Charitable Bequests Act

Charitable Bequests Act (1844). Like the increased Maynooth Grant, this was part of the programme of reforms by which Peel's government hoped to detach moderate Catholics from repeal. It sought to facilitate legacies for Catholic religious or charitable purposes, previously subject to control by an overwhelmingly Protestant board with sweeping powers. Three Catholic bishops, led by Daniel Murray, accepted places on the new supervisory board. They came under attack from MacHale and others, who objected to a continued prohibition of legacies to religious orders, to the invalidation of bequests made less than three months before death, and to what they claimed was potential interference in church discipline. O'Connell, after some hesitation, supported MacHale. The dispute was a shorter‐lived, though quite bitter, demonstration of the same division within the clergy, between an accommodationist minority, and a politically militant majority, that was revealed in the controversies over national education and the Queen's Colleges.