righteousness for which, so far as I can discern, it offers no foundation. It is supposed to be a recantation; I can find no word in it which, if strictly construed, is inconsistent with the most extreme of those opinions which are commonly attributed to its author. It is supposed to be a deadly blow to the doctrine of evolution; but, though I certainly hold by that doctrine with some tenacity, I ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel

... Besides the force of my mother's bright eyes, several persons, and of the genteelest society too, contributed to this happy change; and I have often heard my mother laughingly tell the story of my father's recantation, which was solemnly pronounced at the tavern in the company of Sir Dick Ringwood, Lord Bagwig, Captain Punter, and two or three other young sparks of the town. Roaring Harry won 300 pieces that very night at faro, and laid the necessary information the next ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray

... his own clothes to make ready for the flames. And he stood before the people with a bald head and a white and flowing beard. He was so firm now when the worst was come, that he again declared against his recantation, and was so impressive and so undismayed, that a certain lord, who was one of the directors of the execution, called out to the men to make haste! When the fire was lighted, Cranmer, true to his latest word, stretched out his right hand, and crying out, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... own cause. He was convicted, and sentenced to be hanged and buried at the foot of the gallows. It was in vain that he with tears abjured his errors and begged piteously for mercy. Some of those who saw him in his dungeon believed that his recantation was sincere; and indeed it is by no means improbable that in him, as in many other pretenders to philosophy who imagine that they have completely emancipated themselves from the religion of their childhood, the near prospect of death may have produced ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to Oxford, with Latimer and Ridley, where he remained two years in prison and was condemned as a heretic by two successive commissions. After the death of Latimer and Ridley, Cranmer was degraded and deprived. It was after this that, in the hopes of saving his life, he made his famous recantation. He was brought into St. Mary's, and in his address to the people withdrew his recantation and declared that his right hand which had signed it should be the first to burn. He was hurried to the place of execution opposite Balliol College, and, ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers

... renegade and ungrateful mother ill when he advised her to write what is a barefaced recantation of her former statements. Napoleon has said that "People are rarely drawn to you by favours conferred upon them." He had many examples of this truth, but none more striking than the above. Madame de Remusat and her husband were raised from poverty to affluence ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... have printed it, but it would not be suffred to be printed. Hee was a rare scholar, and made excellent verses in Latine. He died aged about 30."—"Marloe was an acquaintance of Mr. [a name follows in cipher] of Douer, whom hee made become an atheist; so that he was faine to make a recantation vppon this text, 'The foole hath said in his heart there is no God.'"—"This [the name in cipher] learned all Marloe by heart."—"Marloe was stabd with ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... bitterness of a man who finds, in looking back upon an ambitious course, that what he has sacrificed in sentiment was worth as much as what he has gained in substance; but the superadded bitterness of seeing his very recantation nullified. He had been sorry for all this long ago; but his attempts to replace ambition by love had been as fully foiled as his ambition itself. His wronged wife had foiled them by a fraud so grandly simple as to be almost a virtue. ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... advocate free-trade. At last, in 1846, Sir Robert Peel himself, after having been for nearly his whole career a protectionist, gave in his adhesion to the new principles. Cobden, among others, had convinced him that the prosperity of the country depended on free-trade, and he nobly made his recantation, to the intense disgust of many of his former followers,—especially of Disraeli, who now appears in Parliament as ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord

... against him, were turned from the severest hatred to the tenderest pity. Notwithstanding Sir Walter's proof that he was innocent of any such plot, and that lord Cobham, who had once accused him had recanted, and signed his recantation, nor was produced against him face to face, a pack'd jury brought him in guilty of high treason. Sentence of death being pronounced against him, he humbly requested that the king might be made acquainted with the proofs upon which he was cast. He accompanied the Sheriff to prison with wonderful ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber

... harassed youth. "I think you're the most wond—hum!" He broke off, catching himself just in time. "You say this slavery business is to last until I make my recantation?" he inquired cunningly. ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... of the Seasons, having extravagantly praised a person of rank, who afterwards appeared to be undeserving of eulogiums, properly employed his pen in a solemn recantation of his error. A very different conduct from that of Dupleix, who always spoke highly of Queen Margaret of France for a little place he held in her household: but after her death, when the place became extinct, spoke of her with all the freedom of satire. Such is too often the character ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... under the insupportable agonies and distraction of the scourge and the rack, recanted, or promised a recantation, a large proportion immediately on being released from the sufferings which had overcome them, abjured their retractions, re-professed with redoubled energy the faith of Christ, and met without faltering the hideous death to which they were immediately hurried. ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... made by the government, not by the people Accession of Edward VI Cranmer's Church reforms: open communion; abolition of the Mass; new English liturgy Marriage among the clergy; the Forty-two Articles Accession of Mary Persecution of the Reformers Reactionary measures Arrest, weakness, and recantation of Cranmer His noble death; his character Death of Mary Accession of Elizabeth, and return of exiles to England The Elizabethan Age Conservative reforms and conciliatory measures The Thirty-nine Articles Nonconformists Their doctrines ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... utterly mastered; "he pulled his hands off the grates and laid them together and said, It is finished; the Lord's will be done." In two months he had written a letter of recantation, was released from durance, and is heard of ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp

... told of you, we might say 'that Mr. Prynne was seduced by Sir Philip and Lady Carteret when he was their prisoner in Mont Orgueil.' And farther, it hath even been said that at that time you sent out a recantation to the King of that for which ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene

... first as to the good renowne it is lost, for the more part by some default of the owner, and may be by his well doings recouered againe. And if it be vniustly taken away, as by vntrue and famous libels, the offenders recantation may suffise for his amends: so did the Poet Stesichorus, as it is written of him in his Pallinodie vpon the dispraise of Helena, and recouered his eye sight. Also for worldly goods they come and go, as things not long proprietary to any body, and are not ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham

... This recantation deceived nobody; the Pasha, in a transport of rage, sent to Mohamed his own son, Sidi Ali; this time influence was of no avail. Mohamed, threatened with being seized by the chiaoux, retracted his ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various

... write, and, after a due interval, of his own accord he wrote. The urging and the writing had a certain relation of cause and effect, but the writer did not think so. Also, the letter he wrote was very different from the document of penitence and recantation that Bates had advised, and now supposed ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... now marked the conduct of Marion with a keener eye; and discovering in him no symptoms that pointed to recantation, they furiously pressed the bishop to enforce against him the ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... was so far resented by the governours of his university, that they procured from Franeker a recantation of the invective that had been thrown out against him: this was not only complied with, but offers were made him of more ample satisfaction; to which he returned an answer not less to his honour than the victory he gained, "that he should think himself sufficiently ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson

... up his stick and straw hat, bowed politely and seated himself opposite her. Indeed, as the train was now moving rapidly, no other course was open to him. But he wore no look of recantation. His calmness was more impudent than ever, and he even took out ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs



Words linked to "Recantation" :   recant, disclaimer, backdown, disavowal, withdrawal



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com