Act of Parliament | |
Long title | An Act to put an end to the Establishment of the Church of Ireland, and to make provision in respect of the Temporalities thereof, and in respect of the Royal College of Maynooth. |
---|---|
Citation | 32 & 33 Vict. c. 42 |
Territorial extent | United Kingdom |
Dates | |
Royal assent | 26 July 1869 |
Commencement | 1 January 1871 |
Other legislation | |
Relates to | Welsh Church Act 1914 |
Status: Current legislation | |
Text of statute as originally enacted |
The Irish Church Act 1869 (32 & 33 Vict. c. 42) was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which separated the Church of Ireland from the Church of England and disestablished the former, a body that commanded the adherence of a small minority of the population of Ireland (especially outside of Ulster). The act was passed during the first ministry of William Ewart Gladstone and came into force on 1 January 1871. It was strongly opposed by Conservatives in both houses of Parliament. [2]
The act meant the Church of Ireland was no longer entitled to collect tithes from the people of Ireland. It also ceased to send representative bishops as Lords Spiritual to the House of Lords in Westminster. Existing clergy of the church received a life annuity in lieu of the revenues to which they were no longer entitled: tithes, rentcharge, ministers' money, stipends and augmentations, and certain marriage and burial fees. [3]
The passage of the bill through Parliament caused acrimony between the House of Commons and the House of Lords. Queen Victoria personally intervened to mediate. While the Lords extorted from the Commons more compensation to alleviate the disestablished churchmen, in the end, the will of the Commons prevailed. [4]
The Irish Church Act was a key move in dismantling the Protestant Ascendancy which had dominated Ireland for the prior century.
The Church of Ireland is a Christian church in Ireland, and an autonomous province of the Anglican Communion. It is organised on an all-Ireland basis and is the second-largest Christian church on the island after the Roman Catholic Church. Like other Anglican churches, it has retained elements of pre-Reformation practice, notably its episcopal polity, while rejecting the primacy of the pope.
William Connor Magee was an Irish clergyman of the Anglican church, Bishop of Peterborough 1868–1891 and Archbishop of York for a short period in 1891.
The Most Illustrious Order of Saint Patrick is a dormant British order of chivalry associated with Ireland. The Order was created in 1783 by King George III at the request of the then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, The 3rd Earl Temple. The regular creation of knights of the Order lasted until 1922, when most of Ireland gained independence as the Irish Free State, a dominion within what was then known as the British Commonwealth of Nations. While the Order technically still exists, no knight of St Patrick has been created since 1936, and the last surviving knight, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, died in 1974. Charles III, however, remains the Sovereign of the Order, and one officer, the Ulster King of Arms, also survives. St Patrick is patron of the order; its motto is Quis separabit?, Latin for "Who will separate [us]?": an allusion to the Vulgate translation of Romans 8:35, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"
In Ireland, commonly referred to as the Republic of Ireland, vehicle registration plates are the visual indications of motor vehicle registration – officially termed "index marks" – which it has been mandatory since 1903 to display on most motor vehicles used on public roads in Ireland. The alphanumeric marks themselves are issued by the local authority in which a vehicle is first registered.
In the United Kingdom, representative peers were those peers elected by the members of the Peerage of Scotland and the Peerage of Ireland to sit in the British House of Lords. Until 1999, all members of the Peerage of England held the right to sit in the House of Lords; they did not elect a limited group of representatives. All peers who were created after 1707 as Peers of Great Britain and after 1801 as Peers of the United Kingdom held the same right to sit in the House of Lords.
The Welsh Church Act 1914 is an Act of Parliament under which the Church of England was separated and disestablished in Wales and Monmouthshire, leading to the creation of the Church in Wales. The Act had long been demanded by the Nonconformist community in Wales, which composed the majority of the population and which resented paying taxes to the Church of England. It was sponsored by the Liberal Party and opposed by the Conservative Party.
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 of 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 Irish University Bill was a bill introduced in the Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1873 by the first Gladstone government to expand the University of Dublin into a secular national university incorporating multiple colleges.
Events from the year 1869 in Ireland.
James Godkin was an Irish author and journalist who was influential on ecclesiastical and land questions.
The Criminal Law Consolidation Acts 1861 were acts of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. They consolidated provisions from a large number of earlier statutes which were then repealed. Their purpose was to simplify the criminal law. There were six consolidation Acts and a further Act which effected consequential repeals.
Richard More O'Ferrall was an Irish politician, a high level British government official and a Governor of Malta. Born to a noble Irish Catholic family at Balyna, he was the eldest son and heir of Ambrose More O'Ferrall, Lord of Laois and Prince of Annally. Educated at Stonyhurst College, More O'Ferrall entered politics young, becoming Member of Parliament for Kildare in 1830. In 1839, More O'Ferrall married Matilda, daughter of The 3rd Viscount Southwell, KP. After holding many senior roles, he was appointed Governor of Malta in 1847, a post he held until 1851. He was known to be a very honourable man and was made a deputy lieutenant and a justice of the peace as well as a Member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. He stepped down as a Member of Parliament for Kildare in 1865. More O'Ferrall was widely respected, both in Ireland and Great Britain and has been praised for his achievements while Governor of Malta.
The Short Titles Act 1896 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It replaces the Short Titles Act 1892.
The Board of Ecclesiastical Commissioners was an agency of the Dublin Castle administration which oversaw the funding, building and repairs to churches and glebe houses of the Church of Ireland. It was established by the Church Temporalities Act 1833 to supersede the Board of First Fruits as part of a reform and rationalisation of the Church's structure. Under the Irish Church Act 1869 it was superseded by the Church Temporalities Commission, to prepare for the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1871 and deal with subsequent changes in property ownership. Historic monuments were transferred in 1874 to the Board of Public Works. The Irish Church Act Amendment Act, 1881 dissolved the Church Temporalities Commission and transferred its remaining functions to by the Irish Land Commission.
The Bankruptcy Act 1861 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Ministers' money was a tax payable by householders in certain cities and towns in Ireland to fund the local Church of Ireland minister. It was introduced in 1665, modified in 1827, and abolished in 1857. The cities and towns affected were Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Drogheda, Kilkenny, Clonmel, and Kinsale. It was levied as a rate of up to one shilling in the pound on the property's rateable value. The valuation, to a maximum of £60, was done by commissioners appointed by the Lord Lieutenant. Churchwardens appointed by the local minister collected ministers' money on the quarter days: Christmas, Lady Day, St John's Day, and Michaelmas. The 1689 Irish Parliament, which the Catholic James II summoned during the Williamite War, abolished minister's money; after James lost the war, William and Mary's 1695 Parliament annulled the 1689 one. A 1723 act provided that, in Dublin, the same valuation could be used both for ministers' money and for calculating cess, a separate local rate used for public works and poor relief. Thereafter, cess rates were often expressed in terms of pence per shilling of minister's money.
The Welsh Church (Temporalities) Act 1919 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It was made to provide for a grant to be made from the Treasury to enable the Welsh Church Commissioners to carry out their task and to set a date for the implementation of the disestablishment of the Church in Wales from the Church of England mandated by the Welsh Church Act 1914. Operation of this Act had been delayed by the Suspensory Act 1914, initially until 18 September 1915, and subsequently by a series of Orders in Council made under the Suspensory Act. The 1919 Act therefore provided for a final postponement until the Welsh Church Act 1914 would come into operation.