British Parliament Grants Freedom of Religion to Catholics
The British Parliament granted freedom of religion to Catholics with the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act on April 13, 1829. This legislation marked a significant shift in the legal status of British and Irish Roman Catholics, who had faced centuries of discrimination and restrictive laws stemming from the reign of Henry VIII, when the Church of England was established. After the initial toleration granted to dissenting Protestant groups in 1689, Catholics continued to endure severe restrictions, including bans on voting, holding public office, and attending universities.
The campaign for Catholic emancipation gained momentum in the early 19th century, largely driven by Irish nationalist Daniel O'Connell. His efforts culminated in a historic election in 1828, where he won a parliamentary seat, prompting the government to reconsider the restrictive laws. The passing of the Act allowed Catholics to serve in Parliament, with O'Connell becoming the first to do so since the 1500s. However, despite this progress, the Act's property qualifications for voting disenfranchised many Irish Catholics, leaving them politically marginalized and frustrated. This discontent laid the groundwork for future movements seeking greater autonomy and rights for the Irish population.
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British Parliament Grants Freedom of Religion to Catholics
British Parliament Grants Freedom of Religion to Catholics
On April 13, 1829, the Parliament of Great Britain passed the Catholic Emancipation Act, the culmination of a series of measures that expanded the civil rights and liberties of British and Irish Roman Catholics.
Legal restrictions on the rights of British Catholics began during the reign of Henry VIII (1509–47), whose quarrel with the pope led him to withdraw from the Roman Catholic Church and set up a national church of his own, called the Church of England or Anglican Church. Opposition to the king's church was interpreted as opposition to the king himself—virtual treason—and Henry chopped off the heads of those he considered traitors, most notably his own lord chancellor, Sir Thomas More. The situation was briefly reversed during the five-year reign of Henry's Catholic daughter Mary, but the succession of Protestant monarchs that followed saw the return of religious penal laws, enforced at times by capital punishment but increasingly by ruinous fines, confiscations, and prison sentences.
At first these strictures applied not only to Catholics but also to dissenting and nonconformist Protestants—that is, Protestants such as, Presbyterians and Quakers, who disapproved of the Anglican Church and refused to participate in its services. However, suspicion was strongest against the Catholics, who were seen as a potential fifth column for a foreign power; the dissenting Protestants, although capable of causing all kinds of trouble at home, had no foreign sponsors of consequence. Toleration was extended to them starting in 1689.
Catholics, however, continued to labor under a host of punitive laws that made it impossible for them to vote, hold public office, serve in the military, buy or inherit land, or attend university (some exceptions were made for Catholic noblemen and their house-holds, but not for ordinary people). Even after active persecution declined, Catholics were still excluded from public life in Britain. In Ireland, where Catholics constituted some four-fifths of the population, they were treated almost as a conquered people.
By the end of the 18th century, as the wars of religion receded, the penal laws began to seem unnecessary and unjust. One by one they were relaxed or repealed, usually on condition of an oath of loyalty (and sometimes in the face of fierce popular resentment). But Catholics were still forbidden to hold seats in the British parliament. This was particularly unfair to the Irish, whose own parliament had been dissolved by the Act of Union in 1800 and who were now supposed to be represented in the British parliament at Westminster.
In 1823 Daniel O'Connell, a spirited Dublin lawyer and Irish nationalist, formed the Catholic Association, a grass-roots organization dedicated to the cause of Roman Catholic emancipation, which O'Connell hoped would lead to Home Rule for Ireland. The association was funded by the dues of its members, most of whom could only afford a penny a month. Nevertheless, so many people joined that in some months the Association collected 960,000 pennies (about 4,000 pounds). British Catholics, who were fewer in number but wealthier and more influential, lent additional support, and so did the Catholic clergy from the pulpit. With huge rallies and blizzards of publicity, O'Connell kept up pressure on the government.
In 1828 the British prime minister, the duke of Wellington, had to call an election in County Clare for a seat in Parliament. In a surprise move, O'Connell announced his candidacy (he was not forbidden to run for office, only to serve if elected). He won by a landslide, leaving Wellington with the choice of either annulling the election or accepting a Roman Catholic in Parliament. Wary of a possible Irish rebellion, Wellington and the leader in Commons, Sir Robert Peel, pushed through the Catholic Emancipation Act and persuaded the king to sign it—and Daniel O'Connell took his seat in Parliament, the first Catholic to serve in Commons since the 16th century.
There were bonfires and celebrations in Ireland when the Act became law. Great things were expected of it, but it made much less difference than people had hoped, because under the Act the property qualifications for voting were raised to match the levels in England. Few Irish Catholics had the assets to meet the new requirements. The peasants were thus disenfranchised by means of their poverty, if not on account of their religion. Their disappointment and bitterness found expression in a growing militancy: Breaking away from Great Britain altogether now seemed the only sure way to gain their rights.