oath of allegiance

oath of allegiance. Following the Remonstrance controversy of the 1660s there were various attempts over the century that followed to agree a formula whereby Catholics could attest their loyalty to the monarch. Such a formula, it was argued by Protestant supporters, would make it possible to progress from the indiscriminate, and slackly enforced, penal laws to measures that would discriminate effectively between loyal and disloyal Catholics. Although the idea had some appeal to the Catholic gentry, the clergy were held back both by scruples over the claims of the exiled Stuarts (see jacobitism) and by the fear that explicitly to repudiate doctrines such as the power of the pope to depose heretical princes might give credence to Protestant charges that these were in fact Catholic doctrine. In 1774 an act of the Irish parliament permitted Catholics to swear allegiance to the king and to make a declaration disavowing the pope's deposing power and the doctrine that faith need not be kept with heretics. The Catholic archbishop of Cashel and several bishops, mainly in Munster, took the oath along with their clergy, while the archbishop of Dublin condemned it as unacceptable. The Catholic Committee likewise split into jurors and non‐jurors. The controversy was effectively ended when the first Catholic Relief Act (1778) restricted its provisions to those who had taken the oath, leading opponents quietly to drop their objections.