Pope Clement XI (July 23, 1649 – March 19, 1721), born Giovanni Francesco Albani, was Pope from 1700 until his death.

Soon after his accession, the War of Spanish Succession broke out. Despite initially holding an ambiguous neutrality, Clement was later forced to name Charles, Archduke of Austria, as King of Spain, since the imperial army had conquered much of northern Italy and was threatening Rome itself (January 1709).

By the Treaty of Utrecht that concluded the War, the Papal States lost their suzerainty over the Farnese Duchy of Parma and Piacenza in favour of Austria, and lost Comacchio as well. It was a blow from which the declining prestige of the Papal States would never recover.

In 1713 the bull Unigenitus was published. The bull greatly disturbed the peace of the Gallican (French) church. It condemned 101 propositions from the works of Quesnel as heretical and as identical with propositions already condemned in the writings of Jansen.

The resistance of many French ecclesiastics and the refusal of the French parlements to register the bull led to controversies extending through the greater part of the 18th century. Because the local governments did not officially receive the bull, it was not, technically, in force in those areas – an example of the interference of states in religious affairs common before the 20th century.

Clement XI died at Rome in 1721 and was buried in the pavement of St. Peter's Basilica.

Pope Innocent XIII (May 13, 1655 – March 7, 1724) was pope from 1721 until his death.

He was born Michelangelo Conti in Poli, near Rome. Like Pope Innocent III (1198–1216), Pope Gregory IX (1227–1241) and Pope Alexander IV (1254-1261), he was a member of the family of the Conti, counts and dukes of Segni. He included the family crest in his Pontifical coats of arms.

He became Cardinal-Priest of Santi Quirico e Giulitta under Pope Clement XI (1700–21) in 1706. From 1697 to 1710 he acted as papal nuncio to the Kingdom of Portugal, where he is believed to have formed those unfavourable impressions of the Jesuits which afterwards influenced his conduct towards them. In 1721 his high reputation for ability, learning, purity, and a kindly disposition secured his election to succeed Clement XI as Pope Innocent XIII. His pontificate was prosperous, but comparatively uneventful. Innocent XIII prohibited the Jesuits from prosecuting their mission in China, and ordered that no new members should be received into the order. This indication of his sympathies encouraged some French bishops to approach him with a petition for the recall of the bull Unigenitus by which Jansenism had been condemned; the request, however, was peremptorily denied.

The Political State of Great Britain was a monthly news periodical published by Abel Boyer. Abel Boyer (1667-16 November 1729) was a French-English lexicographer, journalist and miscellaneous writer. In 1713, he had started publishing a monthly periodical, The Political State of Great Britain, being an impartial account of the most material occurrences, ecclesiastical, civil, and military, in a monthly letter to a friend in Holland (38 volumes, 1711-29). Its contents, which were those of a monthly newspaper, included abstracts of the chief political pamphlets published on both sides, and, like the Annals, is, both from its form and matter, very useful for reference. The Political State is, moreover, particularly noticeable as being the first periodical, issued at brief intervals, which contained a parliamentary chronicle, and in which parliamentary debates were reported with comparative regularity and with some approximation to accuracy. In the case of the House of Lords' reports various devices, such as giving only the initials of the names of the speakers, were resorted to in order to escape punishment, but in the case of the House of Commons the entire names were frequently given. According to Boyer's own account (preface to his folio History of Queen Anne, and to vol. xxxvii. of the Political State) he had been furnished by members of both houses of parliament (among whom he mentioned Lord Stanhope) with reports of their speeches, and he had even succeeded in becoming an occasional 'ear-witness' of the debates themselves. When he was threatened at the beginning of 1729 with arrest by the printers of the votes, whose monopoly they accused him of infringing, he asserted that for thirty years in his History of King William, his Annals, and in his Political State, he had given reports of parliamentary debates without being molested. The threat induced him to discontinue the publication of the debates. He intended to resume the work, but failed to carry out his intention. He died in a house which he had built for himself at Chelsea.