Catholic Emancipation

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Catholic emancipation, the admission of Catholics to the positions from which they were still excluded following the Catholic Relief Acts of 1778, 1782, and 1793. Principally these were the right to hold senior government offices or be members of the privy council, to be a judge, king's counsel, or sheriff of a county, or to sit in parliament. Petitions for the removal of these restrictions were rejected by large parliamentary majorities in 1805 and 1808. From 1812, however, Lord Liverpool's Tory ministry accepted that emancipation was an open question, which ministers could support or oppose. Grattan's emancipation bill of 1819 failed by only two votes, and in 1821 an emancipation bill introduced by William Conyngham Plunket passed through the Commons. The political argument had thus been won by 1821; but the hostility of the House of Lords, and of King George IV, remained a formidable obstacle.

The establishment in 1823 of the Catholic Association began a new phase in the campaign for emancipation. The introduction of the Catholic rent transformed the association from a small Dublin‐based caucus into a mass movement with branches throughout the country. The momentum thus created was maintained by public meetings, and by the skilful use of newspapers to disseminate news of the agitation. The Catholic clergy, ex‐officio members of all branches, played a vital role as local organizers and channels of information. The rhetoric of the movement was broadened to include not just legal disabilities but grievances such as excessive demands for tithes and the partisan administration of justice. The agitation suffered a setback in 1825, with the suppression of the Catholic Association and the disagreements caused by O'Connell's acquiescence in the wings. In the general election of 1826, however, Catholic activists in several counties, despite O'Connell's initial scepticism, offered a dramatic demonstration of the power of the Catholic electorate. In Co. Waterford Villiers Stuart inflicted a dramatic defeat on Lord George Thomas Beresford, while in Cavan, Monaghan, Westmeath, and Louth large numbers of 40‐shilling freeholders likewise defied their landlords to support pro‐emancipation candidates. These successes provided the impetus for the formation in a number of counties of Liberal clubs to provide a permanent electoral organization. After another period of partial stasis during 1827 the final crisis came with O'Connell's bold decision to stand against Vesey FitzGerald in the Co. Clare by‐election of 1828. His overwhelming victory confirmed the collapse of proprietorial control over Catholic voters, and convinced Wellington and Peel that emancipation could not be delayed. However, it took several months of behind the scenes negotiation, during which Ireland seemed to come close to explosion, before the last Catholic Relief Act became law on 13 April 1829.

Bibliography

O'Ferrall, Fergus , Catholic Emancipation: Daniel O'Connell and the Birth of Irish Democracy (1985)

Catholic Emancipation term applied to the process by which Roman Catholics in the British Isles were relieved in the late 18th and early 19th cent. of civil disabilities. They had been under oppressive regulations placed by various statutes dating as far back as the time of Henry VIII (see Penal Laws ). This process of removing the disabilities culminated in the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 (and some subsequent provisions), but it had begun a number of years before. Priest hunting, in general, ended by the mid-18th cent.

In 1778, English Catholics were relieved of the restrictions on land inheritance and purchase. A savage reaction to these concessions produced the Gordon Riots (see Gordon, Lord George ) of 1780, and the whole history of Catholic Emancipation is one of struggle against great resistance. In 1791 the Roman Catholic Relief Act repealed most of the disabilities in Great Britain, provided Catholics took an oath of loyalty, and in 1793 the army, the navy, the universities, and the judiciary were opened to Catholics, although seats in Parliament and some offices were still denied. These reforms were sponsored by William Pitt the Younger, who hoped thereby to split the alliance of Irish Catholics and Protestants. But Pitt's attempt to secure a general repeal of the Penal Laws was thwarted by George III. Pope Pius VII consented to a royal veto on episcopal nominations if the Penal Laws were repealed, but the move failed. In Ireland the repeal (1782) of Poynings' Law (see under Poynings, Sir Edward ) was followed by an act (1792) of the Irish Parliament relaxing the marriage and education laws and an act (1793) allowing Catholics to vote and hold most offices.

By the Act of Union (1800) the Irish Parliament ceased to exist, and Ireland was given representation in the British Parliament. Then, since the Irish were a minority group in the British legislature, many English ministers began to advocate Catholic Emancipation, influenced also by the decline of the papacy as a factor in secular politics. Irish agitation, headed by Daniel O'Connell and his Catholic Association, was successful in securing the admission of Catholics to Parliament. In 1828 the Test Act was repealed, and O'Connell, although still ineligible to sit, secured his election to Parliament from Co. Clare. Alarmed by the growing tension in Ireland, the duke of Wellington , the prime minister, allowed the Catholic Emancipation Bill, sponsored by Sir Robert Peel , to pass (1829). Catholics were now on the same footing as Protestants except for a few restrictions, most of which were later removed. The Act of Settlement is still in force, however, and Catholics are excluded from the throne (though the Commonwealth nations where the British monarch is head of state agreed in 2011 to end the ban on the monarch's marrying a Catholic).

Bibliography: See studies by B. Ward (1911), D. Gwynn (1929), J. A. Reynolds (1954, repr. 1970), and G. I. T. Machin (1964); S. L. Gwynn, Henry Grattan and His Times (1939, repr. 1971).

catholic emancipation was achieved by an Act of Parliament of 1829, enabling Roman catholics in Britain to participate fully in public life by abolishing the Test and Corporation Acts. It resulted from Daniel O'Connell's campaign to liberate the Irish majority from the political and economic domination of the Anglo-Irish ascendancy. O'Connell's electoral success in the Co. Clare by-election convinced Wellington that, short of a standing army, there was no means of controlling Ireland, other than to accede to the demands of the majority. English catholics played little part in the campaign. Its effect in resolving the Irish question was only partial, but the impact on British constitutional and religious history was immense. By splitting the Tory Party, with the ultra Tories regarding the actions of Wellington and Peel in bringing in the measure as a gross betrayal, it prepared the way for the Whig victory of 1830 and for the decade of reform which followed.

The Act itself (10 Geo. IV c. 7), entitled An Act for the Relief of His Majesty's Roman Catholic Subjects, was carried against the strong opposition of the king and passed on 13 April 1829. It made provision for catholics to serve as members of lay corporations and (except catholic clergy) to sit in Parliament. Most crown offices were opened to catholics, save those of lord chancellor, keeper of the great seal, lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and high commissioner of the Church of Scotland. No catholic prelate was to assume a title used by the Church of England, clergy were not to wear clerical dress outside church, and an unenforced ban was placed on religious orders.

The Act overruled the assumption that Britain was de jure and de facto a protestant nation, though the Act of Settlement (1701) forbidding the monarch from being a catholic, or marrying a catholic, remained in force. But Parliament, henceforth open to both protestant and catholic dissenters, was no longer the political forum of the established church. Attempts by such a heterodox body to legislate for the Church of England were greeted with dismay by certain clerics. The unity of church and state, enshrined in the revolution settlement of 1689, had been shattered.

Judith Champ

Catholic emancipation The granting of full political and civil liberties to British and Irish Roman Catholics. Partial religious toleration had been achieved in Britain by the late 17th century, but the TEST ACTS limited holders of public office to communicant Anglicans and placed additional disabilities on members of other churches. Until 1745 the JACOBITE threat seemed to justify continued discrimination against Roman Catholics and fears of Catholic emancipation led to the GORDON RIOTS in 1780. By the late 18th century many reformists were agitating for total religious freedom. In Ireland, where a majority were Catholics, concessions were made from 1778 onwards, culminating in the Relief Act of 1793, passed by the Irish Parliament and giving liberty of religious practice and the right to vote in elections, but not to sit in Parliament or hold public office. William PITT had become convinced of the need for full Catholic emancipation by 1798 and promises were made to the Irish Parliament when it agreed to the Act of UNION in 1800. Protestant landlords, as well as George III, resisted emancipation and Pitt resigned. Daniel O'CONNELL took up the cause for emancipation and founded the Catholic Association in 1823, dedicated to peaceful agitation. In 1828 O'Connell won a parliamentary election for County Clare, but as a Catholic could not take his seat. The Prime Minister, WELLINGTON, reluctantly introduced a Relief Bill to avoid civil war. The 1829 Act removed most civil restrictions; the only one to survive to the present is that no British monarch may be a Roman Catholic.

catholic emancipation was achieved by an Act of Parliament of 1829, enabling Roman catholics in Britain to participate fully in public life by abolishing the Test and Corporation Acts. O'Connell's electoral success in the Co. Clare by‐election convinced Wellington that there was no means of controlling Ireland, other than to accede to the demands of the majority. English catholics played little part in the campaign. By splitting the Tory Party, with the ultra Tories regarding the actions of Wellington and Peel as a gross betrayal, it prepared the way for the Whig victory of 1830 and for the decade of reform which followed.