The English Protestant Reformation was imposed by the English Crown, and submission to its essential points was exacted by the State with post-Reformation oaths. With some solemnity, by oath, test, or formal declaration, English churchmen and others were required to assent to the religious changes, starting in the sixteenth century and continuing for more than 250 years.
This oath was imposed in March 1534 (Act of Supremacy 1534). The title "Supreme Head" had first been introduced by Henry VIII into a decree of Convocation, 11 February 1531; and had been resisted by the clergy. Though it did not as yet have any religious significance, and might be a matter of compliment only, it might, they feared, receive another interpretation later. But acting under the advice of John Fisher, Warham, and others, they submitted after adding the conditional phrase, quantum per legem Dei licet.
Two years later, the king had broken with the pope, and Parliament had enacted that the king should be "taken, accepted and reputed the only supreme head on Earth of the church of England" by every one of his subjects. But no formula for the oath was laid down in the Act, and great differences seem to have prevailed in practice. Many long "acknowledgments of supremacy" are extant[1] but it would seem that most people were only asked to swear to the Succession, that is to the king's marriage with Anne Boleyn, which the pope condemned, and which therefore involved the supremacy, though the form of the Oath of Succession preserved in The Lords' Journals, refers to the supremacy only lightly. It is unclear what form of the oath Fisher and Thomas More refused to sign. They were ready to accept the succession of Anne Boleyn's children, but refused the supremacy.[2]
"I, A.B., do utterly testify and declare in my conscience, that the Queen's Highness is the only supreme Governor of the Realm . . . as well in all Spiritual or Ecclesiastical things or causes as Temporal, &c. &c. &c. So help me God."
This was not to be proposed at once to every one; but was to be taken by the clergy, and by all holding office under the Crown; by others, when asked. This moderation in exacting the oath helped to prevent an outcry against it, and enabled the Government to deal with the recalcitrant in detail. Many years elapsed, for instance, before it was imposed on the graduates of the universities. The last laws passed by Elizabeth against Catholics (1592-3) enjoined a new test for Recusants (Popish Recusants Act 1592). It comprised (1) A confession of "grievous offence against God in contemning her Majesty's Government"; (2) Royal Supremacy; (3) A clause against dispensations and dissimulations, perhaps the first of its sort in oaths of this class.
Elizabeth's "settlement of religion" (see Elizabethan Religious Settlement) had included compromise with the Puritan party, as they were to become, and they were not in love with the supremacy. An informal test was used, asking the suspected person whether he would fight against the pope, if he sent an army to restore Catholicism. The Catholics called this the "bloody question". There was no law to enforce an answer and no specific penalty for refusal.
Towards the end of Elizabeth's reign, a split began in the Catholic ranks on this subject. Some of the priests who had joined in the Archpriest Controversy and appeal against the archpriest George Blackwell had afterwards presented to Elizabeth a "Protestation of Allegiance".[3] This was not the first example of such a declaration of loyalty, but it was the first which withheld from the pope any possible exercise of the deposing power, rather than simply denying the validity of the deposition pronounced by Pius V.
When the Puritan party had gained the upper hand during the civil wars, the exaction of the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance fell into desuetude, and they were repealed by the Act of February, 1650, and their place taken by an "engagement of allegiance" to the Commonwealth. An "Oath of Abjuration was passed 19 August 1643, and afterwards, in 1656, reissued.
Everyone was to be "adjudged a Papist" who refused this oath, and the consequent penalties began with the confiscation of two thirds of the recusant's goods, and went on to deprive him of almost every civic right. In practice the enactments were sparingly enforced. They checked the gallicanizing party among the English Catholics, which had at first been ready to offer forms of submission similar to the old oath of Allegiance, which is stated (Reusch, 335) to have been condemned anew about this time by Innocent X. The chief writer on the Catholic side was the lawyer John Austin, who generally used the pseudonym William Birchley. The oath was also used against Quakers who refused any oath.
The Test Oath (1672, 1678)
(Also known as the Declaration of Attestation Oath.) The first Parliament after the Restoration revived the Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance, which were taken on 14 July 1660. The Catholics in England being at first in some favour at Court, managed, as a rule, to escape taking it. In Ireland the old controversy was revived through an address to the Crown, called "The Irish Remonstrance", which emphasized the principles of the condemned Oath of Allegiance. It had been drawn up by a Capuchin friar (who afterwards left the order), called Peter Valesius Walsh, who published many books in its defence, which publications were eventually placed on the Index.[4]
After the conversion of James, then Duke of York, the jealousy of the Protestant party increased, and in 1672 a Test Act was carried by Shaftesbury, which compelled all holders of office under the Crown to make a short "Declaration against Transubstantiation", viz., to swear that "there is not any transubstantiation in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, . . . at or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever" (25 Chas. II, c. 2). This test was effective: James resigned his post of Lord High Admiral.
In reaction to the Popish Plot in 1678, however, a new test was devised, later known as "the King's Declaration". This test added a further clause that "The invocation of the virgin Mary, or any Saint and the Sacrifice of the Mass . . . are superstitious and idolatrous . . . and that I make this declaration without any evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation whatsoever, and without any dispensation already granted me by the pope, &c., &c. (30 Chas. II, ii. 1). It was originally appointed for office holders and the members of both Houses, except the Duke of York.
On the death of Charles, James II succeeded, and he would no doubt have gladly abolished the anti-Catholic oaths altogether. But he never had the opportunity of bringing the project before Parliament. The Oaths of Supremacy and Allegiance were less of a live issue during James's reign, but the Test was the subject of constant discussion, for its form and scope had been expressly intended to hamper a reform such as James was instituting. He freed himself, however, more or less from it by the Dispensing Power, especially after the declaration of the judges, June, 1686, that it was contrary to the principles of the constitution to prevent the Crown from using the services of any of its subjects when they were needed.
The Revolution of 1688 quickly brought the Test back into greater vogue than ever. The first Parliament summoned after the triumph of William of Orange added a clause to the Bill of Rights, which was then passed, by which the Sovereign was himself to take the Declaration (1 W. & M., sess. 1, c. 8). By this device no Catholic could ever be admitted to accept the new regime, without renouncing their faith.
The Irish Oath of 1774 to Catholic Emancipation, 1829
In 1770 John Burgoyne proposed unsuccessfully to free Catholic soldiers from the obligations of the Test. In 1774, however, it was necessary to pacify Canada, and the Quebec Act was passed, the first measure of toleration for Catholics sanctioned by Parliament since the days of the Tudor Queen Mary. Soon after began the war of American Independence, the difficulties of which gradually awakened English statesmen to the need of reconciling Catholics.
The Irish Government took the first step by undoing William III's work of joining the profession of fidelity to the sovereign with the rejection of papal authority. In 1774 an oath was proposed of allegiance to King George (§ 1) and rejection of the Pretender (§ 2), but without prejudice to the pope's spiritual authority, or to any dogma of the Faith. The alleged malpractice of "no faith with heretics" was renounced (§ 3), so was the deposing power (§ 4), but without the objectionable words, "impious, damnable and heretical." The "temporal and civil jurisdiction of the pope, direct and indirect within the realm" was also abjured (§ 5), and the promise was given that no dispensation from this oath should be considered valid (§ 6). This Irish Oath, of 1774, was accepted by the legislative authorities as proof of loyalty, and it was freely taken.
In 1778, the first Relief Bill, also called Sir George Savile's Act, came before the English Parliament. It was intended to relieve the English Catholics from the worst consequences of the penal laws, and in it was embodied the Irish Oath (18 George III, c. 60). This Act was passed with little difficulty, and the oath was taken without remonstrance by the clergy of all schools.
The relief given by the Bill of 1778 was so imperfect that further legislation was soon called for, and now the disadvantages of the system of tests were acutely felt. A committee of lay Catholics, with Gallican proclivities, who afterwards characteristically called themselves the Cisalpine Club entered into negotiations with the government. To them it was represented that if more concessions were required more assurances should be given. They were accordingly presented with a long "Protest", which not only rejected the alleged malpractices, already disowned by the Irish Oath, but declaimed against them and others of the same kind in strong but untheological language. It reintroduced, for instance, the objectionable terms "impious, heretical and damnable" of James's Oath of Allegiance. The committee insisted (1) that words would be understood in a broad popular way, and (2) that, to obtain the Relief Act, it must be signed instantly. To prevent such a misfortune, it was freely signed by laity and clergy, and by the four vicars Apostolic, but two of these recalled their names. When, however, the signatures had been obtained, the new Relief Bill was brought forward by Government, with an oath annexed founded on the Protest (the "Protestation Oath"), which excluded from relief those who would not swear to it, and accept the name of "Protesting Catholic Dissenters". John Milner, later a bishop, argued against it.
The Second Relief Act, therefore, passed (1791) without changing the previous oath, or the name of Catholics. Though the Emancipation Bill was eventually carried without any tests, this was not foreseen at first. The Catholic Committee continued its endeavours, but their proposals (like the Veto) often savoured of Gallicanism. So too did the oath annexed to the bill proposed in 1813, which from its length was styled the "Theological Oath". Eventually, owing to the growing influence exercised by Daniel O'Connell and the Irish, Catholic Emancipation was granted without any tests at all in 1829.
Repeal of the Statutory Oaths against Catholicism (1867-1910)
The Relief Bills were generally measures of relief only, leaving the old statutes, oaths, and tests still on the Statute Book, and some of the chief officers of State had still to take them. The actual repeal of the disused tests and oaths of William III took place later.
In 1867, during the reign of Queen Victoria, the Declaration was repealed (30, 31 Vict., c. 75). After this, the only person bound to pronounce the oath was the king himself at the commencement of his reign. In 1871 the Promissory Oaths Bill removed all the old Oaths of Allegiance (34, 35 Vict., c. 48). In 1891 the first attempt was made by Lord Herries in the House of Lords to get rid of the king's Declaration, but the amendments offered by Government were so insignificant that the Catholics themselves voted against their being proposed at all.
In 1901 strong resolutions were passed against its retention by the House of Commons of Canada, as also by its hierarchy, and these were emphasized by similar petitions from the hierarchies of Australia, and the Catholics of the English colonies. In 1904, 1905, and 1908 bills or motions to the same effect were introduced by Lord Braye, Lord Grey, Lord Llandaff, the Duke of Norfolk, and John Redmond, but without the desired effect. After the death of King Edward VII, however, King George V is believed to have urged the Government to bring in a repealing Act. This was done and public opinion, after some wavering, finally declared itself strongly on the side of the Bill, which was carried through both Houses by large majorities, and received Royal Assent on 3 August 1910, thus removing the last anti-Catholic oath or declaration from the English Constitution.
The Bill of Rights 1689 is an Act of the Parliament of England that set out certain basic civil rights and clarified who would be next to inherit the Crown. It remains a crucial statute in English constitutional law.
The Irish Oath of Allegiance was a controversial provision in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, which Irish TDs and Senators were required to swear before taking their seats in Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann before the Constitution Act 1933 was passed on 3 May 1933. The controversy surrounding the Oath was one of the principal issues that led to the Irish Civil War of 1922–23 between supporters and opponents of the Treaty.
In English history, the penal laws were a series of laws that sought to uphold the establishment and State decreed religious monopoly of the Church of England against illegal and underground Catholics and Protestant nonconformists by imposing various forfeitures, civil penalties, and civil disabilities upon recusants from mandatory attendance at weekly Anglican Sunday services. The penal laws in general were repealed in the early 19th century during the process of Catholic Emancipation. Penal actions are civil in nature and were not English common law.
The Test Acts were a series of penal laws originating in Restoration England, passed by the Parliament of England, that served as a religious test for public office and imposed various civil disabilities on Catholics and nonconformist Protestants.
The Acts of Supremacy are two acts passed by the Parliament of England in the 16th century that established the English monarchs as the head of the Church of England; two similar laws were passed by the Parliament of Ireland establishing the English monarchs as the head of the Church of Ireland. The 1534 Act declared King Henry VIII and his successors as the Supreme Head of the Church, replacing the Pope. This first Act was repealed during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I. The 1558 Act declared Queen Elizabeth I and her successors the Supreme Governor of the Church, a title that the British monarch still holds.
The Oath of Supremacy required any person taking public or church office in the Kingdom of England, or in its subordinate Kingdom of Ireland, to swear allegiance to the monarch as Supreme Governor of the Church. Failure to do so was to be treated as treasonable. The Oath of Supremacy was originally imposed by King Henry VIII of England through the Act of Supremacy 1534, but repealed by his elder daughter, Queen Mary I of England, and reinstated under Henry's other daughter and Mary's half-sister, Queen Elizabeth I of England, under the Act of Supremacy 1558. The Oath was later extended to include Members of Parliament (MPs) and people studying at universities. In 1537, the Irish Supremacy Act was passed by the Parliament of Ireland, establishing Henry VIII as the supreme head of the Church of Ireland. As in England, a commensurate Oath of Supremacy was required for admission to offices.
Catholic emancipation or Catholic relief was a process in the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, and later the combined United Kingdom in the late 18th century and early 19th century, that involved reducing and removing many of the restrictions on Roman Catholics introduced by the Act of Uniformity, the Test Acts and the penal laws. Requirements to abjure (renounce) the temporal and spiritual authority of the pope and transubstantiation placed major burdens on Roman Catholics.
The Act of Supremacy 1558, sometimes referred to as the Act of Supremacy 1559, is an Act of the Parliament of England, which replaced the original Act of Supremacy 1534, and passed under the auspices of Elizabeth I. The 1534 Act was issued by Elizabeth's father, Henry VIII, which arrogated ecclesiastical authority to the monarchy, but which had been repealed by Mary I. Along with the Act of Uniformity 1558, the Act made up what is generally referred to as the Elizabethan Religious Settlement.
An Act to prevent the further Growth of Popery was an Act of the Parliament of Ireland that was passed in 1704 designed to suppress Roman Catholicism in Ireland ("Popery"). William Edward Hartpole Lecky called it the most notorious of the Irish Penal Laws.
The Oath of Allegiance is a promise to be loyal to the British monarch, and his or her heirs and successors, sworn by certain public servants in the United Kingdom, and also by newly naturalised subjects in citizenship ceremonies. The current standard wording of the oath of allegiance is set out in the Promissory Oaths Act 1868.
The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, also known as the Catholic Emancipation Act 1829, removed the sacramental tests that barred Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom from Parliament and from higher offices of the judiciary and state. It was the culmination of a fifty-year process Catholic emancipation which had offered Catholics successive measures of "relief" from the civil and political disabilities imposed by Penal Laws in both Great Britain and in Ireland in the seventeenth, and early eighteenth, centuries.
The Corporation Act 1661 was an Act of the Parliament of England. It belonged to the general category of test acts, designed for the express purpose of restricting public offices in England to members of the Church of England.
In Ireland, the penal laws were a series of legal disabilities imposed in the seventeenth, and early eighteenth, centuries on the kingdom's Roman Catholic majority and, to a lesser degree, on Protestant "Dissenters". Enacted by the Irish Parliament, they secured the Protestant Ascendancy by further concentrating property and public office in the hands of those who, as communicants of the established Church of Ireland, subscribed to the Oath of Supremacy. The Oath acknowledged the British monarch as the "supreme governor" of matters both spiritual and temporal, and abjured "all foreign jurisdictions [and] powers"—by implication both the Pope in Rome and the Stuart "Pretender" in the court of the King of France.
The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 is an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain passed in 1791 relieving Roman Catholics of certain political, educational, and economic disabilities. It admitted Catholics to the practice of law, permitted the exercise of their religion, and the existence of their schools. On the other hand, chapels, schools, officiating priests and teachers were to be registered, assemblies with locked doors, as well as steeples and bells to chapels, were forbidden; priests were not to wear vestments or celebrate liturgies in the open air; children of Protestants were not to be admitted to the schools; monastic orders and endowments of schools and colleges were prohibited.
The Papists Act 1778 is an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain and was the first Act for Roman Catholic relief. Later in 1778 it was also enacted by the Parliament of Ireland.
The Roman Catholic Relief Bills were a series of measures introduced over time in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries before the Parliaments of Great Britain and the United Kingdom to remove the restrictions and prohibitions imposed on British and Irish Catholics during the English Reformation. These restrictions had been introduced to enforce the separation of the English church from the Catholic Church which began in 1529 under Henry VIII.
Anti-Catholicism in the United Kingdom dates back to Roman times. Attacks on the Church from a Protestant angle mostly began with the English and Irish Reformations which were launched by King Henry VIII and the Scottish Reformation which was led by John Knox. Within England, the Act of Supremacy 1534 declared the English crown to be "the only supreme head on earth of the Church in England" in place of the Pope. Any act of allegiance to the latter was considered treasonous because the papacy claimed both spiritual and political power over its followers. Ireland was brought under direct English control starting in 1536 during the Tudor conquest of Ireland. The Scottish Reformation in 1560 abolished Catholic ecclesiastical structures and rendered Catholic practice illegal in Scotland. Today, anti-Catholicism remains common in the United Kingdom, with particular relevance in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The Sacramental Test Act 1828 was an Act passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It repealed the requirement that government officials take communion in the Church of England. Sir Robert Peel took the lead for the Tory government in the repeal and collaborated with Anglican Church leaders.
The Reformation in Ireland was a movement for the reform of religious life and institutions that was introduced into Ireland by the English administration at the behest of King Henry VIII of England. His desire for an annulment of his marriage was known as the King's Great Matter. Ultimately Pope Clement VII refused the petition; consequently, in order to give legal effect to his wishes, it became necessary for the King to assert his lordship over the Catholic Church in his realm. In passing the Acts of Supremacy in 1534, the English Parliament confirmed the King's supremacy over the Church in the Kingdom of England. This challenge to Papal supremacy resulted in a breach with the Catholic Church. By 1541, the Irish Parliament had agreed to the change in status of the country from that of a Lordship to that of Kingdom of Ireland.
The Toleration Act 1688, also referred to as the Act of Toleration, was an Act of the Parliament of England. Passed in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, it received royal assent on 24 May 1689.
References
For the full texts of the Acts of Parliament see The Statutes at Large (London, 1762--);
Henry Scobell, Collection of Acts, 1640-1656 (London, 1657–58);
Statutes at Large (Ireland) (Dublin, 1765--).
For the debates in the parliament, see:
Hansard, Parliamentary Debates; Journals of the House of Lords, and Journals of the House of Commons;
Cobbett, Parliamentary Hist. of England (London, 1806);
Butler, Mem. of English Catholics (London, 1819), Catholic, but with Gallican proclivities;
Thomas Flanagan, History of the Church in England (London, 1857);
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