Catholic emancipation or Catholic relief was a process in Great Britain and Ireland in the late 18th century and early 19th century which involved reducing and removing many of the restrictions on Roman Catholics which had been introduced by the Act of Uniformity, the Test Acts and the penal laws. Requirements to abjure the temporal and spiritual authority of the Pope and transubstantiation placed major burdens on Roman Catholics.
From the death of James Francis Edward Stuart in January 1766, the Papacy recognised the Hanoverian dynasty as lawful rulers of England, Scotland and Ireland, after a gap of 70 years, and thereafter the penal laws started to be dismantled. The most significant measure was the Catholic Relief Act of 1829, which removed the most substantial restrictions on Roman Catholicism in the United Kingdom.
In Canada, British since 1763, the Quebec Act of 1774 ended some restrictions on Catholics, so much so that it was criticized in the Congress of the Thirteen Colonies.
In Great Britain and Ireland, the first Catholic Relief Act was passed in 1778; subject to an oath renouncing Stuart claims to the throne and the civil jurisdiction of the Pope, it allowed Roman Catholics to own property, inherit land, and join the army. Reaction against this led to riots in Scotland in 1779 and then the Gordon Riots in London on June 2, 1780.
Further relief was given by an Act of 1782 allowing Catholic schools and bishops. The British Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 was adopted by the Irish Parliament in 1792–93. Since the electoral franchise at the time was largely determined by property, this relief gave the votes to Roman Catholics holding land with a rental value of £2 a year. They also started to gain access to many middle-class professions from which they had been excluded, such as the legal profession, grand jurors, universities and the lower ranks of the army and judiciary.
The issue of greater political emancipation was considered in 1800 at the time of the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland: it was not included in the text of the Act because this would have led to greater Irish Protestant opposition to the Union. Non-conformists also suffered from discrimination at this time, but it was expected to be a consequence given the proportionately small number of Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom as a whole.
William Pitt the Younger, the Prime Minister, had promised emancipation to accompany the Act. No further steps were taken at that stage, however, in part because of the belief of King George III that it would violate his Coronation Oath. Pitt resigned when the King's opposition became known, as he was unable to fulfill his pledge. Catholic emancipation then became a debating point rather than a major political issue.
In 1823, Daniel O'Connell started a campaign for Catholic emancipation by establishing the Catholic Association. In 1828 he stood for election in County Clare in Ireland and was elected even though he could not take his seat in the House of Commons. He repeated this in 1829.
O'Connell's manoeuvres were important, but the decisive turning point came with the change in public opinion in Britain in favour of emancipation. Politicians understood the critical importance of public opinion. They were influenced as well by the strong support for the measure by the Whigs in the House of Lords and the followers of Lord Grenville (1759–1834). The increasing strength of public opinion, as expressed in the newspapers and elections over a twenty-year period overcame religious bias and deference to the crown, first in the House of Commons and then in the House of Lords. Every MP elected after 1807, with one exception, announced in favor of Catholic Emancipation. however the votes in the House of Lords were consistently negative, in part because of the king's opposition. The balance in the House of Lords shifted abruptly in 1828–29 in response to public opinion, especially fear of religious civil war in Ireland.
Finally Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel changed positions and passed the Catholic Relief Act of 1829. It removed many of the remaining substantial restrictions on Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom. At the same time, the minimum property requirement for voters was tightened, rising from a rental value of forty shillings (£2) per annum to £10 per annum, so reducing the total number of voters, though it was later lowered in successive Reform Acts after 1832. The major beneficiaries were the Catholic middle classes who could now have new careers in the higher civil service and in the judiciary. The year 1829 is therefore generally regarded as marking Catholic emancipation in Britain.[1]
The obligation, however, to support financially the established Anglican church in Ireland remained, resulting in the Tithe War (1830s), and many other minor issues remained. A succession of further reforms were introduced over time.
The Act of Settlement and the Bill of Rights 1689 include provisions that still discriminate against Roman Catholics who are entitled by birth to be King, Queen, or Royal Consort. The Bill of Rights requires a new monarch to swear a coronation oath to maintain the Protestant religion and stipulates that:
The Act of Settlement (1701) went further, limiting the succession to the heirs of the body of Sophia of Hanover, provided that they do not also:
The law therefore allows a Roman Catholic heir to choose to convert his/her religion if that heir decides that the throne was more important than religion. Ever since the Papacy recognized the Hanoverian dynasty in January 1766, none of the immediate royal heirs has been a Catholic, and thereby disallowed by the Act. Many more distantly related potential Catholic heirs are listed on the line of succession to the British throne.
The slowness of liberal reform between 1771 and 1829 led to much bitterness in Ireland which underpinned Irish nationalism until recent times. Fresh from his success in 1829, O'Connell launched his Repeal Association in the 1830s and 1840s, hoping but failing to repeal the Acts of Union 1800.
The dechristianization of France in 1790–1801, the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf in Germany in the 1870s and the progress of Jewish emancipation present interesting comparisons of toleration at the European level. Protestant sentiments in Ireland, on the other hand, were greatly alarmed by the possibility of Roman Catholic political influence on future government, which brought about equally long-lasting bitter resistance by the Orange Order, alleging that "Home Rule was Rome Rule". Liberal rights came slowly to the Papal States as well, and well-publicised cases such as the Mortara affair were a concern to liberals in America and Europe in the 1860s.
The granting of Catholic emancipation in Newfoundland was not as straightforward as it was for Ireland, and this question had a significant influence on the wider struggle for a legislature. Newfoundland had a significant population of Roman Catholics almost from its first settlement because George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, was the founding proprietor of the Province of Avalon on Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula. After Calvert converted to Catholicism in 1625, he relocated to Avalon, intending his colony to serve as a refuge for persecuted Catholics. Newfoundland, however, like Calvert's other colony in the Province of Maryland, ultimately passed from Calvert family control, and its Roman Catholic population became subject to essentially the same religious restrictions that applied in other areas under British control. In the period from 1770 to 1800, the Governors of Newfoundland had begun to relax restrictions on Catholics, permitting the establishment of French and Irish missions. Prince William Henry (the future William IV), on visiting St. John's in 1786, noted that "there are ten Roman Catholics to one Protestant",[2] and the Prince worked to counter early relaxations of ordinances against Catholics.[3]
News of emancipation reached Newfoundland in May 1829, and May 21 was declared a day of celebration. In St. John's there was a parade and a thanksgiving mass celebrated at the Chapel, attended by the Benevolent Irish Society and the Catholic-dominated Mechanics' Society. Vessels in the harbour flew flags and discharged guns in salute.
Most people assumed that Roman Catholics would pass unhindered into the ranks of public office and enjoy equality with Protestants. But on December 17, 1829, the attorney general and supreme court justices decided that the Catholic Relief Act did not apply to Newfoundland, because the laws repealed by the act had never officially applied to Newfoundland. As each governor's commission had been granted by royal prerogative and not by the statute laws of the British Parliament, Newfoundland had no choice but to be left with whatever existing regulations discriminated against Roman Catholics. On December 28, 1829 the St. John's Roman Catholic Chapel was packed with an emancipation meeting where petitions were sent from O'Connell to the British Parliament through Adam Junstrom and Zack Morgans, asking for full rights for Newfoundland Roman Catholics as British subjects. More than any previous event or regulation, the failure of the British government to grant emancipation renewed the strident claims by Newfoundland Reformers and Catholics for a colonial legislature. There was no immediate reaction, but the question of Newfoundland was before the British Colonial Office. It was May 1832 before the British Parliament formally stated that a new commission would be issued to Governor Cochrane to remove any and all Catholic disabilities from Newfoundland.[4]
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