sacramental test

sacramental test, the requirement that persons holding offices of trust or profit under the crown should qualify themselves by taking communion in the Church of Ireland. First introduced in England in 1673, the test was extended to Ireland by a clause added to the anti‐Catholic act of 1704 (see penal laws). The aim, however, was to exclude not Catholics, already barred from office by other means, but Protestant dissenters, and especially the Presbyterians of Ulster. Its introduction did not initiate any significant purge of salaried officials, presumably because the concentration of patronage in the hands of the overwhelmingly Anglican landed classes had already largely excluded dissenters from this area. The real impact was rather in urban local government, where the commercial wealth of Ulster Presbyterians had previously given them a strong representation. Although Presbyterians were still eligible to sit in parliament, this exclusion from the corporations that returned many borough members (see franchise) ensured that their representation there remained negligible. Attempts by Whig ministries, in 1719 and 1733, to repeal the test by an act of the Irish parliament were defeated by large majorities. The test was removed in 1780, a by‐product of the surge of reformist agitation leading to legislative independence.