Long title | An Act to prevent the further Growth of Popery |
---|---|
Citation | 2 Anne c.6 [Ir.] |
Dates | |
Royal assent | 4 March 1704 [1] |
Repealed | 13 August 1878 |
Other legislation | |
Amended by | Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793, Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 |
Repealed by | Promissory Oaths Act 1871, Statute Law Revision (Ireland) Act 1878 |
Status: Repealed | |
Text of statute as originally enacted |
An Act to prevent the further Growth of Popery (2 Anne, c.6; commonly known as the Popery Act or the Gavelkind Act) [2] 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. [3]
Inheritance in traditional Irish law used gavelkind, whereby an estate was divided equally among a dead man's sons. In contrast, English common law used male primogeniture, with the eldest son receiving the entire estate. The 1704 act enforced gavelkind for Catholics and primogeniture for Protestants.
Two separate bills "to prevent the further Growth of Popery" were introduced in the parliamentary session 1703–1704. One originated with the Irish Privy Council and was referred on 4 July 1703 to the Attorney-General for Ireland; [1] the other was introduced as heads of a bill in the Irish House of Commons on 28 September 1703 and sent to the Lord Lieutenant on 19 November. [4] Under Poynings' Law, both bills were transmitted to the English Privy Council for approval. [1] Formally, one bill was vetoed and the other was returned to Dublin with amendments; a lack of surviving documentation makes it impossible to determine which of the two had which fate. [1] The approved bill was engrossed on 20 January, presented in the Commons on 14 February, sent to the Irish House of Lords on 25 February, and given royal assent on 4 March. [1]
Sir Toby Butler, the former Solicitor General for Ireland, a Roman Catholic, made a celebrated speech at the bar of the Commons denouncing the act as being "against the laws of God and man... against the rules of reason and justice". Other eminent Catholic lawyers like Stephen Rice also denounced the measure but to no avail.
Charles Ivar McGrath says that while the Popery Act had "evident ... negative effects", specific research is lacking, [9] and that it was intended more to prevent an increase in Catholic landholding than encourage further decrease: [9] the Catholic share of land had already fallen from 60% before the 1641 Rebellion to 22% before the Williamite War to 14% in 1704. [10] The figure of 5% in 1776 given in Arthur Young's Tour in Ireland is probably an underestimate, [9] although in 1778 only 1.5% of rent was paid to Catholics. [10]
Catholic gavelkind cemented a tradition of farm subdivision, [10] which persisted beyond the act's repeal and contributed to the Great Famine of the 1840s.
Lord Redesdale, the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, remarked in an 1805 case, based on a disputed inheritance of an estate originally purchased before and after 1704 by a Catholic: [11]
In 1866, Chancery Commissioners reported that the Law of Judgments was much more complicated in Ireland than in England, and traced the difference back to the steps introduced in Ireland to enforce the 1704 act and ensure property was not being secretly transferred from Protestants to Catholics. [12]
The act was "explained and amended" by a 1709 act which specified certain time limits left ambiguous by the original act, and closed some loopholes used by Catholics to remain beneficial owners of nominally Protestant property. [13]
A 1719 act [14] indemnified officials who had not thitherto subscribed to the oath required by the Popery Act. The time period for Dissenters subscribing to the oath was routinely extended, initially by an Indemnity Act at the start of each biennial parliamentary session. [15] Similar acts were passed by the British parliament, and after the union the UK parliament continued the practice. [16]
From the late 18th century Roman Catholic relief bills eased the Penal Laws, by explicit or implicit repeal and replacement. In 1772 Catholics were allowed to lease up to 50 Irish acres of bog-land for up to 61 years. [17] The 1704 oath of allegiance for Catholics was replaced in 1774. [18] Gardiner's Act [19] (the Irish re-enactment of the British Papists Act 1778) implicitly repealed many other provisions of the 1704 act. Some were replaced with less onerous restrictions; for example, the maximum lease for Catholic tenants was increased from 31 years to 999 years. [20] The restrictions on inheritance and preference for a convert eldest son were abolished. [21] The sacramental test was repealed for Dissenters in 1780. [n 2] [24] The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1782 repealed section 23 of the 1704 act. [25] Another act of 1782 allowed lay Catholics to be guardians of Protestants. [26] Most restrictions on intermarriage were removed by the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1792. [27] Many Penal Laws were repealed in general terms by the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793; [28] the sacramental test for Catholics was effectively replaced by the 1774 oath. [29] [n 3]
The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 [30] abolished the declaration against transubstantiation [31] specified a new public oath for Catholics, [32] [33] explicitly permitted Catholics to hold Irish civil or military offices other than Lord Lieutenant and Lord Chancellor, [33] with the same oaths as required of non-Catholics (in addition to the new Catholic oath). [34]
The Criminal Law Commission's 1845 report on oaths said sections 1, 3, and 6 of the 1704 act had fallen into disuse and should be repealed. [35] The Religious Disabilities Act 1846, passed in consequence of the committee's report, explicitly repealed provisions of sections 1, 3, and 4 of the 1704 act. [36]
The Popery Act was explicitly repealed as obsolete by the Promissory Oaths Act 1871, with the exception of section 25, [37] which was made redundant by the coming into force in 1871 of the Irish Church Act 1869, and was repealed by the Statute Law Revision (Ireland) Act 1878. [38]
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 words Popery and Papism are mainly historical pejorative words in the English language for Roman Catholicism, once frequently used by Protestants and Eastern Orthodox Christians to label their Roman Catholic opponents, who differed from them in accepting the authority of the Pope over the Christian Church. The words were popularised during the English Reformation (1532–1559), when the Church of England broke away from the Roman Catholic Church and divisions emerged between those who rejected Papal authority and those who continued to follow Rome. The words are recognised as pejorative; they have been in widespread use in Protestant writings until the mid-nineteenth century, including use in some laws that remain in force in the United Kingdom.
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 Registration Act was an Act of the Parliament of Ireland passed in 1704, which required all "Popish" priests to register at their local magistrates' court, to pay two 50-pound bonds to ensure good behavior, and to stay in the county where they registered.
The Protestant Ascendancy, also known as the Ascendancy, was the political, economic, and social domination of Ireland between the 17th century and the early 20th century by a minority of landowners, Protestant clergy, and members of the professions, all members of the Established Church. The Ascendancy excluded other groups from politics and the elite, most numerous among them Roman Catholics but also members of the Presbyterian and other Protestant denominations, along with non-Christians such as Jews, until the Reform Acts (1832–1928).
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.
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 Popery Act 1698 was an Act of Parliament of the Parliament of England enacted in 1700. The long title of the Act was "An Act for the further preventing the Growth of Popery".
Events from the year 1703 in Ireland.
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 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.
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 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.
The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793 was an Act of the Parliament of Ireland, implicitly repealing some of the Irish Penal Laws and relieving Roman Catholics of certain political, educational, and economic disabilities.
The Newtown Act was an act of the Parliament of Ireland regulating municipal corporations, in particular the manner in which parliamentary boroughs elected members to the Irish House of Commons.