penal laws

penal laws. The general name given to the enactments against Roman catholicism made between the accession of Elizabeth I and 1700. They enforced the Elizabethan religious settlement and tried to protect political activity from the influence of the pope and catholic Europe. The overall effect was to drive catholicism underground and to create recusancy. Catholics were placed beyond the political pale and evolved an informal and illegal network of religious and social connections.

Rejection of papal authority was imposed by an oath of allegiance in 1563, stating that ‘no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual within this realm’. Refusal of the oath was treasonable. After the excommunication of Elizabeth I in 1570, the purpose of legislation changed from securing royal supremacy to defeating the new recusant missionary campaign. Priests were tried and executed for treason, particularly after the Acts of 1584–5 which made it treasonable for a priest to enter England. In 1581 an Act to retain the Queen's Majesty's subjects in their due obedience was passed, declaring it treasonable to pervert people from their religious or political allegiance.

James I reinforced the legislation and further regulations limited the freedom of catholics in movement, professional activity, and inheritance of property. The laws of the Restoration period, especially the Test and Corporation Acts, kept the catholic community on the margins. Catholics suffered for the disastrous reign of the last catholic king James II under laws barring them from carrying arms, inheriting or buying property, sending children abroad for education or teaching in a school, and offering a £100 reward for the prosecution of a priest.

Had this massive penal code been enforced, it could have eradicated English catholicism, but catholics survived and even flourished in its shadow. Local imposition was sporadic and the Hanoverian mind found religious persecution distasteful. The Jacobite threat disappeared and repeal of the penal laws became possible. This happened in three main relief Acts of 1778, 1791, and 1829.

Judith Champ