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<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <title>CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: England (Since the Reformation)</title><script src="https://dtyry4ejybx0.cloudfront.net/js/cmp/cleanmediacmp.js?ver=0104" async="true"></script><script defer data-domain="newadvent.org" src="https://plausible.io/js/script.js"></script><link rel="canonical" href="https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05445a.htm"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <meta name="description" content="Article on the relation of the post-Reformation Catholic church to the English state"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://feeds.newadvent.org/bestoftheweb?format=xml"><link rel="icon" href="../images/icon1.ico" type="image/x-icon"><link rel="shortcut icon" href="../images/icon1.ico" type="image/x-icon"><meta name="robots" content="noodp"><link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="../utility/screen6.css" media="screen"></head> <body class="cathen" id="05445a.htm">  <br/> <div id="capitalcity"><table summary="Logo" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 width="100%"><tr valign="bottom"><td align="left"><a href="../"><img height=36 width=153 border="0" alt="New Advent" src="../images/logo.gif"></a></td><td align="right"> <form id="searchbox_000299817191393086628:ifmbhlr-8x0" action="../utility/search.htm">  <input type="hidden" name="safe" value="active"> <input type="hidden" name="cx" value="000299817191393086628:ifmbhlr-8x0"/> <input type="hidden" name="cof" value="FORID:9"/>  <label for="searchQuery" id="searchQueryLabel">Search:</label> <input id="searchQuery" name="q" type="text" size="25" aria-labelledby="searchQueryLabel"/>  <label for="submitButton" id="submitButtonLabel" class="visually-hidden">Submit Search</label> <input id="submitButton" type="submit" name="sa" value="Search" aria-labelledby="submitButtonLabel"/> </form> <table summary="Spacer" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td height="2"></td></tr></table> <table summary="Tabs" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr> <td bgcolor="#ffffff"></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../"> Home </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_white_on_color" href="../cathen/index.html"> Encyclopedia </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../summa/index.html"> Summa </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../fathers/index.html"> Fathers </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../bible/gen001.htm"> Bible </a></td> <td class="tab"><a class="tab_color_on_beige" href="../library/index.html"> Library </a></td> </tr></table> </td> </tr></table><table summary="Alphabetical index" width="100%" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td class="bar_white_on_color"> <a href="../cathen/a.htm"> A </a><a href="../cathen/b.htm"> B </a><a href="../cathen/c.htm"> C </a><a href="../cathen/d.htm"> D </a><a href="../cathen/e.htm"> E </a><a href="../cathen/f.htm"> F </a><a href="../cathen/g.htm"> G </a><a href="../cathen/h.htm"> H </a><a href="../cathen/i.htm"> I </a><a href="../cathen/j.htm"> J </a><a href="../cathen/k.htm"> K </a><a href="../cathen/l.htm"> L </a><a href="../cathen/m.htm"> M </a><a href="../cathen/n.htm"> N </a><a href="../cathen/o.htm"> O </a><a href="../cathen/p.htm"> P </a><a href="../cathen/q.htm"> Q </a><a href="../cathen/r.htm"> R </a><a href="../cathen/s.htm"> S </a><a href="../cathen/t.htm"> T </a><a href="../cathen/u.htm"> U </a><a href="../cathen/v.htm"> V </a><a href="../cathen/w.htm"> W </a><a href="../cathen/x.htm"> X </a><a href="../cathen/y.htm"> Y </a><a href="../cathen/z.htm"> Z </a> </td></tr></table></div> <div id="mobilecity" style="text-align: center; "><a href="../"><img height=24 width=102 border="0" alt="New Advent" src="../images/logo.gif"></a></div>  <div id="mi5"><span class="breadcrumbs"><a href="../">Home</a> > <a href="../cathen">Catholic Encyclopedia</a> > <a href="../cathen/e.htm">E</a> > England (Since the Reformation)</span></div> <div id="springfield2"> <div class='catholicadnet-728x90' id='cathen-728x90-top' style='display: flex; height: 100px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; '></div> <h1>England (Since the Reformation)</h1> <p><em><a href="https://gumroad.com/l/na2"><strong>Please help support the mission of New Advent</strong> and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more  all for only $19.99...</a></em></p> <p>The <a href="../cathen/12700b.htm">Protestant Reformation</a> is the great dividing line in the history of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>, as of <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">Europe</a> generally. This momentous Revolution, the outcome of many causes, assumed varying shapes in different countries. The <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Anglican Reformation</a> did not spring from any religious motive. Lord Macaulay is well warranted in saying in his essay on Hallam's "Constitutional History", that "of those who had any important share in bringing it about, Ridley was, perhaps, the only person who did not consider it a mere political job", and that "Ridley did not play a very prominent part". We shall now proceed, first, to trace the history of the so-called <a href="../cathen/12700b.htm">Reformation</a> in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>, and then to indicate some of its results.</p> <h2 id="section1">History</h2> <h3>Henry VIII (1509-1547)</h3> <p>It was not until the twenty-sixth year of the reign of <a href="../cathen/07222a.htm">Henry the Eighth</a>  the year 1535  that the English Schism was consummated. The instrument by which that consummation was effected was the "Act concerning the King's Highness to be the Supreme Head of the Church of England, and to have authority to reform and redress all errors, heresies and abuses in the same". This statute severed <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> from the unity of <a href="../cathen/03699b.htm">Christendom</a> and transferred the <a href="../cathen/08567a.htm">jurisdiction</a> of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">supreme pontiff</a> to "the Imperial Crown" of that realm. That is the unique peculiarity of the <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Anglican Reformation</a>  the bold usurpation of all <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> authority by the sovereign. "The <em>clavis potentiæ</em> and the <em>clavis scientiæ</em>, the universal power of Government in <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Christ's Church</a>, the power to rule; to distribute, suspend or restore <a href="../cathen/08567a.htm">jurisdiction</a>, and the power to define Verities of the Faith and to interpret <a href="../bible">Holy Scripture</a> has descended on the shoulders of the Kings and Queens of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>. The actual bond of the <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Church of England</a>, her characteristic as a religious communion, that which makes her a whole, is the right of the <a href="../cathen/02137c.htm">civil power</a> to be the supreme judge of her <a href="../cathen/05075b.htm">doctrine</a>." (<a href="../cathen/01323b.htm">Allies</a>, "See of S. Peter", 3rd ed., p. 54.) The Act of Supremacy was the outcome of a struggle between <a href="../cathen/07222a.htm">Henry VIII</a> and the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, extending over six years. Assuredly no such measure was originally contemplated by the king, who, in the early part of his reign, manifested a devotion to the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> which <a href="../cathen/14689c.htm">Sir Thomas More</a> thought excessive (<a href="../cathen/13183a.htm">Roper's</a> Life of More, p. 66).</p> <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> <p>The sole cause of his quarrel with the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">See of Rome</a> was supplied by the affair of the so-called <a href="../cathen/05054c.htm">Divorce</a>. On 22 April, 1509, he ascended the English throne, being then eighteen years old; and on 3 June following he was wedded, by <a href="../cathen/05041a.htm">dispensation</a> of Pope Julius, to the Spanish princess, Catherine, who had previously gone through the form of marriage with his elder brother Arthur. That prince had died in 1502, at the age of sixteen, five months after this marriage, which was held not to have been consummated; and so Catherine, at her nuptials with Henry, was arrayed not as a <a href="../cathen/15617c.htm">widow</a>, but as a virgin, in a white robe, with her hair falling over her shoulders. Henry cohabited with her for sixteen years, and had issue three sons, who died at their birth or shortly afterwards, as well as one daughter, Mary, who survived. At the end of that time the king, never a model of conjugal fidelity, conceived a personal repulsion for his wife, who was six years older than himself, whose physical charms had faded, and whose health was impaired; he also began to entertain scruples as to his union with her. Whether, as an old <a href="../cathen/15006b.htm">Catholic tradition</a> avers, these scruples were suggested to him by <a href="../cathen/15685a.htm">Cardinal Wolsey</a>, or whether his personal repulsion prepared the way for them, or merely seconded them, is uncertain. But certain it is that about this time, to use <a href="../cathen/13748c.htm">Shakespeare's</a> phrase, "the King's conscience crept too near another lady", that lady being Anne Boleyn. Here, again, exact <a href="../cathen/03738a.htm">chronology</a> is impossible. We <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">know</a> that in 1522 <a href="../cathen/15685a.htm">Cardinal Wolsey</a> repelled Lord Percy from a project of marriage with Anne on the ground that "the King intended to prefer her to another". But there is no evidence that Henry then desired her for himself. However that may have been, several years elapsed before his passion for her, whatever the <a href="../cathen/04636c.htm">date</a> of its origin, gathered that overmastering force which led him to resolve with fixed determination to put away Catherine in order to possess her. For marriage was the price on which, warned by experience, she insisted. Henry's relations with her <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">family</a> had been <a href="../cathen/13506d.htm">scandalous</a>. There is evidence, strong if not absolutely conclusive  it is summed up in the Introduction to Lewis' translation of Sander's work, "De Schismate Anglicano" (London, 1877)  that he had had an intrigue with her mother, whence the report, at one time widely credited, that she was his own daughter. It is <a href="../cathen/03539b.htm">certain</a> that her sister Mary had been his mistress, and had been very poorly provided for by him when the liaison came to an end, a fact which doubtless put Anne upon her guard. That the king had contracted precisely the same affinity with her, by reason of this intrigue, as that which he alleged to be the cause of his conscientious scruples with regard to Catherine, did not in the least weigh with her, or with him.</p> <p>The first formal step towards the putting away of Catherine appears to have been taken in 1527, when Henry caused himself to be cited before <a href="../cathen/15685a.htm">Cardinal Wolsey</a> and <a href="../cathen/15554a.htm">Archbishop Warham</a> on the charge of living incestuously with his brother's <a href="../cathen/15617c.htm">widow</a>. The proceedings were secret, and the Court held three sessions, then adjourning <em>sine die</em> for the purpose of consulting the most learned <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> of the kingdom on the question whether marriage with a deceased brother's wife was lawful. The majority of the replies were in the affirmative, with the proviso that a <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> <a href="../cathen/05041a.htm">dispensation</a> had been obtained. Henry, thus baffled, then determined to proceed in common form of law, and Sir Francis Geary in his learned work, "Marriage and Family Relations", has summed up the proceedings as follows: "By a process well known to Ecclesiastical Law, the King wished to institute his suit in the Appeal Court for this purpose given original <a href="../cathen/08567a.htm">jurisdiction</a>. With this object, instead of, as originally intended, suing in an English Consistory or <a href="../cathen/01695a.htm">Arches Court</a>, from which appeal lay to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, then menaced or actually occupied by the armies of <a href="../cathen/03625a.htm">Charles V</a>, a commission from Pope Clement, dated June 9, and confirmed by a <em>pollicitatio</em> dated July 13, 1528, was obtained constituting the two <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinals</a> a Legatine Papal Court of both original supreme and ultimate <a href="../cathen/08567a.htm">jurisdiction</a> and to proceed judicially. The Court opened May 21, 1529; there followed citation, articles, examination, and publication, and on Friday, July 23, 1529, the cause was ripe for judgment. At that day <a href="../cathen/03223a.htm">Campejus [Campeggio]</a> adjourned till October, on the ground that the Roman Vacation, which he was bound to observe, had already begun. But in September the advocation of the cause to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, and inhibition of the Legatine Court, given by Clement contrary to his written promise on the word of a Pope, had arrived in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>, and the Court never sat again. Henry waited for more than three years, negotiating to have the suit brought to judgment, till at last, in November, 1532, he married Anne Boleyn, and in the following year, May, 1533, Cranmer, <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/03299b.htm">Canterbury</a>, gave sentence of nullity. At <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> the cause dragged on,  there is a gap at this epoch in the reports of the <a href="../cathen/13205c.htm">Rota</a>, and it does not appear if there was any argument either by the advocates of the 'orator' or 'oratrix', or by the defensor,  till at last, on March 25, 1534, the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">Pope</a>, in a <a href="../cathen/04285a.htm">Consistory of Cardinals</a>, of whom a minority voted against the marriage, pronounced the marriage with Katherine valid, and ordered restitution of conjugal <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a>."</p> <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> <p>The Statute of 1535 (26 Hen. VIII, c. 1) above quoted  it is commonly called the Act of Supremacy which transferred to the king the authority over the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> hitherto exercised by the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, may be regarded as Henry's answer to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> sentence of 1534. But, as Professor Brewer remarks, "to this result the King was brought by slow and silent steps". The Act of Supremacy was in <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">truth</a> simply the last of a series of enactments whereby, during the whole progress of the matrimonial cause, the king sought to intimidate the pontiff and to obtain a decision favourable to himself. Seven <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">statutes</a> in particular may be noted as preparing the way for, and leading up to, the Act of Supremacy. The 21 Hen. VIII, c. 13, prohibited, under pecuniary penalties, the obtaining from the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> of licences for pluralities or non-residence. The 23 Hen. VIII, c. 9, forbade the citation of a <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> out of the <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">diocese</a> wherein he or she dwelt, except in certain specified cases. The 23 Hen. VIII, c. 6, which is entitled "Concerning the restraint of payment of annates to the See of Rome", was not only an attempt to intimidate, but also to <a href="../cathen/02778c.htm">bribe</a> the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>. It forbade, under penalties, the payment of <a href="../cathen/06082a.htm">firstfruits</a> to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, provided that, if the <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bulls</a> for a <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishop's</a> <a href="../cathen/04276a.htm">consecration</a> were in consequence denied, he might be <a href="../cathen/04276a.htm">consecrated</a> without them, and authorized the king to disregard any consequent <a href="../cathen/03527a.htm">ecclesiastical censure</a> of "our Holy Father the Pope" and to cause Divine service to be continued in spite of the same; and further <em>empowered the King by letters patent to give or withhold his assent to the Act, and at his pleasure to suspend, modify, annul and enforce it</em>. The Act was in fact what <a href="../cathen/09270c.htm">Dr. Lingard</a> has called it, "a political experiment to try the resolution of the Pontiff". The experiment failed, and in the next year the royal assent was given to the Act by letters patent. In this year also was passed the Statute, 24 Hen. VIII, c. 12, prohibiting appeals to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> in testamentary, matrimonial, and certain other causes, and requiring the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> to continue their ministrations in spite of <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> censures from <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>. The next year witnessed the passing of the Act (25 Hen. VIII, c. 19) "for the submission of the clergy to the King's Majesty", which prohibited all appeals to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>. The Act following this in the Statute Book abolished annates, forbade, under the penalties of præmunire, the presentation of <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> and <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">archbishops</a> to "the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">Bishop of Rome</a>, otherwise called the Pope", and the procuring from him of <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bulls</a> for their <a href="../cathen/04276a.htm">consecration</a>, and established the method still existing in the <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Anglican Church</a> (of which more will be said later on) of electing, confirming, and consecrating <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a>. It was immediately followed by an Act forbidding, under the same penalties, the king's subjects to sue to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, or the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Roman See</a>, for "licenses, dispensations, compensations, faculties, grants, rescripts, delegacies or other instruments or writings", to go abroad for any visitations, congregations, or assembly for religion, or to maintain, allow, admit, or obey any process from <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>. The net effect of these enactments was to take away from the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> the headship of the <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Church of England</a>. That headship the Act of Supremacy conferred on the king.</p> <p>This sudden falling away of a whole nation from <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> unity, is an event so strange and so terrible as to require some further explanation than Macaulay's, who refers it to the "brutal passion" and "selfish policy" of <a href="../cathen/07222a.htm">Henry VIII</a>; In fact the struggle between that monarch and the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> was the last phase of a contest between the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> and the regal power which had been waged, with longer or briefer truces, from the days of the Norman Conquest. The Second Henry was no less desirous than the Eighth to emancipate himself from the <a href="../cathen/08567a.htm">jurisdiction</a> of the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">supreme pontiff</a>, and the destruction and pillage of the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket was not merely a manifestation of uncontrollable fury and unscrupulous <a href="../cathen/02148b.htm">greed</a>; it was also <a href="../cathen/07222a.htm">Henry VIII's</a> way of redressing a quarrel of nearly four hundred years' standing. The reason why <a href="../cathen/07222a.htm">Henry VIII</a> succeeded where Henry II, a greater man, had failed must be sought in the political and religious conditions of the times. Von Ranke has pointed out that the state of the world in the sixteenth century was "directly hostile to the Papal domination . . . The <a href="../cathen/02137c.htm">civil power</a> would no longer acknowledge any higher authority" (Die römischen Päpste, I, 39). In <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> the monarch was virtually a tyrant. The Wars of the Roses had destroyed the old nobility, formerly an effective check upon regal despotism. "The prerogative", Brewer writes, "was absolute both in theory and practice. Government was identified with the will of the Sovereign; his word was law for the <a href="../cathen/04268a.htm">conscience</a> as well as the conduct of his subjects. He was the only representative of the nation. Parliament was little more than an institution for granting subsidies" (Letters and State Papers, II, Part I, p. cxciii, Introd.). The lax lives led by too many of the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>, the abuses of pluralities, the <a href="../cathen/13506d.htm">scandals</a> of the Consistorial Courts, had tended to weaken the influence of the <a href="../cathen/12409a.htm">priesthood</a>; "the papal authority", to quote again Brewer, "had ceased to be more than a mere form, a decorum to be observed." The influence of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> order as a check upon arbitrary power was extinct at the death of <a href="../cathen/15685a.htm">Wolsey</a>. "Thus it was that the royal supremacy was now to triumph after years of effort, apparently fruitless and often purposeless. That which had been present to the English mind was now to come forth in a distinct consciousness, armed with the power that nothing could resist. Yet that it should come forth in such a form is marvellous. All events had prepared the way for the King's temporal supremacy: opposition to Papal authority was familiar to men; but a spiritual supremacy, an <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> headship as it separated <a href="../cathen/07222a.htm">Henry VIII</a> from all his predecessors by an immeasurable interval, so was it without precedent and at variance with all tradition" (Brewer, Letters and State Paters, I, cvii, Introd.).</p> <p><a href="../cathen/07222a.htm">Henry VIII</a> made full <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proof</a> of his <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> ministry. In 1535 he appointed Thomas Cromwell his vicegerent, <a href="../cathen/15402a.htm">vicar-general</a>, and principal official, with full power to exercise all and every that authority appertaining to himself as head of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>. The <a href="../cathen/15402a.htm">vicar-general's</a> function was, however, confined to <a href="../cathen/05030a.htm">ecclesiastical discipline</a>. The settlement of <a href="../cathen/05075b.htm">doctrine</a> Henry took under his own care and, as is related in the preamble to the "Act abolishing diversity of opinions" (31 Hen. VIII, c. 14), "most graciously vouchsafed, in his own princely <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a>, to descend and come into his High Court of Parliament" and there expounded his <a href="../cathen/14580x.htm">theological</a> views, which were embodied in that Statute, commonly called "The Statute of the Six Articles". It was in 1539 that this Act was passed. It asserted <a href="../cathen/05573a.htm#section3">Transubstantiation</a>, the sufficiency of communion under one kind, the <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligation</a> of <a href="../cathen/03481a.htm">clerical celibacy</a>, the validity "by the <a href="../cathen/09071a.htm">law of God</a>" of <a href="../cathen/15511a.htm">vows</a> of chastity, the excellence of private masses, the necessity of the sacrament of penance. The penalty for denial of the first article was the stake; of the rest <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">imprisonment</a> and forfeiture as of felony. But while thus upholding, after his own fashion, <a href="../cathen/05075b.htm">Catholic doctrine</a>, Henry had possessed himself of a vast amount of <a href="../cathen/12466a.htm">ecclesiastical property</a> by the suppression first of the smaller and then of the larger <a href="../cathen/04340c.htm">religious houses</a>, thus laying the foundation of English pauperism.</p> <h3>Edward VI (1547-1553)</h3> <p>After the death of Henry (1547) the direction of <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> affairs passed chiefly into the hands of Thomas Cranmer. Lord Macaulay has described him accurately as "a supple, timid, interested courtier, who rose into favour by serving Henry in the disgraceful affair of his first divorce", who was "equally false to political and religious obligations", and who "conformed forwards and backwards as the King changed his mind". During the minority of Edward VI, no longer cowed by the "vultus instantis tyranni", he favoured first <a href="../cathen/09438b.htm">Lutheranism</a>, then <a href="../cathen/15772a.htm">Zwinglianism</a>, and lastly <a href="../cathen/03198a.htm">Calvinism</a>, so that it may seem <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubtful</a> what form of <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestantism</a>, if any, he really held. Certain it is, however, that he had "the convictions of his own interests", and that these were bound up with the anti-Catholic party. He had judicially pronounced the invalidity of Henry's marriage with Catherine and the <a href="../cathen/07650a.htm">illegitimacy</a> of Mary, thereby deeply offending and <a href="../cathen/13506d.htm">scandalizing</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>, who were by no means mollified because, not long afterwards, he had similarly prostituted his judicial office in dealing with Anne Boleyn and her daughter Elizabeth. He was married, contrary to the Statute of the Six Articles, to a daughter of the <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> divine Osiander, whom, according to a tradition preserved by Sander and Harpsfield (both first-rate authorities), he was in the habit of carrying about in a chest until, in the latter part of <a href="../cathen/07222a.htm">Henry VIII's</a> reign, he judged it prudent to send her, for greater security, to <a href="../cathen/06484b.htm">Germany</a>. Shortly after the death of the king, he reclaimed her, showing her publicly as his wife. To him are chiefly due the legalization of the marriage of the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> (23 Ed. VI, c. 21), the <a href="../cathen/04748c.htm">desecration</a> and destruction of altars, for which tables were substituted, and of images and pictures, which gave place to the royal arms. He had the chief part in the inspiration and compilation of the first <a href="../cathen/12345b.htm">Prayer</a> Book of Edward VI (1548) in supersession of the <a href="../cathen/02768b.htm">Breviary</a> and the <a href="../cathen/10354c.htm">Missal</a>, a work which, in the preamble of the Act of Parliament sanctioning and enjoining it, is said to have "been drawn up by the aid of the Holy Ghost". Notwithstanding this encomium, it was superseded, within four years, by a second Cranmerian <a href="../cathen/12345b.htm">Prayer</a> Book, not similarly commended in the Act prescribing it, in which the slight outward similarity to the Mass, preserved in the Communion Service of the first <a href="../cathen/12345b.htm">Prayer</a> Book, was obliterated. The Ordinal underwent similar treatment; the sacrificing Priest, like the Sacrifice, was abolished. Another of Cranmer's exploits was the compilation of Forty-two Articles of Religion which, reduced to Thirty-nine and slightly recast, still form the Confession of Faith of the <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Anglican Communion</a>.</p> <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> <h3>Mary I (1553-1558)</h3> <p>In 1556, under Mary, Cranmer met his death at the stake, after vainly endeavouring by copious recantations  Sander avers that "he signed them seventeen times with his own hand"  to save his life. This severity, though doubtless impolitic, can hardly be deemed <a href="../cathen/08010c.htm">unjust</a> if his career be carefully considered. But his work lived after him and formed the basis of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> legislation of Elizabeth, when Mary's brief reign came to an end, and with it the ineffectual endeavour to destroy the new religion by the fagot.</p> <p>Mary's fiery <a href="../cathen/15753a.htm">zeal</a> for the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">Faith</a> failed to undo the work of her two predecessors, and unquestionably did ill service to the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> cause. It would be foolish to blame her for not practising a toleration utterly alien from the temper of the times. But there can be no question that Green is well warranted in writing that to her is due "the bitter remembrance of the blood shed in the cause of <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> which, however partial and <a href="../cathen/08010c.htm">unjust</a> it must seem to an historic observer, still lies graven deep in the temper of the English people" (Short History, p. 360).</p> <h3>Elizabeth I (1558-1603)</h3> <p>The first act of Elizabeth, when she found herself firmly seated on the throne, was to annul the religious restorations of her sister. "All Laws and Statutes made against the See Apostolic of Rome since the twentieth year of King Henry VIII" had been abolished by the 1 and 2 Philip and Mary, c. 8, which "enacted and declared the Pope's Holiness and See Apostolic to be restored, and to have and enjoy such authority, pre-eminence and <a href="../cathen/08567a.htm">jurisdiction</a> as His Holiness used and exercised, or might lawfully have used and exercised, by authority of his supremacy, before that <a href="../cathen/04636c.htm">date</a>". Elizabeth, by the first Act of Parliament of her reign, repealed this Statute, and revived the last six of the seven Acts against the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">Roman pontiff</a> passed between the 21st and 26th year of <a href="../cathen/07222a.htm">Henry VIII</a> of which we have given an account, and also certain other anti-papal Statutes passed subsequently to the enactment of Henry's Act of Supremacy. That Act was not revived, doubtless because Elizabeth, as a <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">woman</a>, shrank from assuming the title of Supreme Head of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> bestowed by it on the sovereign. But, although she did not take to herself that title, she took all the authority implied therein by this first Act of her reign. It vests the plenitude of <a href="../cathen/08567a.htm">ecclesiastical jurisdiction</a> in the Crown and the Queen's Highness, who is described as "the only Supreme Governor of this realm as well in all spiritual and ecclesiastical things or causes as temporal", and it prescribes an <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> recognizing her to be so for all holding office in <a href="../cathen/14250c.htm">Church and State</a>. The next Act on the Statute Book is the Act of Uniformity. It orders the use in the churches of the second <a href="../cathen/12345b.htm">Prayer</a> Book of Edward VI, in the place of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> rites, and provides penalties for <a href="../cathen/10326a.htm">ministers</a> disobeying this injunction. It also enforces the attendance of the <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laity</a> at the <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> church on <a href="../cathen/14335a.htm">Sundays</a> and holidays, for the new service. This was the definite establishment of the new religion in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>, the consummation of the revolution initiated by <a href="../cathen/07222a.htm">Henry VIII</a>. The <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a>, with the exception of Kitchen of <a href="../cathen/09315c.htm">Llandaff</a>, refused to accept it, as did about half the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>. The majority of the <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laity</a> passively acquiesced in it, just as they had acquiesced in the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> changes of Henry, and Edward, and Mary. Its effect was, virtually, to reduce the <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Church of England</a> to a department of the State. The <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Anglican</a> <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> became, and are still, nominees of the Crown, election by the dean and chapter, where it exists  in some of the newer <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">dioceses</a> there are no chapters, and the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> are appointed by Letters Patent  being a mere farcical form of which Emerson has given a pungent description: "The King sends the Dean and Canons a congé d'élire, or leave to elect, but also sends them the name of the <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> whom they are to elect. They go into the Cathedral, chant and <a href="../cathen/12345b.htm">pray</a>; and after these invocations invariably find that the dictates of the Holy Ghost agree with the recommendation of the King." If they arrived at any other conclusion, they would be involved in the penalties of a præmunire. The Convocations of York and Canterbury are similarly fettered. They cannot proceed so much as to discuss any project of <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> legislation without "Letters of Business" from the Crown. The sovereign is the ultimate arbiter in causes, whether of <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> or <a href="../cathen/10559a.htm">morals</a> within the <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Anglican Church</a>, and his decisions of them given by the voice of his Privy Council, are irreformable. But of course in these days the sovereign practically means the Legislature. "The National Church", <a href="../cathen/10794a.htm">Cardinal Newman</a> writes in his "Anglican Difficulties", "is strictly part of the Nation, just as the Law or the Parliament is part of the Nation." "It is simply an organ or department of the State, all <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> acts really proceeding from the civil government." "The Nation itself is the sovereign Lord and Master of the <a href="../cathen/12345b.htm">Prayer</a> Book, its composer and interpreter."</p> <p>Queen Elizabeth's Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity form, in the words of Hallam, "the basis of that restrictive code of <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a> which pressed so heavily, for more than two centuries, upon the adherents of the Roman church". It is not <a href="../cathen/10733a.htm">necessary</a> here to describe in detail that "restrictive code". An account of it will be found in the first chapter of "A Manual of the Law specially affecting Catholics", by W. S. Lilly and J. P. Wallis (London, 1893). But we may observe that the queen who originated it was animated by very different motives from those which influenced her father in his revolt against <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>. Sander has correctly said, "he gave up the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> for no other reason in the world than that which came from his <a href="../cathen/09438a.htm">lust</a> and wickedness"; and, indeed, while severing himself from <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> unity, and pillaging the possessions of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, he was as far as possible from sympathizing with the <a href="../cathen/05075b.htm">doctrinal</a> innovations of <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestantism</a> and savagely repressed them. Elizabeth, by the very necessity of her position, was driven  we speak <em>ex humano die</em>  to espouse the <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> cause. No doubt, as <a href="../cathen/09270c.htm">Lingard</a> writes, "it is pretty evident that she had no settled notions of religion", and she freely exhibited her contempt for her <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> on many occasions  notably on her death-bed, when she drove away from her presence the <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/03299b.htm">Canterbury</a> and certain other <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> <a href="../cathen/12386b.htm">prelates</a> of her own making, telling them "she <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knew</a> full well that they were hedge <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>, and took it for an indignity that they should speak to her" (Dodd, "Church History", III, 70). But, like Cranmer, if she had no religious convictions, she had the conviction of her interests. Her lot was plainly cast in with the <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> party. <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> had declared her mother's marriage null, and her own birth <a href="../cathen/07650a.htm">illegitimate</a>. <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>, in general, looked upon <a href="../cathen/09764a.htm">Mary Queen of Scots</a> as the rightful claimant to the throne which she occupied. Throughout her reign</p> <blockquote><p>Church policy and State policy are conjoint:<br>But Janus-faces, looking different ways.</p></blockquote> <p>The <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Anglican Church</a>, as established by her, was a mere instrument for political ends; in her own phrase, she tuned her <a href="../cathen/12563b.htm">pulpits</a>. The maxim, <em>Cujus regio ejus religio</em>, was currently accepted in her time. It seemed according to the natural order of things that the people should profess the creed of the prince. Elizabeth is not open to the charges made against her sister of religious fanaticism. But she was given up to that "self will and self worship" which Bishop Stubbs justly attributes to her father. And, in the well-weighed words of Hallam, "she was too deeply imbued with arbitrary principles to endure any deviation from the mode of worship she should prescribe".</p> <p>It was on the feast of <a href="../cathen/08486b.htm">St. John Baptist</a>, 1559, that the statute took effect which abolished throughout <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> the old worship, and set up the new. Thenceforth <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> rites could be performed only by stealth, and at the risk of severe punishment. But during the first decade of the queen's reign <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> were treated with comparative lenity, occasional fines, confiscations, and imprisonments being the severest penalties employed against them. Camden and others assert that they enjoyed "a pretty free use of their religion". But this is too strongly put. The <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">truth</a> is that a vast number who were <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> at heart temporized, resorting to the new worship more or less regularly, and attending secretly, when opportunity offered, <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> rites celebrated by the Marian <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> commonly called "the old priests". Of these a considerable number remained scattered up and down the country, being generally found as <a href="../cathen/03579b.htm">chaplains</a> in private <a href="../cathen/05782a.htm">families</a>. These occasional conformists were supported by the vague hope of political change which might give relief to their consciences. Elizabeth and her counsellors calculated that when the old <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> dropped off, through death and other causes, people generally would be won over to the new religion. But it fell out otherwise. As the old <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> disappeared, the question of a supply of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> began to engage the minds of those to whom they had ministered. Moreover, stricter conceptions of their <a href="../cathen/05215a.htm">duty</a> in respect of <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heretical</a> worship were gaining ground among <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">English</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>, partly on account of the decision of a congregation appointed by the <a href="../cathen/15030c.htm">Council of Trent</a>, that attendance at it was "grievously sinful", inasmuch as it was "the offspring of <a href="../cathen/13529a.htm">schism</a>, the badge of <a href="../cathen/07149b.htm">hatred</a> of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>". Then a man appeared whom <a href="../cathen/02782b.htm">Father Bridgett</a> rightly describes as "the father, under God, of the Catholic <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> in England after the destruction of the ancient hierarchy", to whom "principally, we owe the continuation of the <a href="../cathen/12409a.htm">priesthood</a>, and the succession of the <a href="../cathen/13675a.htm">secular clergy</a>".</p> <p>That man was William Allen, afterwards <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinal</a>. He conceived the <a href="../cathen/07630a.htm">idea</a> of an apostolate having for its object the perpetuation of the Faith in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>, and in 1568 he founded the <a href="../cathen/13694a.htm">seminary</a> at <a href="../cathen/05138a.htm">Douai</a>, then belonging to Spanish <a href="../cathen/06094b.htm">Flanders</a>, which was for so many generations to minister to the wants of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">English</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>. It is notable as the first college organized according to the rules and constitution of the <a href="../cathen/15030c.htm">Council of Trent</a>. The missionaries, full of <a href="../cathen/15753a.htm">zeal</a>, and not counting their lives dear, who were sent over from this institution, revived the drooping spirits of the faithful in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> and maintained the standard of <a href="../cathen/11330a.htm">orthodoxy</a>. Elizabeth viewed with much displeasure this frustration of her hopes, nor was the <a href="../cathen/03052b.htm">Bull</a> "Regnans in excelsis", by which, in 1570, <a href="../cathen/12130a.htm">St. Pius V</a> declared her deposed and her <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> subjects released from their allegiance, calculated to mollify her. Increased severity of the <a href="../cathen/11611c.htm">penal laws</a> marks the rest of Elizabeth's reign. By the Act of Supremacy <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> offending against that statute had been made liable to capital punishment as traitors, the queen hoping thereby to escape the odium attaching to the infliction of death for religion. Few will now dissent from the words of Green in his "Short History": "There is something even more revolting than open <a href="../cathen/11703a.htm">persecution</a> in the policy which brands every <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priest</a> as a traitor, and all <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> worship as disloyalty." But, for a time, the policy succeeded, and the <a href="../cathen/09736b.htm">martyrs</a> who suffered for no other cause than their <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> were commonly believed to have been <a href="../cathen/12565a.htm">put to death</a> for treason. In 1581 this offence of spiritual treason was the subject of a far more comprehensive enactment (23 Eliz., c. 1). It qualified as traitors all who should absolve or reconcile others to the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">See of Rome</a>, or willingly be so absolved or reconciled. Many English historians (Hume is the most considerable of them) have affirmed that "sedition, revolt, even assassination were the means by which <a href="../cathen/13694a.htm">seminary</a> <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> sought to compass their ends against Elizabeth". But this sweeping accusation is not <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">true</a>. No <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubt</a> <a href="../cathen/01322b.htm">Cardinal Allen</a>, the <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuit</a> <a href="../cathen/11729a.htm">Persons</a>, and other <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> exiles were cognizant of, and involved in, plots which had for their end the queen's overthrow, nor would some of the conspirators have shrunk from taking her life any more than she shrank from taking the life of <a href="../cathen/09764a.htm">Mary Queen of Scots</a>. But, in spite of all their sufferings, the great body of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">English</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> maintained their loyalty. From the political intrigues in which the exiles were so deeply involved they held aloof, nay, many of them viewed with suspicion not only the exiles, but the whole <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Society</a> of which <a href="../cathen/11729a.htm">Persons</a> was a foremost representative, and desired the exclusion of <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> from English Colleges and from the English mission. When the <a href="../cathen/01727c.htm">Armada</a> was expected they repaired in every county to the standard of the Lord Lieutenant, imploring that they might not be suspected of bartering the national independence for their religious <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">belief</a>. They received from Elizabeth a characteristic reward. "The Queen," writes <a href="../cathen/09270c.htm">Lingard</a>, "whether she sought to satisfy the religious animosities of her subjects, or to display her gratitude to the Almighty by punishing the supposed enemies of His worship, celebrated her triumph with the immolation of human victims" (History of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>, VI, 255). In the four months between 22 July and 27 November, of 1588, twenty-one <a href="../cathen/13694a.htm">seminary</a> <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>, eleven <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laymen</a>, and one <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">woman</a> were <a href="../cathen/12565a.htm">put to death</a> for their <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a>. During the rest of Elizabeth's life her <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> subjects groaned under incessant <a href="../cathen/11703a.htm">persecution</a>, of which one special note was the systematic use of torture. "The rack seldom stood idle in the Tower during the latter part of her reign", Hallam remarks. The total number of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> who suffered under her was one hundred and eighty-nine, one hundred and twenty-eight of them being <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>, fifty-eight <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laymen</a>, and three <a href="../cathen/15687b.htm">women</a>. To them should be added, as Law remarks in his "Calendar of English Martyrs" (London, 1870), thirty-two <a href="../cathen/06217a.htm">Franciscans</a> who were starved to death.</p> <p>Notwithstanding the severities of Elizabeth, the number of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> on the English missions in her time was considerable. It has been estimated that at the end of the sixteenth century they amounted to three hundred and sixty-six, fifty being survivors of the old Marian <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>, three hundred <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> from <a href="../cathen/05138a.htm">Douai</a> and the other foreign <a href="../cathen/13694a.htm">seminaries</a>, and sixteen <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> of the <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Society of Jesus</a>.</p> <h3>James I (1603-1625)</h3> <p>On the queen's death the eyes of the <a href="../cathen/11703a.htm">persecuted</a> remnant of the old <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> turned hopefully towards James. Their hopes were doomed to disappointment. That prince took himself seriously as head of the English Church. He chose rather to be the successor of Elizabeth than the avenger of <a href="../cathen/09764a.htm">Mary Stuart</a>, and continued the savage policy of the late queen. The year after his accession an Act was passed "for the due execution of the Statutes against Jesuits, Seminary priests and other <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>", which took away from <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> the power of sending their children to be <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">educated</a> abroad, and of providing <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> for them at home. In the course of the same year a proclamation was issued banishing all missionary <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> out of the kingdom. The next year is marked by the <a href="../cathen/07081b.htm">Gunpowder Plot</a>, "the contrivance", as <a href="../cathen/14723b.htm">Tierney</a> well observes, "of half a dozen <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">persons</a> of desperate fortunes, who, by that means, brought an odium upon the body of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>, who have ever since laboured under the weight of the <a href="../cathen/03190c.htm">calumny</a>, though no way concerned". Soon afterwards a new <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> of allegiance was devised, rather for the purpose of dividing than of relieving <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>. It was incorporated in "An Act for the better discovery and repression of Popish recusants" (a <a href="../cathen/12677a.htm">recusant</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> was simply one who refused to be present at the new service of the <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant religion</a> in the <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parish</a> church), and was directed against the deposing power. The <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> disallowed it, but some <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> took it, among them being Blackwell the Archpriest. Twenty-eight <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>, of whom eight were <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laymen</a>, suffered under James I, but that prince was more concerned to exact money from his <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> subjects than to slay them. According to his own account he received a net income of 36,000 a year from the fines of Popish <a href="../cathen/12677a.htm">recusants</a> (Hardwick Papers, I, 446).</p> <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> <h3>Charles I (1625-1649)</h3> <p>With the accession of Charles I (1625) a somewhat brighter time began for <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">English</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>. He was unwilling to shed their innocent blood  indeed only two underwent capital punishment while he bore rule  and this reluctance was one of the causes of rupture between him and the Parliament. His policy, Hallam writes, "with some fluctuations, was to wink at the domestic exercise of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> religion, and to admit its professors to pay compensations for clemency, which were not regularly enforced". The number of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> received a considerable augmentation in his reign. Panzani reported to the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> that in 1634 there were on the English mission five hundred <a href="../cathen/13675a.htm">secular priests</a>, some hundred and sixty <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a>, a hundred <a href="../cathen/02443a.htm">Benedictines</a>, twenty <a href="../cathen/06217a.htm">Franciscans</a>, seven <a href="../cathen/12354c.htm">Dominicans</a>, two Minims, five <a href="../cathen/03354a.htm">Carmelites</a>, and one <a href="../cathen/03388a.htm">Carthusian</a> <a href="../cathen/09093a.htm">lay brother</a>, besides the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>, nine in number, who served the queen's <a href="../cathen/03574b.htm">chapel</a>. This large increase in the number of <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> was not regarded by all as an unmixed gain, unquestionable as was their <a href="../cathen/15753a.htm">zeal</a> and devotion. It was considered by some as the cause of rivalries and dissensions, unpleasant to read of, among the small remnant who kept the <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a>. The <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> seem to have been, at times, open to the charge of aggressiveness, and certainly they did not succeed in dissipating the prejudice so universal against them. One of the burning questions among <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">English</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> was concerning the episcopal succession. The <a href="../cathen/13675a.htm">secular clergy</a> desired a <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishop</a>, and Allen had proposed to <a href="../cathen/07001b.htm">Gregory XIII</a> that one should be sent. Though <a href="../cathen/11729a.htm">Persons'</a> influence at <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, which was very great, instead of a <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishop</a> an <a href="../cathen/01697b.htm">archpriest</a> was appointed (1598) in the <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> of George Blackwell, who has been already mentioned, a friend of his own, who was deprived by the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> ten years later for taking the <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> of allegiance under James I. Birkhead succeeded him, and <a href="../cathen/07143c.htm">Harrison</a> succeeded Birkhead, until, in 1623, Dr. William Bishop was appointed <a href="../cathen/15401b.htm">Vicar Apostolic </a> of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>. He died in 1624, and was succeeded by Dr. Richard Smith. Shortly afterwards there was an outbreak of <a href="../cathen/11703a.htm">persecution</a> occasioned by the <a href="../cathen/12581a.htm">Puritan</a> party in the House of Commons led by Sir John Elliot, and Bishop Smith withdrew to <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a> at the end of 1628, never to return to <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>, which remained without a <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishop</a> till 1685.</p> <p>When <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a> broke out between Charles I and the Parliament, <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">English</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>, to a man, espoused the cause of the king. They could not do otherwise. Hatred of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a> was a dominant note of the Parliamentary party, who bitterly resented the quasi-toleration which the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> had for some years enjoyed; and between the meeting of the Long Parliament and the death of Cromwell twenty-four adherents of the Faith suffered <a href="../cathen/09736b.htm">martyrdom</a>. The <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>, as Hallam points out, were "the most strenuous of the King's adherents"; they were also the greatest sufferers for their loyalty. One hundred and seventy <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> gentlemen lost their lives in the royal cause; and <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> were especially oppressed under the Commonwealth.</p> <h3>Charles II (1660-1685)</h3> <p>At the Restoration of Charles II, in 1660, <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">English</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> expected, not unnaturally, to receive some recompense for their unswerving devotion to the royal cause, and this more especially as the new king's personal <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligations</a> to them were very great. After his total overthrow at the battle of <a href="../cathen/15703a.htm">Worcester</a>, he owed his life to the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> of Staffordshire, the Huddlestones, the Giffards, the Whitegreaves, the Penderells. But "Let not virtue seek remuneration for the thing it was" is a lesson written on every page of the history of the Stuarts. <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> asked, in a petition presented to the House of Lords by <a href="../cathen/01765c.htm">Lord Arundell of Wardour</a>, that they might receive the benefit of the Declaration of <a href="../cathen/02752a.htm">Breda</a>. Charles was inclined to give them "liberty of conscience", but Lord Chancellor Hyde, afterwards Earl of Clarendon, we read in Kenneth's "Register and Chronicle", "was so hot upon the point, that His Majesty was <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obliged</a> to yield rather to his importunities than his reasons". The king, who, as he himself expressed it, was not minded to set out again on his travels, recognized that there was in the nation a strong anti-Catholic feeling, and bowed to it, though himself intellectually convinced of the <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">truth</a> of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> religion. The <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a> against Papists remained on the statute book, and, from time to time, proclamations  they were, it is <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">true</a>, for the most part <em>brutum fulmen</em>  were issued requiring <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> and other <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> to quit the kingdom under the statutory penalties. A singular instance of overmastering anti-Catholic prejudice prevailing in the nation is supplied by the monument erected by the Corporation of <a href="../cathen/09341a.htm">London</a> to commemorate the Great Fire of 1666. It bore an inscription in which <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> were accused of being the authors of that calamity, a monstrous assertion for which no shred of evidence was ever adduced. </p> <blockquote><p>Where London's column pointing to the skies, <br>Like a tall bully lifts its head and lies, </p></blockquote> <p>Pope had the <a href="../cathen/06147a.htm">courage</a> to write. But not until the nineteenth century was well advanced was the <a href="../cathen/03190c.htm">calumny</a> erased.</p> <p>It is not possible here to follow, even in briefest outline, the course of Charles II's reign. We may, however, point out that two things are <a href="../cathen/10733a.htm">necessary</a> to a right view of it: to understand the character and aims of Charles II, and to realize the dominant temper of the English nation. Idle, voluptuous, and good-humouredly cynical, Charles certainly was; but he possessed deep <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knowledge</a> of <a href="../cathen/09580c.htm">human</a> <a href="../cathen/10715a.htm">nature</a>, great political tact, and remarkable tenacity of purpose. That he preferred the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> religion to any other, is certain; and he was glad to embrace it on his death-bed. But he recognized the strong <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> feeling of the people over whom he ruled, and was not prepared to imperil his crown by defying it. He was, however, really desirous to do what he could, without risk to himself, for the relief of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>; and this was the motive of his Declaration of Indulgence in 1672, by which he ordered "that all manner of <a href="../cathen/11611c.htm">penal laws</a> on matters <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> against whatever sort of <a href="../cathen/11095b.htm">Nonconformist</a> or <a href="../cathen/12677a.htm">recusants</a>" should be suspended, and gave liberty of public worship to all dissentients, except <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>, who were allowed to celebrate the rites of religion in private houses only. This declaration was sovereignly displeasing to all parties in the House of Commons, who answered it by a resolution "that penal statutes in matters ecclesiastical cannot be suspended except by consent of Parliament", and refused supplies until the declaration was recalled. That was a convincing argument to Charles. He recalled the declaration forthwith. Parliament then proceeded to pass a bill  it went through both Houses without opposition, and Charles dared not refuse his royal assent to it  which required every one in the civil and military employment of the Crown to take the <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oaths</a> of allegiance and supremacy, to subscribe a declaration against <a href="../cathen/05573a.htm#section3">Transubstantiation</a>, and to receive the Eucharist according to the rites of the <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Church of England</a>. One effect of this Act (13 Car. II, St. 2, c. 1) was to deprive James, Duke of York, who had become a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a>, of his office of Lord High Admiral.</p> <p>During the next nine years the struggle between the king and the Parliament continued. The popular leader was Ashley, Earl of Shaftesbury  for some time Chancellor  whose character has been delineated by <a href="../cathen/05167b.htm">Dryden</a> with merciless severity, but with substantial accuracy, in "Absalom and Achitophel". This statesman's own <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestantism</a> was of the haziest kind, but he was <a href="../cathen/15753a.htm">zealous</a>, from political motives, for the national religion, and for that reason was bent upon excluding the Duke of York from the succession to the throne. To accomplish this end, he fought strenuously, unremittingly, nor was any weapon too vile for his use. The Second Test Act, passed through his exertions in 1678, rendered <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> incapable of sitting in Parliament, and thus deprived twenty-one <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> peers of their seats in the House of Lords; but the king contrived to procure the insertion of a clause exempting the Duke of York from the operation of the Statute. It was in this same year that Titus Oates appeared on the scene with his <a href="../cathen/11173c.htm">pretended Popish Plot</a>. There is no evidence that Ashley was the instigator of the colossal villainy, but he did not scruple to employ it for his own purposes. "The origin of the Plot", says a recent well-informed writer in "Blackwood's Magazine" (May, 1908), "is a mystery. We <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">know</a> no more than that the English people, being mad, interrupted the course of <a href="../cathen/08571c.htm">justice</a>, insisted that the judges should condemn every man brought before them, suspected of papistry, and easily believed the crazy stories of hired <a href="../cathen/11696a.htm">perjurers</a>. It is most probable that Oates himself contrived the death of Sir Edmund Godfrey." However that may have been, certain it is that the <a href="../cathen/03190c.htm">calumnies</a> of Oates and his confederates and imitators awakened the Elizabethan Statutes into fresh activity. The king was far too shrewd to give credence to what Macaulay has well called "a hideous romance resembling rather the dream of a sick man than any transaction which ever took place in this world." But he was powerless to save the victims of popular fanaticism; "I cannot pardon them", he said, "for I dare not." And so, in 1679, the horrors of 1588 were repeated, eight <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> of the <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Society of Jesus</a>, two <a href="../cathen/06217a.htm">Franciscans</a>, five <a href="../cathen/13675a.htm">secular priests</a>, and seven <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laymen</a> being <a href="../cathen/12565a.htm">put to death</a>, while many more died in their foul <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">prisons</a>. The next year witnessed the judicial <a href="../cathen/07441a.htm">murder</a> of Lord Stafford, his peers being unable to withstand the madness of the people. In 1681 <a href="../cathen/12169b.htm">Oliver Plunket</a>, the <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/01729a.htm">Armagh</a>, was executed at Tyburn, after a mock trial. His was the last blood shed for the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> religion in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>. The <a href="../cathen/11703a.htm">persecution</a>, which had begun with the execution of the three saintly <a href="../cathen/03388a.htm">Carthusian</a> <a href="../cathen/06280b.htm">friars</a> in the twenty-sixth year of <a href="../cathen/07222a.htm">Henry VIII</a>, had lasted, with little intermission, for a century and a half. Three hundred and forty-two <a href="../cathen/09736b.htm">martyrs</a> had sealed their <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> with their blood, while some fifty confessors, in the reign of Elizabeth and her successors, ended their lives in <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">prison</a>. The king's long struggle with the popular party ended in his complete victory. No more consummate master of political strategy ever perhaps existed; and the <a href="../cathen/15446a.htm">violence</a> of the party led by Shaftesbury played into his hands. Shaftesbury himself was arrested on a charge of suborning <a href="../cathen/05781a.htm">false</a> witnesses to the Plot; although the Grand Jury of Middlesex ignored the bill of his indictment, he saw that the tide of popular feeling, which had begun to ebb with the execution of Lord Stafford, was now turned completely against him, and at the end of 1682 he fled to <a href="../cathen/10759a.htm">Holland</a>, where, two months afterwards, he died.</p> <p>Charles II was the most popular of kings during the last two years of his reign, and he was careful not to mar his popularity by illegal acts or by measures opposed to the feeling of the nation. The statute for the regulation of printing, passed immediately after the Restoration, had expired in 1679; Charles made no attempt for its renewal. In the same year the Habeas Corpus Act  that great charter of the liberty of the subject  was passed; Charles acquiesced in it. He did indeed infringe the Test Act by the Duke of York's readmission to the Council and restoration to the office of lord high admiral. But, in the recrudescence of loyalty, this tribute to fraternal affection passed unblamed. In his last illness the churches were thronged with crowds <a href="../cathen/12345b.htm">praying</a> that <a href="../cathen/06608a.htm">God</a> would raise him up again to be a father to his people; and on his death, in February, 1685, all sorts and conditions of his subjects made great lamentation over him.</p> <h3>James II (1685-1688)</h3> <p>In the first year of the reign of James II Dr. Leyburn was appointed by the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> as <a href="../cathen/15401b.htm">vicar Apostolic</a>. In the next year Dr. Giffard received a like appointment, as did Dr. Ellis and Dr. Smith the year after that, <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> being divided into four districts: the <a href="../cathen/09341a.htm">London</a>, the Midland, the Western, and the Northern, in each of which the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">papal</a> vicar exercised all the authority possessed by an ordinary. The new king came to the throne with advantages which he could hardly have hoped for. He inherited, in some sort, the popularity of his brother, and his religion was forgotten in his blood. He began his reign by a solemn pledge to keep the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a> inviolate and to protect the <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Church of England</a>, and the nation believed him. "We have the word of a king", it was said, "and of a king who was never worse than his word." The saying, whoever was its author, went abroad. It expressed the general conviction, and his first Parliament made <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proof</a> of exuberant loyalty, granting to the monarch, without demur, a revenue of nearly two millions for life. Argyll's rebellion in the North and Monmouth's in the West but served to bring out the devotion of the nation at large to the sovereign. But the cruelties of Kirke and the savageries of Jeffreys in the "Bloody Circuit" caused a change in the general feeling. The king's popularity began to wane, and the measures to which he now resorted soon put an end to it. Monmouth's revolt was made the pretext for raising the army to twenty thousand men, and it soon appeared that James supposed himself able, with this force at his command, to place himself above the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>. He attempted to nullify the provisions of <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">statutes</a> by the exercise of his dispensing powers. Judges who refused to fall in with his plans were dismissed; and it was held by a bench packed with his creatures that his <a href="../cathen/05041a.htm">dispensation</a> could be pleaded in bar of an Act of Parliament. Armed with this decision, the king proceeded to set aside the disabilities of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> and the restraints upon the exercise of their religion. They were admitted to civil and military offices closed to them by the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>; members of <a href="../cathen/12748b.htm">religious</a> orders appeared in the streets of <a href="../cathen/09341a.htm">London</a> in their habits; the <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a> opened a <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> which was soon crowded. Further, the king found himself <em>ex officio</em> supreme head of the <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Anglican Communion</a>, and he resolved to use his supremacy as a weapon for its overthrow. Following the precedent of Elizabeth, he appointed an Ecclesiastical Commission, in defiance of an Act of Charles I which declared that court illegal; and he placed Jeffreys at the head of it. He forbade the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> to preach against popery, and suspended the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">Bishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/09341a.htm">London</a> for refusing to carry out this order. At Oxford he presented a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> to the deanery of Christ Church and converted Magdalen College into a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">society</a>. Among <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">English</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> most men of reputation stood aghast at this reckless <a href="../cathen/15446a.htm">violence</a>. Few approved it but converts of broken fortune and tarnished reputation. <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> gave no countenance to it. Macaulay is absolutely warranted in writing: "Every letter which went from the Vatican to Whitehall recommended patience, moderation and respect for the prejudices of the English people". "The <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">Pope</a>", he observes in another page, with equal <a href="../cathen/08571c.htm">justice</a>,</p> <blockquote><p>was too wise a man to believe that a nation so bold and stubborn could be brought back to the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> of <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> by the violent and unconstitutional exercise of the royal authority. It was not difficult to see that if James attempted to promote the interests of his religion by illegal and unpopular measures, his attempt would fail: the <a href="../cathen/07149b.htm">hatred</a> with which the <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heretical</a> islanders regarded the <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">true</a> <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> would become fiercer and stronger than ever: and an indissoluble association would be created in men's minds between <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestantism</a> and civil freedom, between Popery and arbitrary power. </p></blockquote> <p>This is precisely what happened. And indeed it is not too much to say that British <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> have, in great measure, to thank the two last <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> sovereigns for the strong feeling which so long existed against them throughout the nation, and which, even now, has not wholly disappeared. The severities of Mary appeared to give countenance to the popular <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> opinion that <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> rely chiefly on the argument from fire and are always ready, if they can, to burn dissidents from their religious <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">belief</a>. The conduct of James II seemed an object lesson confirmatory of the vulgar conviction that <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> are not bound to keep <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> with <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heretics</a>, and that any violation of law, any "crooked and indirect bye-ways" are justifiable means to the end of advancing the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> religion.</p> <p>The reign of James II lasted only three years. It is not too much to say that before two of them were out he had succeeded in alienating the devotion of the entire nation. The famous Declaration of Indulgence supplied the supreme <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proof</a> of his folly and was the immediate occasion of his downfall. The gist of it was that by the royal authority all <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a> against all classes of <a href="../cathen/11095b.htm">Nonconformists</a> were suspended, that all religious tests imposed upon them by statute as a qualification for office were abrogated. Only an absolute monarch could claim to exercise such a prerogative. It is <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">true</a> that the Declaration was full of professions of <a href="../cathen/09397a.htm">love</a> of liberty of <a href="../cathen/04268a.htm">conscience</a>  professions which came oddly from a monarch with James's record. Moreover, as we now <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">know</a>, upon the very eve of publishing it he had written to congratulate <a href="../cathen/09371a.htm">Louis XIV</a> upon his revocation of the Edict of Nantes, an example which Barillon, a very competent judge, thought he would have only too gladly followed if he had been able. Those hollow and palpably <a href="../cathen/05781a.htm">false</a> professions deceived no one, and the failure of the Declaration to conciliate the support of those who would have chiefly benefited by it, might have suggested caution to a wiser man. But James would brook no opposition; and on 27 April, 1688, he ordered the <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Anglican</a> <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> to read his Declaration of Indulgence during divine service on two successive <a href="../cathen/14335a.htm">Sundays</a>. Nearly all the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> refused to obey, and Sancroft, the <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/03299b.htm">Canterbury</a>, with six of his suffragans, addressed to the king a respectful and temperate protest. The document was treated as a <a href="../cathen/09210a.htm">libel</a>, and the famous trial of the seven <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> was the result. The acquittal of the <a href="../cathen/12386b.htm">prelates</a> was greeted throughout the country with a tumult of acclaim, which was the signal for the <a href="../cathen/13007b.htm">Revolution</a>, whereby the ancient liberties of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> were vindicated, and a Parliamentary title to the crown was substituted for an hereditary one. (See <a href="../cathen/13007b.htm">ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF 1688</a>).</p> <h3>William III & Mary II (1688-1702)</h3> <p>The disfavour with which <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> were viewed when William and Mary were placed on the throne vacated by James II, was natural enough. They shared in the <a href="../cathen/07149b.htm">hatred</a> inspired by the perfidy, cruelty, and tyranny of the absconded sovereign. William, indeed, would have gladly extended to them the same measure of toleration which, in spite of Tory opposition, he was able to secure for <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> <a href="../cathen/11095b.htm">Nonconformists</a>. He was under great <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligations</a> not only to the emperor, but also to the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>, whose sympathy and diplomatic support had been of much help to him in his perilous enterprise. He was, by temperament and by conviction, averse from religious <a href="../cathen/11703a.htm">persecution</a>. Moreover, as Hallam justly observes, "no measure would have been more politic, for it would have dealt to the Jacobite cause a more deadly wound than any which double taxation or <a href="../cathen/11611c.htm">penal laws</a> were able to effect." And this, no doubt, was one of the reasons why the High Tories persistently opposed it. But the Legislature did not content itself with leaving on the statute book the former <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">statutes</a> against <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>; it enacted new disqualifications and penalties. The Bill of Rights provides that no member of the reigning house who is a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a>, or has married a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a>, can succeed to the throne, and that the sovereign, on becoming a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a>, or marrying a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a>, thereby forfeits the crown. This article of the constitution was confirmed by the <a href="../cathen/01112a.htm">Act of Settlement</a> (12 & 13 Will. III, c. 5, s. 2), which conferred the succession on the descendants of the Electress Sophia (a daughter of James I), being <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a>. Another statute, of the first year of William and Mary, prohibited <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> from residing within ten miles of <a href="../cathen/09341a.htm">London</a> and empowered justices to tender to reputed Papists "the oath appointed by <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>", providing that any who refused it, and yet remained within ten miles of <a href="../cathen/09341a.htm">London</a>, was to forfeit and suffer as a Papist <a href="../cathen/12677a.htm">recusant</a> convict. A third Act of the same year (1 W. & M., c. 15) provides that no suspected Papist who shall neglect to take the <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> appointed by law, when tendered to him by two justices of the peace, and who shall not appear before them upon notice from one authorized under their hands and seals, shall keep any arms, ammunition, or horse above the value of five pounds in his possession, and in that of any other <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> to his use (other than such as shall be allowed him by the sessions for defence of his house and <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a>); that any two justices may authorize by warrant any <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> to search for all such arms, ammunition, and horses in the daytime, with the assistance of the constable or his deputy or tithing-man, and to seize them for the king's use; and that if any <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> shall conceal such arms, ammunition, or horses, he shall be <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">imprisoned</a> for three months and shall forfeit to the king treble the value of such arms, ammunition, or horse. The 7 & 8 Will. III, c. 24, closed to <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> the professions of counsellor-at-law, barrister, attorney, and solicitor; and the 7 & 8 Will. III, c. 27, declared that any <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> who refuses to take the <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oaths</a> of allegiance and supremacy, when lawfully tendered, should be liable to suffer as a Popish <a href="../cathen/12677a.htm">recusant</a> convict; and that no <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> who should refuse the said <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> should be admitted to give a vote at the elections of any member of Parliament. In 1700 an Act was passed which, Sir Erskine May observes, "cannot be read without astonishment". It incapacitated every <a href="../cathen/13121a.htm">Roman Catholic</a> from inheriting or purchasing land, unless he <a href="../cathen/01044d.htm">abjured</a> his religion upon <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a>; and on his refusal it vested his <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a>, during his life, in his next of kin being a <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a>. He was even prohibited from sending his children abroad, to be <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">educated</a> in his own <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a>. And while his religion was thus proscribed, his civil <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> were further restrained by the <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> of <a href="../cathen/01044d.htm">abjuration</a>. It prescribed <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">imprisonment</a> for life for all <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>, and enacted that an informer, in the event of their being convicted of saying <a href="../cathen/10006a.htm">Mass</a>, was to receive a reward of one hundred pounds.</p> <p>Concerning this Act of William III Hallam remarks, "So unprovoked, so <a href="../cathen/08010c.htm">unjust</a> a <a href="../cathen/11703a.htm">persecution</a> is the disgrace of the Parliament that passed it." But he goes on to add, "The spirit of Liberty and tolerance was too strong for the tyranny of the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> and this statute was not executed according to its purpose. The <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> landholders neither renounced their religion nor abandoned their inheritance. The judges put such constructions upon the clause of forfeiture as eluded its efficiency." No <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubt</a> this is generally <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">true</a>. But as Charles Butler tells us in his "Historical Memoirs" (London, 1819-21), "in many instances the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a> which deprived <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> of their landed <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a> were enforced." He adds that "in other respects they were subject to great vexation and contumely". They were a very small and very unpopular minority in an age when a common creed was regarded, in every <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">European</a> country, as the chief bond of civil polity and dissidents from it were more or less rigorously repressed. As a matter of fact, it is to a great English magistrate that we owe the ruling which placed an almost insuperable difficulty in the way of the tribe of informers. At the trial of the Rev. James Webb on the 25th of June, 1768, at <a href="../cathen/15592c.htm">Westminster</a>, at the suit of a <a href="../cathen/11126b.htm">notorious</a> common informer named Payne, Lord Mansfield told the jury that the defendant could not be condemned "unless there were sufficient <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proof</a> of his <a href="../cathen/11279a.htm">ordination</a>". Such <a href="../cathen/12454c.htm">proofs</a>, of course, were not forthcoming. Lord Mansfield, as Charles Butler relates in his above-mentioned "Historical Memoirs", discountenanced the prosecution of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> and took care that the accused should have every advantage that the form of proceedings, or the letter or spirit of the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>, could allow. And at that period the same temper animated English judges generally.</p> <h3>After William and Mary</h3> <p>As the second half of the eighteenth century wore on, <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">English</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> ceased to be regarded by the Government as politically dangerous. A certain number of them had taken part in the rising of 1715, and in the far more serious rising of 1745, and had in some instances been executed for their pains. But in 1758 the Old Pretender died, and the Young Pretender, upon whom his claim devolved, had ceased to excite either dread or enthusiasm. Men no longer took him seriously, and <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">English</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> in time  it was no very long time  acquiesced in the <a href="../cathen/13007b.htm">Revolution of 1688</a>. Nay, they did something more than acquiesce. In 1778 an address was presented to George III, bearing the signatures of the Duke of Norfolk and nine other peers, and of one hundred and sixty-three commoners, on behalf of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> body. It represents to the sovereign their "true attachment to the civil constitution of the country, which having been perpetuated through all changes of religious opinions and establishments, has been at length perfected by that <a href="../cathen/13007b.htm">Revolution</a> which has placed your Majesty's illustrious house on the throne of these Kingdoms, and inseparably united your title to the crown with the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> and liberties of your people". In this year, 1778, the first <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> Relief Act was passed. It repealed the worst portions of the Statute of 1699 above mentioned, and set forth a new <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> of allegiance which a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> could take without denying his religion. Though a very modest measure of relief, it was extremely distasteful to some bigoted <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a>, among whom it is distressing to find the name of John Wesley. But in <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">truth</a> Wesley  it is not a rare case  was no less <a href="../cathen/07648a.htm">ignorant</a> and narrow-minded than <a href="../cathen/15753a.htm">zealous</a> and devout, as is sufficiently evident from his "Letter concerning the Principles of Roman <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>". In this document, besides other equally foolish assertions, he alleges that they hold an <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> not binding if administered by <a href="../cathen/07256b.htm">heretics</a>, and that they <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">believe</a> in the remission of future <a href="../cathen/14004b.htm">sins</a> through the <a href="../cathen/11618c.htm">Sacrament of Penance</a>. The conclusion he draws is that no government "ought to tolerate men of the <a href="../cathen/13121a.htm">Roman Catholic</a> persuasion". There can be no <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubt</a> that the diatribes of Wesley and his followers largely swelled the agitation for the repeal of the Act of 1778, which was conducted by the Protestant Association, and which issued in the <a href="../cathen/06649c.htm">Lord George Gordon Riots</a>.</p> <p>It would be an <a href="../cathen/05525a.htm">error</a> to impute the prevalence of a milder spirit towards <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> at this period to sympathy with their religion. It arose rather from the relaxation of dogmatic <a href="../cathen/02408b.htm">belief</a>, the latitudinarianism, the indifferentism which is a notable sign of those times, and which infected <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> as well as <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a> throughout <a href="../cathen/05607b.htm">Europe</a>. In <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> it was manifested, among other ways, in the apostasy of nine <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> peers, while many other <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laymen</a>, of position and influence, assumed a quite un-Catholic attitude towards the episcopate and towards the Government. They desired, legitimately enough, further deliverance from the <a href="../cathen/11611c.htm">penal laws</a>; and to compass this end they had recourse to means not at all legitimate. In May, 1783, five of these constituted themselves "a Committee appointed to manage the further affairs of Catholics in this kingdom", to use their own words. "It was in some respects", writes Canon Flanagan (History of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>, II, 393), "a useful institution, working <a href="../cathen/15753a.htm">zealously</a> for the supposed interests of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> body. Its <a href="../cathen/15753a.htm">zeal</a>, unfortunately, was not according to <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knowledge</a>. It sought to win emancipation by making to <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a> every concession that it believed it could in <a href="../cathen/04268a.htm">conscience</a>, but it forgot meantime that minute <a href="../cathen/14580x.htm">theological</a> <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knowledge</a> would be <a href="../cathen/10733a.htm">necessary</a> for so delicate a task; or rather it forgot that it was unintentionally perhaps, but not the less certainly, usurping the place of the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> and of the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a>. It was now in treaty with the government for fresh measures of relief. It complained that the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> were not allowed their own 'mode of worship'; were punished severely for <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">educating</a> their children 'in their own religious principles', whether at home or abroad; could not practise any of the professions of the <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a>, or serve in the Army or Navy, or vote in the elections, or hold a seat in either House; and it <a href="../cathen/12345b.htm">prayed</a> William Pitt, who was now prime minister, to aid them in their intended application for redress". Pitt was favourably inclined towards the committee, whose proceedings, however, were soon marked by great unwisdom. <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> <a href="../cathen/11095b.htm">Nonconformists</a> were at that time striving to obtain a complete toleration, and held out the right hand of fellowship to <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>. The <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> committees were well pleased by the proposed alliance, and in a bill which they drafted for the House of Commons, they inserted a clause providing that the relief to be given by it was to be available to those only who subscribed their names, in a Court of Justice, in the following form: "I, A.B., do hereby declare myself to be a Protesting <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> Dissenter. The four <a href="../cathen/15401b.htm">vicars Apostolic</a>, in an <a href="../cathen/05413a.htm">encyclical</a> letter, condemned this and other vagaries of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> Committee, and declared that none of the faithful <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> or <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laity</a> under their care ought to take any <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> or subscribe to any instrument wherein the interests of religion are concerned without the previous <a href="../cathen/01656b.htm">approbation</a> of their respective <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a>. The <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> approved this letter. In the Relief Act which was passed in 1791 the foolish phrase "Protesting <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> Dissenters" was struck out, and the <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> proposed by the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> Committee was utterly discarded, the inoffensive <a href="../cathen/08098b.htm">Irish</a> <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> of 1778, with slight variations, being substituted for it. <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> taking this <a href="../cathen/11176a.htm">oath</a> were relieved from the penalties of the Statutes of Recusancy and from the <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obligation</a> of taking the <a href="../cathen/11177a.htm">oath of supremacy</a> prescribed by the Statute of William and Mary. Various disabilities were removed, and toleration was extended to <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> and worship. Shortly after this Act was passed the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> Committee turned itself into the Cisalpine Club and continued under that name, for thirty years, to trouble more or less the <a href="../cathen/15401b.htm">vicars Apostolic</a>.</p> <p>There can be little <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubt</a> that the passing of the Relief Act was facilitated by the outbreak of the <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">Revolution</a> in <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a>. Another result, at first extremely prejudicial to the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>, of that great upheaval was the closing of the <a href="../cathen/13694a.htm">seminaries</a> on the Continent, which had furnished to that country a supply of <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>. <a href="../cathen/05138a.htm">Douai</a> was seized by the <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">French Revolutionary</a> Government in 1793. The <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">English</a> <a href="../cathen/02443a.htm">Benedictine</a> houses in <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a> also disappeared. The closing of the English <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> colleges in <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a> was, however, to some extent compensated by the influx of <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a> from that country. No less than eight thousand of these confessors of the <a href="../cathen/03712a.htm">Christian Faith</a> sought the hospitality of <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>, and it was ungrudgingly given. The King's House at <a href="../cathen/15649c.htm">Winchester</a> sheltered a thousand of them, and for several years a considerable sum was voted for their relief by Parliament and was largely supplemented by <a href="../cathen/15506a.htm">voluntary</a> subscriptions. A certain number of these <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> sought and found work on the English Mission. By far the greater part of them returned home when <a href="../cathen/10687a.htm">Napoleon</a> had concluded his <a href="../cathen/04204a.htm">Concordat with the Holy See</a> and re-established <a href="../cathen/15710a.htm">Christian worship</a> in <a href="../cathen/06166a.htm">France</a>. Of those who remained a few were irreconcilably dissatisfied with the new <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">ecclesiastical</a> arrangements in their country. They were known as Blanchardists, from their leader Blanchard, and were a source of much annoyance to the <a href="../cathen/15401b.htm">vicars Apostolic</a>. The heroic <a href="../cathen/10315a.htm">Milner</a> was especially prominent in combating them, and in asserting the <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a> of the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a>. That strenuous champion of <a href="../cathen/11330a.htm">orthodoxy</a> had, at the same time, to contend with <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> of his own nationality. The spirit which had animated the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> Committee and the Cisalpine Chub was by no means extinct, and led to the formation in 1808, of what was called a "Select Board" which professed as its object the organization of an association for "the general advantage of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> body". That "general advantage" turned out to be the further removal of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> disabilities, and the price which the Select Board was prepared to pay for such removal was the vesting in the Crown of an effectual negative upon the appointment of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a>  commonly called the Veto. The <a href="../cathen/08098b.htm">Irish</a> episcopate unanimously opposed this arrangement, and passed a vote of thanks to <a href="../cathen/10315a.htm">Dr. Milner</a> for his "apostolic constancy" in withstanding it. On 30 April, 1813, Grattan brought forward a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> relief bill in the House of Commons, which substantially provided for the Veto. It was thrown out on the third reading. Eight years later a similar bill passed the House of Commons, but was rejected by the House of Lords. Of the eventual emancipation of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> <a href="../cathen/10315a.htm">Dr. Milner</a> had no <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubt</a>. Twelve years before his death, which took place in 1826, he assured the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a> that it was certain to come. But he would not purchase it by the slightest sacrifice of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> principle. In 1826 a declaration was put forward by all the <a href="../cathen/15401b.htm">vicars Apostolic</a> of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> explanatory of various articles of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">Faith</a> greatly misunderstood by many <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a>. It was widely read and doubtless helped to remove prejudice. In the same year Sidney Smith published his masterly "Letter on the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> Question". Not, however, till March, 1829, was the long desired boon conceded to <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>. It was wrung, so to speak, from statesmen who had always opposed it. The Clare election convinced Peel and the Duke of <a href="../cathen/15580a.htm">Wellington</a>, who were then in power, that the settlement of the <a href="../cathen/08098b.htm">Irish</a> question was a political necessity. The duke reminded the House of Lords that when the <a href="../cathen/08098b.htm">Irish</a> Rebellion of 1798 had been suppressed the Legislative Union had been proposed in the next year mainly for the purpose of introducing this very measure of concession, and not obscurely intimated his opinion that further to refuse it must lead to civil <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a>. This relief bill passed both Houses by large majorities. The king's consent was reluctantly given, and the Emancipation Act became law. It should be noted that before the passing of the Emancipation Act the friction of which we have been <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obliged</a> to speak, between certain prominent members of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laity</a> and the <a href="../cathen/15401b.htm">vicars Apostolic</a>, was virtually at an end. The Cisalpine Club still existed; but, as Monsignor Ward remarks (<a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/09341a.htm">London</a> A Century Ago, p. 38), "there was very little Cisalpinism in it". This was largely due to the personal influence of Dr. Poynter, <a href="../cathen/15401b.htm">Vicar Apostolic </a> of the London District, whose gentleness and meekness triumphed where the fiery <a href="../cathen/15753a.htm">zeal</a> of <a href="../cathen/10315a.htm">Milner</a> failed.</p> <div class="CMtag_300x250" style="display: flex; height: 300px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; "></div> <p>When the nineteenth century opened, the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> of Great Britain were, to quote <a href="../cathen/10794a.htm">Cardinal Newman's</a> words, "a <em>gens lucifuga</em>, found in corners and alleys and cellars and the housetops, or in the recesses of the country". Their <a href="../cathen/03574b.htm">chapels</a> were few and far between, and were purposely placed in quarters where they were unlikely to attract observation. It was common to locate them in mews, and in their exterior they were hardly distinguishable from the adjoining stables. George Eliot has well remarked in Felix Holt, "Till the agitation about the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> in '29, rural Englishmen had hardly known more of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> than of the fossil mammoths." Their political emancipation was the beginning of a great change in their social condition. "The steps were higher that men took"; their ostracism began to pass away. Moreover, the reaction which had followed the <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">French Revolution</a> had told in favour of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a> even in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>. <a href="../cathen/03640a.htm">Chateaubriand's</a> "Génie du christianisme" had a world-wide influence, and some of the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott, however deficient in accuracy, presented a much kinder view of the ancient <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> than had been commonly taken in <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> countries.</p> <p>In the history of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> since 1829 two events require special notice. One was the rise of what is called <a href="../cathen/11370a.htm">"The Oxford Movement"</a>. <a href="../cathen/10794a.htm">Cardinal Newman</a> used to date that movement from the year 1833, when Keble preached at Oxford his famous assize sermon on "National Apostasy". But indeed it was simply the bodying-forth of tendencies which had been long in the air. The old notion of the <a href="../cathen/10285c.htm">medieval period</a> as "a millennium of darkness" had passed away; and from the contemplation of its masterpieces in architecture and <a href="../cathen/11395a.htm">painting</a> men proceeded to study its <a href="../cathen/08066a.htm">intellectual</a> and spiritual life. They were also led to investigate, in the light of facts and first principles, the claims of <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Anglicanism</a>. No <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubt</a> the "Lectures on the History and Structure of the Prayer Book of the Church of England" delivered by Dr. Lloyd, the Regius Professor of Divinity at <a href="../cathen/11365b.htm">Oxford</a>, set many of his hearers thinking, <a href="../cathen/10794a.htm">Newman</a> among them. But the object of the leaders of the <a href="../cathen/11370a.htm">Oxford Movement</a> at its beginning was not to examine, but to defend, the <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Anglican Church</a>. This was the intention of the "Tracts for the Times", begun in 1833. It is not here possible, or indeed <a href="../cathen/10733a.htm">necessary</a>, to follow the course of the movement, which, as it went on, departed ever more and more widely from the standards  even the highest  of <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Anglicanism</a>, and approximated ever more and more closely to the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> ideal. It culminated in the famous "Tract XC", the theme of which was that the Thirty-nine Articles were susceptible of a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> interpretation and could be accepted by one who held all the <a href="../cathen/05089a.htm">dogmas</a> of the <a href="../cathen/15030c.htm">Council of Trent</a>. Of course the movement greatly interested <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>, and by no one was it more closely and anxiously followed than by <a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Dr. Wiseman</a>, who had made the acquaintance of <a href="../cathen/10794a.htm">Newman</a> and Froude upon the occasion of their visiting <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> in 1833. In September, 1840, <a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Wiseman</a> arrived at Oscott from <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>  where almost all his previous life had been spent  to take up his residence as president of that college and <a href="../cathen/15401b.htm">Vicar Apostolic </a> of the Midland District. He felt from the day of his arrival there, as he wrote in a memorandum eight years afterwards, that a new era had commenced in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>. To help forward that era was the end to which his great gifts and his large heart were utterly devoted. The majority of hereditary <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">English</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> were much prejudiced against the Tractarians. <a href="../cathen/09270c.htm">Dr. Lingard</a> warned <a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Bishop Wiseman</a> not to trust them. Dr. Griffiths, the <a href="../cathen/15401b.htm">Vicar Apostolic </a> of the London District, used similar language. But <a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Wiseman</a> did trust them. He held that <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> principles, if honestly entertained, must lead to the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, and he fully believed in the honesty of <a href="../cathen/10794a.htm">Newman</a> and <a href="../cathen/10794a.htm">Newman's</a> followers. How <a href="../cathen/10794a.htm">Newman</a> was influenced by a paper of his on the <a href="../cathen/05121a.htm">Donatists</a>, published in the Dublin Review in 1839, is well known. The <a href="../cathen/11370a.htm">Oxford Movement</a> had been directed to the impossible aim of unprotestantizing the <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Anglican Church</a>. <a href="../cathen/10794a.htm">Newman</a> and many of his friends came gradually to see that the aim was impossible. The kindly light which they had so faithfully followed step by step led them on to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>. <a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Wiseman</a> testified: "The Church has not received at any time a convert who has joined her in more docility and simplicity of <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> than <a href="../cathen/10794a.htm">Newman</a>."</p> <p><a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Wiseman</a> had earnestly desired "an influx of fresh blood" into the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>. The accession of the converts due to the <a href="../cathen/11370a.htm">Oxford Movement</a> brought it. And no <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubt</a> it accelerated the <a href="../cathen/16037d.htm">restoration of the hierarchy</a> which had been so strongly desired by generations of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>. In 1840 <a href="../cathen/07006a.htm">Gregory XVI</a> had increased the number of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">English</a> <a href="../cathen/15401b.htm">vicars Apostolic</a> from four to eight. Ten years afterwards <a href="../cathen/12134b.htm">Pius IX</a> decreed that "the <a href="../cathen/07322c.htm">hierarchy</a> of Bishops ordinary, taking their titles from their sees, should, according to the usual rules of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, again flourish in the Kingdom of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>". The whole of the country was formed into one province consisting of the <a href="../cathen/10244c.htm">metropolitan See</a> of Westminster, and the twelve suffragan <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">sees</a> of <a href="../cathen/14162b.htm">Southwark</a>, <a href="../cathen/12171b.htm">Plymouth</a>, <a href="../cathen/04058c.htm">Clifton</a>, Newport and Menevia, <a href="../cathen/13759c.htm">Shrewsbury</a>, <a href="../cathen/09314a.htm">Liverpool</a>, <a href="../cathen/13399a.htm">Salford</a>, <a href="../cathen/07318b.htm">Hexham and Newcastle</a>, Beverley, <a href="../cathen/11133a.htm">Nottingham</a>, <a href="../cathen/02578c.htm">Birmingham</a>, Northampton. This restoration of the <a href="../cathen/07322c.htm">hierarchy</a> was certainly not designed as an act of <a href="../cathen/15546c.htm">war</a>; it was indeed "unattended by any suspicion that it would give offence to others". But it did give dire offence, and the country resounded with denunciations of what was called "The Papal Aggression". An "insolent and insidious aggression", Lord John Russell, the premier, pronounced it to be, and shortly afterwards introduced into the House of Commons a bill by which the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> were prohibited, under penalties, from assuming the territorial titles conferred upon them by the <a href="../cathen/12260a.htm">pope</a>. The bill became law after long and angry debates, but was, from the first, a dead letter. There can be no question that <a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Cardinal Wiseman's</a> appeal to the people of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> largely contributed to allay the popular passion which his pastoral letter "From without the Flaminian Gate" had had no small share in exciting. Though a somewhat lengthy pamphlet, it was printed <em>in extenso</em> in "The Times" and in four other <a href="../cathen/09341a.htm">London</a> newspapers, and its circulation was immense. The <a href="../cathen/03333b.htm">cardinal</a> appealed to the "manly sense and honest heart" of his countrymen, to "the love of honourable dealing and fair play, which is the instinct of an Englishman", and he did not appeal in vain.</p> <p><a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Cardinal Wiseman</a> filled the <a href="../cathen/10244c.htm">metropolitan See</a> of Westminster from 1850 to 1865, and it would be hard to overrate the greatness of his services to the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> cause in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>. <a href="../cathen/09604b.htm">Manning</a> truly said in the sermon preached at his funeral: "When he closed his eyes he had already seen the work he had begun expanding everywhere, and the traditions of three hundred years everywhere dissolving before it." When he began that work, there were less than five hundred <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>; when he ceased from it there were some fifteen hundred. The number of converts during these fifteen years had increased tenfold, and fifty-five <a href="../cathen/04340c.htm">monasteries</a> had come into being. But mere statistics give no sufficient notion of the progress made by the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> under <a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Wiseman's</a> rule, a progress directly due to him in large measure. Not the least important item of his service to religion was the way in which he presented the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> to his countrymen. Mr. Wilfrid Ward is well warranted when he writes: "Wiseman may claim to have been the first effectively to remind Englishmen in our own day of the historical significance of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, which so much impressed Macaulay, and which affected permanently such a man as Comte, which kindled the historical enthusiasm of a De Maîstre, a Görres and a Frederick Schlegel." The organization of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, as it now exists in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>, may be said to be due to him. He himself drew up, almost entirely, the decrees regarding it for the First Provincial Synod, held at Oscott (1852). His work, indeed, was not done in the tranquillity which he <a href="../cathen/09397a.htm">loved</a>. "Without were fightings, within were fears." Some of the converts did not fuse with the hereditary <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>, "the little remnant of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>", whom they judged to be ill-educated and behind the times, and this prejudice <a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Wiseman</a> regarded as ungenerous, even if, to some extent, it was not unfounded. He deprecated strongly the spirit of party and sought in all gentleness, to put it down and to guide his flock into the way of peace. On the other hand, some of the old <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>, taking their stand upon the ancient ways, regarded with distrust certain innovations of discipline and devotion introduced by the more <a href="../cathen/15753a.htm">zealous</a> of the converts. They looked upon the <a href="../cathen/11272a.htm">Oratorians</a> as extravagant. They viewed <a href="../cathen/09604b.htm">Monsignor Manning</a> with suspicion. It is unnecessary to enter into the dissensions which embittered <a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Wiseman's</a> declining years. The last two, indeed, were passed in comparative quiet, but amid much physical suffering. Not long before he died he said: "I have never cared for anything but the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>. My sole delight has been in everything connected with her."</p> <p><a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Cardinal Wiseman's</a> successor in the See of Westminster  the successor he desired  was the <a href="../cathen/12517a.htm">provost</a> of his chapter, <a href="../cathen/09604b.htm">Monsignor Manning</a>, whose episcopate lasted until 1892. They were twenty-seven years of fruitful activity, through <a href="../cathen/05649a.htm">evil</a> report and through good report. For some time he was certainly unpopular, not only among his <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> fellow countrymen but among his own <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>, who did not like his strict discipline and some of whom by no means sympathized with what was called his "ultra-papalism". But gradually the prejudice against him wore off, and his great qualities obtained general recognition. It was the victory of his <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> unfeigned, his deep devotion, his spotless integrity, his indomitable <a href="../cathen/06147a.htm">courage</a>, his singleness of aim, his entire devotion to the cause which, in his heart of hearts, he believed to be the only cause worth living for. One who <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knew</a> him well said of him: "He was an Archbishop who lived among his people", "the door-steps of his house were worn with the footsteps of the fatherless and the <a href="../cathen/15617c.htm">widow</a>, the <a href="../cathen/12327a.htm">poor</a>, the forlorn, the tempted and the disgraced, who came to him in their hours of trouble and sorrow." No <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubt</a> he made mistakes, some of them grave enough  as, for example, his persistent opposition to the frequentation of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge by <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> young men  and his abortive and costly attempt to supply the loss of academical training by a <a href="../cathen/04107b.htm">college</a> of higher studies at Kensington under the direction of Monsignor Capel. But it is certainly <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">true</a> that the active part which he played in every department of social reform revealed him not only as a great philanthropist and a great churchman, but also as a statesman of no mean order. It was said by an able writer, upon the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his <a href="../cathen/04276a.htm">consecration</a>: "To him, more than to any man, it is due that <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">English</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> have at last outgrown the narrow cramped life of their past of <a href="../cathen/11703a.htm">persecution</a>, and stand in all things upon a footing of equality with their fellow countrymen." No <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubt</a> this <a href="../cathen/07131b.htm">happy</a> result was largely due to <a href="../cathen/09604b.htm">Manning</a>; but perhaps it was more largely due to another. The revelation of his inner life which <a href="../cathen/10794a.htm">John Henry Newman</a> thought himself <a href="../cathen/11189a.htm">obliged</a> to put before his countrymen in order to vindicate himself from the wanton attacks of Charles Kingsley, in 1864, came like a revelation to multitudes of what <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a> as a religion really is. The "Apologia pro Vita Sua" was like a burst of sunlight putting to flight the densest mists of <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> prejudice. And the "Letter to the Duke of Norfolk" (1875), in reply to Gladstone's pamphlet on the Vatican decrees which appeared in 1874, may be said to have made an end of the old <a href="../cathen/05525a.htm">error</a> that a loyal <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> cannot be a loyal Englishman. It was enough for <a href="../cathen/10794a.htm">Newman</a> to affirm that there was no incompatibility between the two characters. His countrymen believed him on his word. Lord Morley of Blackburn, a very competent judge, writes: "Newman raised his Church to what would, not so long before, have seemed a strange and incredible rank in the mind of <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>" (Miscellanies, Fourth Series, p. 161).</p> <p><a href="../cathen/15311b.htm">Herbert Vaughan</a>, who succeeded <a href="../cathen/09604b.htm">Cardinal Manning</a> in the See of Westminster, ruled the diocese as <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">archbishop</a>, and the province as <a href="../cathen/10244c.htm">metropolitan</a> for nearly eleven years. It was reserved for him to take up a work which his predecessor had put aside  the erection of a <a href="../cathen/03438a.htm">cathedral</a> for Westminster. The first public act which <a href="../cathen/09604b.htm">Manning</a> had to perform after his <a href="../cathen/11093a.htm">nomination</a> to the <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">archbishopric</a>  it was even before his <a href="../cathen/04276a.htm">consecration</a>  was to preside over a meeting summoned to promote the building of a <a href="../cathen/03438a.htm">cathedral</a> in memory of <a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Cardinal Wiseman</a>. He declared on that occasion: "It is a work which I will take up and will to the utmost of my power promote  when the work of the poor children in <a href="../cathen/09341a.htm">London</a> is accomplished, and not till then." This work for the poor <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> children of <a href="../cathen/09341a.htm">London</a>  provision for their <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a> in their religion  was <a href="../cathen/09604b.htm">Cardinal Manning's</a> life-work; and before he passed away it was accomplished. The building of the <a href="../cathen/03438a.htm">cathedral</a> he left, as he announced in 1874, to his successor. The magnificent fane conceived by the genius of John Francis Bentley may, in some sort, be considered as <a href="../cathen/15311b.htm">Cardinal Vaughan's</a> monument, as being the outcome of his energy and <a href="../cathen/15753a.htm">zeal</a>. It is a memorial of him, as well as of <a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Cardinal Wiseman</a>.</p> <h2 id="section2">Current position of the Church</h2> <p>So much must suffice regarding the history of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a> in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> from the so-called <a href="../cathen/12700b.htm">Reformation</a> to the present day. We now proceed to give some account of the actual position of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> in that country. We have already seen that in 1850 <a href="../cathen/12134b.htm">Pope Pius IX</a> reconstituted the <a href="../cathen/07322c.htm">hierarchy</a>, making <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> one <a href="../cathen/12514a.htm">ecclesiastical province</a> under the <a href="../cathen/10244c.htm">metropolitan See</a> of Westminster, with the twelve suffragan Sees of <a href="../cathen/14162b.htm">Southwark</a>, <a href="../cathen/07318b.htm">Hexham and Newcastle</a>, Beverley, <a href="../cathen/09314a.htm">Liverpool</a>, <a href="../cathen/13399a.htm">Salford</a>, Newport and Menevia, <a href="../cathen/04058c.htm">Clifton</a>, <a href="../cathen/12171b.htm">Plymouth</a>, <a href="../cathen/11133a.htm">Nottingham</a>, <a href="../cathen/02578c.htm">Birmingham</a>, and <a href="../cathen/11107b.htm">Northampton</a>. In 1878 the <a href="../cathen/02540b.htm">Diocese of Beverley</a> was divided into the Dioceses of <a href="../cathen/09112a.htm">Leeds</a> and Middlesborough; in 1882 the <a href="../cathen/14162b.htm">Diocese of Southwark</a> was divided into the Dioceses of <a href="../cathen/14162b.htm">Southwark</a> and Portsmouth, and in 1895 <a href="../cathen/15532a.htm">Wales</a>, excepting Glamorganshire, was separated from the <a href="../cathen/11018a.htm">Diocese of Newport in England</a> and Menevia, and formed into the Vicariate Apostolic of <a href="../cathen/15532a.htm">Wales</a>. Three years later this vicariate was erected into the <a href="../cathen/10187d.htm">Diocese of Menevia</a>, so that the <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/15592c.htm">Westminster</a> now has fifteen suffragans. Hitherto, since the <a href="../cathen/12700b.htm">Reformation</a>, <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> had been regarded as a missionary country and had been <a href="../cathen/05706a.htm">immediately subject</a> to the <a href="../cathen/12456a.htm">Congregation of Propaganda</a>. But <a href="../cathen/12137a.htm">Pius X</a>, by his Constitution, "Sapienti Consilio", transferred (1908) <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> from that state of tutelage to the <a href="../cathen/09068a.htm">common law</a> of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>.</p> <p>The number of <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>, <a href="../cathen/13675a.htm">secular</a> and <a href="../cathen/12722c.htm">regular</a>, in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>, according to the most recent list, is three thousand five hundred and twenty-four, and the number of churches, <a href="../cathen/03574b.htm">chapels</a>, and institutes, one thousand seven hundred and thirty-six. Of the regulars who are over a thousand in number, many are French exiles, and a considerable number of them are not engaged in <a href="../cathen/11499b.htm">parochial</a> or missionary work. There are three hundred and eleven <a href="../cathen/04340c.htm">monasteries</a> and seven hundred and eighty-three <a href="../cathen/04340c.htm">convents</a>, a great increase during the half-century which has passed away since 1851, when there were only seventeen <a href="../cathen/04340c.htm">monasteries</a> and fifty-three <a href="../cathen/04340c.htm">convents</a>. During the same period many <a href="../cathen/03041a.htm">churches</a> of imposing proportions, adorned with more or less magnificence, have been erected. Conspicuous among them is the <a href="../cathen/03438a.htm">cathedral</a> of Westminster of which mention has been already made. It is in the Byzantine style and is certainly one of the noblest of modern <a href="../cathen/03041a.htm">religious edifices</a>. Nearly two hundred and fifty thousand pounds have already been expended on it, and, although still unfinished, it has been open for daily use since <a href="../cathen/03724b.htm">Christmas</a>, 1903.</p> <p><a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> are still subject to various legal disabilities. We have already seen that by the Bill of Rights (11 Will. and Mary sen. 2, c. 2) no member of the reigning house who is a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a>, or has married a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a>, can succeed to the throne, that the sovereign, on becoming a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a>, or marrying a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a>, thereby forfeits the crown, and that the <a href="../cathen/01112a.htm">Act of Settlement</a> (12 and 13 Will. III, c. 2, s. 2), by which the succession was confined to the descendants of the Electress Sophia, being <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a>, confirms this article of the Constitution. This last-mentioned statute further enacts "that whosoever shall hereafter come to the possession of the Crown of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> shall join in communion with the <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Church of England</a> as by law established". The Emancipation Act (10 Geo. IV, c. 7), which was largely a disabling Act, provides that nothing contained in it "shall extend or be construed to enable any person otherwise than he is now by <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">law</a> entitled, to hold the office of Lord Chancellor of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> or Lord Lieutenant of Ireland", and the common opinion is that <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> cannot now fill these great positions, but this view appears questionable. The point is discussed at length in Lilly and Wallis's "Manual of the Law specially affecting <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>", pp. 36-43. The Emancipation Act also contains sections imposing fresh disabilities upon "Jesuits and members of other <a href="../cathen/12748b.htm">religious</a> orders, communities or Societies of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> of <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, bound by monastic or religious <a href="../cathen/15511a.htm">vows</a>". These sections have never been put in force; still, as they remain on the statute book, they have the serious effect of disabling <a href="../cathen/12748b.htm">religious</a> orders of men from holding <a href="../cathen/12462a.htm">property</a>. An Act of 1860 (23 and 24 Vict., c. 134) has, however, somewhat mitigated this hardship, as also a like hardship regarding bequests for what are deemed <a href="../cathen/14339a.htm">superstitious</a> uses, such as Masses for the dead. Such bequests are held by English law to be void, but the <a href="../cathen/08098b.htm">Irish</a> courts do not follow the English on this point. It should be noted that up to the passing of the Emancipation Act, trusts for the promotion of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> charities were held to be illegal. Nor did that enactment expressly refer to them, so that three years later, in order to remove all <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubts</a> concerning them, the Roman <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> Charities Act was passed, by which such charities were made subject to the same <a href="../cathen/09053a.htm">laws</a> as Protestant Dissenting charities. The English law as to trusts for <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> purposes, which are neither charitable nor void as being for "superstitious uses" or for support of forbidden orders, is the same as that which applies to other bequests which are lawful but not charitable.</p> <p>The only other <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> disability which need be noticed here is that no <a href="../cathen/11726a.htm">person</a> in <a href="../cathen/11279a.htm">Holy orders</a> of the <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> of <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> is capable of being elected to serve in Parliament as a Member of the House of Commons. This disability is shared by the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergymen</a> of the <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Church of England</a>, who, however, can escape from it by the legal process vulgarly, though incorrectly, called renouncing their orders, but not by Protestant Dissenting <a href="../cathen/10326a.htm">ministers</a>.</p> <p>It should be noticed that in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> provision is made for securing religious liberty for pauper and criminal <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>. In every workhouse a creed register is kept in which the religion of every inmate is entered by the master, upon admission, and the Guardians of the Poor are empowered to appoint <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergymen</a>, at suitable salaries, to minister to the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> paupers. Similarly, <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/03579b.htm">chaplains</a> may be appointed in public lunatic asylums. <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> pauper children may be transferred from the workhouse <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> to <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> of their own religion, and, if boarded out, provision is made for their attending the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> church. <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/10326a.htm">ministers</a> to <a href="../cathen/12430a.htm">prisons</a> are appointed by the Home Secretary, and are duly remunerated. There are sixteen commissioned army <a href="../cathen/03579b.htm">chaplains</a> paid by the State. In the Navy there are twenty-three <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/03579b.htm">chaplains</a>, and a hundred and thirty <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> receive capitation allowances.</p> <p>We go on to say some words en <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a> in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> since the <a href="../cathen/12700b.htm">Reformation</a>. Of course it hardly existed when the penal law's were enforced in their full rigour. The <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>, as we have seen, were trained abroad at <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a>, at <a href="../cathen/05138a.htm">Douai</a>, at <a href="../cathen/09281a.htm">Lisbon</a>, at Valladolid. The young <a href="../cathen/08748a.htm">laity</a> benefited in intermittent and uncertain fashion by the teaching of the <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a>. <a href="../cathen/13748c.htm">Shakespeare</a>, whom there is strong reason for accounting a <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> (see Lilly's "Studies in Religion and Literature"), was "reared up", according to an old tradition, by an old <a href="../cathen/02443a.htm">Benedictine</a> <a href="../cathen/10487b.htm">monk</a>, Dom Thomas Combe, or Coombes. In Pope's time a few <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> were found here and there, and he was sent to one of them, a "Roman Catholic seminary", it is called, at Twyford, kept by Thomas Deane, an ex-fellow of Magdalen College, <a href="../cathen/11365c.htm">Oxford</a>. But these "seminaries" were carried on with difficulty, being illegal, and it was not until the outbreak of the <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">French Revolution</a> that much was effected for the cause of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a> in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>. The professors and pupils of the University of Douni, after enduring many hardships, returned to <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> in 1795, some going to Herefordshire, in the South, and some to Tudhoe, in the North. The Herefordshire establishment developed in time into St. Edmund's College. The <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">school</a> founded at Tudhoe, and removed first to Crook Hill, has expanded into the great college of <a href="../cathen/15233b.htm">Ushaw</a>, which now also serves as a <a href="../cathen/13694a.htm">seminary</a> for the five northern Dioceses of <a href="../cathen/07318b.htm">Hexham and Newcastle</a>, <a href="../cathen/09112a.htm">Leeds</a>, Middlesborough, <a href="../cathen/13399a.htm">Salford</a>, and <a href="../cathen/13759c.htm">Shrewsbury</a>. Thus these two noble institutions may claim as their far-off founder <a href="../cathen/01322b.htm">Cardinal Allen</a>. The magnificent <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuit</a> <a href="../cathen/04107b.htm">college</a> of Stonyhurst may in like manner derive its origin from <a href="../cathen/11729a.htm">Father Persons</a>, for it was founded by the religious who fled from the house established by him at <a href="../cathen/11251a.htm">St. Omer</a>. The not less magnificent college of Downside is the descendant of St. Gregory's, <a href="../cathen/05138a.htm">Douai</a>, i.e. of the <a href="../cathen/02443a.htm">Benedictine</a> <a href="../cathen/04340c.htm">monastery</a> and college founded there in 1606. The <a href="../cathen/10487b.htm">monks</a> fleeing from the fury of the <a href="../cathen/13009a.htm">French Revolution</a> were received at Acton Burnell in Shropshire by Sir Edward Smith who had been one of their pupils. It was in 1814 that they settled at <a href="../cathen/05149a.htm">Downside</a>. The great college of Oscott is now a <a href="../cathen/13694a.htm">seminary</a> in which <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> are trained for the southern <a href="../cathen/05001a.htm">dioceses</a> and is under the joint direction of the <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">Archbishop</a> of <a href="../cathen/15592c.htm">Westminster</a> and the Bishops of <a href="../cathen/02578c.htm">Birmingham</a>, <a href="../cathen/04058c.htm">Clifton</a>, <a href="../cathen/10187d.htm">Menevia</a>, Newport, <a href="../cathen/11107b.htm">Northampton</a>, and <a href="../cathen/12296a.htm">Portsmouth</a>.</p> <p>St. Joseph's Missionary College was founded by <a href="../cathen/15311b.htm">Cardinal Vaughan</a>, who ever took the deepest interest in it, and who is buried in the grounds. Of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> higher <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> two deserve special mention; that at Edgbaston, founded by <a href="../cathen/10794a.htm">Cardinal Newman</a>, and that at Beaumont, established by the <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Jesuits</a>. Until 1895 <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> young men were discouraged  nay were inhibited, without special permission of the <a href="../cathen/07322c.htm">ecclesiastical authorities</a>  from frequenting the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, but in that year a letter from the <a href="../cathen/12456a.htm">Congregation of Propaganda</a> to <a href="../cathen/15311b.htm">Cardinal Vaughan</a> announced that the <a href="../cathen/07424b.htm">Holy See</a> had removed this restriction, the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a>, however, being enjoined to make proper provision for <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> worship and instruction for <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> young men resorting to these ancient seats of learning. Elementary <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a> has also been largely provided for by <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>. Before the <a href="../cathen/12700b.htm">Protestant Reformation</a> all the great <a href="../cathen/04340c.htm">monasteries</a> had, attached to them, primary <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> for poor children. These of course disappeared with the <a href="../cathen/04340c.htm">monasteries</a>. In the eighteenth century a number of <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> charity <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a> were founded, but it was not until the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century that provision for elementary public instruction began to be recognized as a public <a href="../cathen/05215a.htm">duty</a>. In 1833 a Parliamentary grant was first made "for the purpose" of <a href="../cathen/05295b.htm">education</a>. It was divided between two <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestant</a> <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">societies</a>, the British and Foreign School, which ignored dogmatic religious teaching, and the National, which represented the <a href="../cathen/01498a.htm">Church of England</a>. In 1847 <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> elementary <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, which had much increased in numbers, were admitted to share in the government grant, and the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> Poor School Committee was founded to supervise and direct them, a <a href="../cathen/05215a.htm">duty</a> which this body, now called the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> Education Council, still fulfils.</p> <p><a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> journalism in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> is <a href="../cathen/15753a.htm">zealously</a> represented by "The Tablet" newspaper, which was founded so long ago as 1840. It is published weekly. Other <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> journals are the "Catholic Times", "Catholic Meekly", "Catholic Herald", "Catholic News", and "Universe". The chief <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> review is the "Dublin Review", founded by <a href="../cathen/15670a.htm">Cardinal Wiseman</a>, long edited by <a href="../cathen/15552c.htm">W.G. Ward</a>, and now by his son Mr. Wilfrid Ward. It is published quarterly. "The Month", a magazine of general literature edited by Fathers of the <a href="../cathen/14081a.htm">Society of Jesus</a>, is issued monthly, as its name denotes. An extremely important publication is the "Catholic Directory", which in its present form dates from the year 1838. But for nearly a century previously there had been a Directory which, however, in its earliest issues was merely an Ordo, or Calendar, for the use of <a href="../cathen/12406a.htm">priests</a> reciting Office.</p> <p>It remains now to speak of certain <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">societies</a> existing in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>. In the first place mention must be made of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> Union of Great Britain, founded in 1871. The earliest meeting recorded in the minute book was held at Norfolk House, on the 10th of February of that year, when it was unanimously agreed, "that a Society of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> be founded, under the title of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> Union of Great Britain, to promote all <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> interests, especially the restoration of the Holy Father to his lawful Sovereign <a href="../cathen/13055c.htm">rights</a>". The establishment of the <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">society</a> was sanctioned by the <a href="../cathen/01691a.htm">archbishops</a> and <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">bishops</a> of <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> and by the <a href="../cathen/15401b.htm">vicars Apostolic</a> of <a href="../cathen/13613a.htm">Scotland</a> (the <a href="../cathen/07322c.htm">hierarchy</a> in that country was not restored until 1878), and was emphatically approved by <a href="../cathen/12134b.htm">Pius IX</a>. In the rules of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> Union the following means of effecting its objects are specified:</p> <div class="bulletlist"><ol><li>By meetings of the Union and of the Council;</li><li>By public meetings;</li><li>By petitions or memorials, or deputations to the Authorities;</li><li>By local branches;</li><li>By correspondence with similar <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">societies</a> in other countries;</li><li>By procuring and publishing information on subjects of interest to <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>;</li><li>By co-operation with approved Confraternities, Institutions, and Charitable Associations, for the furtherance of their respective objects; which co-operation shall, in each case, be sanctioned by the <a href="../cathen/02581b.htm">Bishop</a> of the Diocese;</li><li>By any other mode approved of by the Council and the Bishops.</li></ol></div> <p>For thirty-seven years the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> Union has worked steadily and successfully on the lines thus indicated. It has also been of great utility in affording advice and assistance to <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a>, especially the <a href="../cathen/04049b.htm">clergy</a>, in matters of <a href="../cathen/05141a.htm">doubt</a> and difficulty, legal and administrative. It is governed by a president and council elected by the general body of members. From the first the office of president has been held by the Duke of Norfolk, and for many years the Marquis of Ripon has been the vice-president. On its list of members will be found most British <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> of position and influence.</p> <p>The <a href="../cathen/15077a.htm">Catholic Truth Society</a> was founded in 1884 by the late <a href="../cathen/15311b.htm">Cardinal Vaughan</a>, then <a href="../cathen/12676c.htm">rector</a> of the Foreign Missionary College at Mill Hill, and has since had a career of much usefulness. Its main objects are to disseminate among <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> small and cheap devotional works; to assist the uneducated poor to a better <a href="../cathen/08673a.htm">knowledge</a> of their religion; to spread among <a href="../cathen/12495a.htm">Protestants</a> information about <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/15073a.htm">truth</a>; to promote the circulation of good, cheap, and popular <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> books. It holds every year a Conference for the elucidation and discussion of questions affecting the work of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>. During the twenty years of its existence it has issued publications, great and small, at the rate of about a million a year. It has formed a lending <a href="../cathen/09227b.htm">library</a> of books for the blind; and it has a collection of about forty sets of lantern views, with accompanying readings on subjects connected with <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/05752c.htm">faith</a> and history. It has been copied by <a href="../cathen/14074a.htm">societies</a> bearing the same names in <a href="../cathen/13613a.htm">Scotland</a> and <a href="../cathen/08098b.htm">Ireland</a>, in the <a href="../cathen/15156a.htm">United States</a> <a href="../cathen/03227a.htm">Canada</a>, <a href="../cathen/02644a.htm">Bombay</a>, and Australia.</p> <p>The Catholic Association was originally founded in 1891. Its objects are stated in its Rules as being;</p> <div class="bulletlist"><ul><li>To promote unity and good fellowship among <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholics</a> by organizing lectures, concerts, dances, whist tournaments, excursions, and other gatherings of a social character, and</li><li>to assist, whenever possible, in the work of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> organization, and in the protection and advancement of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> interests.</li></ul></div> <p>It has been particularly successful in the organization of <a href="../cathen/12085a.htm">pilgrimages</a> to <a href="../cathen/13164a.htm">Rome</a> and other places of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> interest.</p> <p>We cannot better bring to an end this brief survey of the career of <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholicism</a> in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a> since the <a href="../cathen/12700b.htm">Protestant Reformation</a> than in some eloquent and touching words with which Abbot Gasquet concludes his "Short History of the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a> in <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">England</a>":  "When we recall the state to which the long years of <a href="../cathen/11703a.htm">persecution</a> had reduced the <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> body at the dawn of the nineteenth century, we may well wonder at what has been accomplished since then. Who shall say how it has come about? Where out of our poverty, for example, have been found the sums of money for all our innumerable needs? Churches and colleges and <a href="../cathen/13554b.htm">schools</a>, monastic buildings and <a href="../cathen/04340c.htm">convents</a>, have all had to be built and supported; how, the <a href="../cathen/12510a.htm">Providence of God</a> can alone explain. . . . From the first years of the nineteenth century, when the principle 'suffer it to be' was applied to the <a href="../cathen/05445a.htm">English</a> <a href="../cathen/03449a.htm">Catholic</a> <a href="../cathen/03744a.htm">Church</a>, there have been signs of the dawn of the brighter, happier days for the old religion. Slight indeed were the signs at first, slight but significant, and precious memories to us now, of the workings of the <a href="../cathen/07409a.htm">Spirit</a>, of the rising of the sap again in the old trunk, and of the bursting of bud and bloom in manifestation of that life which, during the long winter of <a href="../cathen/11703a.htm">persecution</a>, had been but dormant. Succisa virescit. Cut down almost to the ground, the tree planted by <a href="../cathen/02081a.htm">Augustine</a> has manifested again the divine life within it; it has put forth once more new branches and leaves, and gives promise of abundant fruit."</p> <div class='catholicadnet-728x90' id='cathen-728x90-bottom' style='display: flex; height: 100px; align-items: center; justify-content: center; '></div> <div class="cenotes"><h2>Sources</h2><p class="cenotes">Anything like a complete bibliography of the subject treated in the foregoing article would attain to the dimensions of a large library catalogue. But the following books may be mentioned: BELLESHEIM. <em>Wilhelm Cardinal Allen, 1532-1594, und die englischen Semin re auf dem Festlande</em> (Mainz, 1885); BUTLER, <em>Historical Memoirs of English, Scottish, and Irish Catholics</em> (3 vols., London, 1819-21); ID., <em>Historical account of the Laws respecting the Roman Catholics</em> (London, 1795); ID., <em>The Book of the Roman Catholic Church</em> (London, 1825); BREWER, GAIRDNER, AND BRODIE, eds., <em>Calendar of Letters and Papers foreign and domestic of the reign of Henry VIII</em> (18 vols., London, 1862-1902); CHALLONER, <em>Memoirs of the Missionary priests and other Catholics that suffered death in England, 1577-1684</em> (2 vols., Manchester, 1803; Derby, 1843); COLLIER, <em>History of the Church of England</em> (London, 1708-09); DODD, <em>Church History of England from 1500 to 1688</em> (Brussels, 1737-42), and new edition by TIERNEY (5 vols., London, 1839); FOLEY, <em>Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus</em> (7 vols., London, 1880); GASQUET, <em>Henry VIII and the English Monasteries</em> (5th ed., London, 1893); ID. AND E. BISHOP, <em>Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer</em> (London, 1890); GILLOW, <em>Literary and biographical history of Roman Catholics</em> (5 vols., London, 1886); GILLOW ed., <em>Haydock Papers</em> (London, 1888); HALLAM, <em>Constitutional History of England from the accession of Henry VII to death of George II</em> (3 vols., tenth ed., London, 1863); HAUDEC UR, <em>La Conservation providentielle du Catholicisme en Angleterre</em> (Reims, 1898); HUSENBETH, <em>Notices of the English Colleges and Convents on the Continent after the dissolution of the religious houses in England</em> (Norwich, 1849); KNOX, <em>Records of the English Catholics under the Penal Laws</em> (2 vols., London, 1882-4); LAW, <em>A Calendar of the English Martyrs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries</em> (London, 1876); LILLY AND WALLIS, <em>A Manual of the Law specially affecting Catholics</em> (London, 1893); MACAULAY, <em>Works</em> (8 vols., London, 1866); MAY (LORD FARNBOROUGH), <em>Constitutional History of England, 1760-1860</em> (2 vols., 2nd ed., London, 1863-5); MILNER, <em>Letters to a Prebendary; ans. to Reflections on Popery by J. Sturges, remarks on the opposition of Hoadlyism to the doctrines of the Church of England</em> (7th ed., London, 1822); ID., <em>Supplementary Memoirs of English Catholics</em> (London, 1820); ID., <em>The End of Religious Controversy</em>; ID., <em>Vindication of the end of religious controversy from exceptions of T. Burgess and R. Grier</em> (London, 1822); PANZANI, <em>Memoirs, giving account of his agency in England, 1634-6</em>, tr. by BERINGTON, added, <em>State of English Catholic Church</em> (Birmingham, 1793); VON RANKE, <em>Die r m. P pste in d. letzten vier Jhdtn</em> (3 vols., 7th ed., Leipzig, 1878); SANDER, <em>Rise of the Anglican Schism (1585)</em>, with continuation by RISHTON, tr., with notes, etc., by LEWIS (London, 1877); SIMPSON, <em>Edmund Campion</em> (London, 1867); <em>Statutes at Large</em>; STRYPE, <em>Annals of Reformation</em> (London, 1708-09); WARD, <em>Catholic London a Century ago</em> (London, 1905).</p></div> <div class="pub"><h2>About this page</h2><p id="apa"><strong>APA citation.</strong> <span id="apaauthor">Lilly, W.</span> <span id="apayear">(1909).</span> <span id="apaarticle">England (Since the Reformation).</span> In <span id="apawork">The Catholic Encyclopedia.</span> <span id="apapublisher">New York: Robert Appleton Company.</span> <span id="apaurl">http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05445a.htm</span></p><p id="mla"><strong>MLA citation.</strong> <span id="mlaauthor">Lilly, William.</span> <span id="mlaarticle">"England (Since the Reformation)."</span> <span id="mlawork">The Catholic Encyclopedia.</span> <span id="mlavolume">Vol. 5.</span> <span id="mlapublisher">New York: Robert Appleton Company,</span> <span id="mlayear">1909.</span> <span id="mlaurl"><http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05445a.htm>.</span></p><p id="transcription"><strong>Transcription.</strong> <span id="transcriber">This article was transcribed for New Advent by Douglas J. Potter.</span> <span id="dedication">Dedicated to the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary.</span></p><p id="approbation"><strong>Ecclesiastical approbation.</strong> <span id="nihil"><em>Nihil Obstat.</em> May 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, Censor.</span> <span id="imprimatur"><em>Imprimatur.</em> +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York.</span></p><p id="contactus"><strong>Contact information.</strong> The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is webmaster <em>at</em> newadvent.org. Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback — especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.</p></div> </div> <div id="ogdenville"><table summary="Bottom bar" width="100%" cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td class="bar_white_on_color"><center><strong>Copyright © 2023 by <a href="../utility/contactus.htm">New Advent LLC</a>. 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