Roman Britons and early Christianity is regarded as the
protomartyr of the Roman Britons. Much of
Great Britain was incorporated into the
Roman Empire during the
Roman conquest of Britain, starting in AD 43, conquering lands inhabited by
Celtic Britons. The indigenous religion of the Britons under their priests, the
Druids, was suppressed; most notably,
Gaius Suetonius Paulinus launched
an attack on
Anglesey (or Ynys Môn) in AD 60 and destroyed the shrine and
sacred groves there. In the following years, Roman influence saw the importation of several religious
cults into Britain, including
Roman mythology,
Mithraism and the
imperial cult. One of these sects, then disapproved of by the Roman authorities, was the
Palestinian-originated religion of
Christianity. While it is unclear exactly how it arrived, the earliest British figures considered
saints by Christians are
St. Alban followed by SS
Julius and Aaron, all in the 3rd century. Eventually, the position of the Roman authorities on Christianity moved from hostility to toleration with the
Edict of Milan in AD 313 and then enforcement as
state religion following the
Edict of Thessalonica in AD 380, becoming a key component of
Romano-British culture and society. Records note that
Romano-British bishops, such as
Restitutus, attended the
Council of Arles in 314, which confirmed the theological findings of an earlier convocation held in Rome (the
Council of Rome) in 313. The
Roman departure from Britain in the following century and the subsequent
Germanic invasions sharply decreased contact between Britain and Continental Europe. Christianity, however, continued to flourish in the
Brittonic areas of Great Britain. During this period, certain practices and traditions took hold in Britain and in Ireland that are collectively known as
Celtic Christianity. Distinct features of Celtic Christianity include a unique monastic
tonsure and calculations for the date of
Easter. Regardless of these differences, historians do not consider this Celtic or British Christianity a distinct church separate from general Western European Christianity.
Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons 's
Life of St Cuthbert, showing King
Æthelstan During the
Heptarchy, the
English people (referred to as the
Anglo-Saxons) were converted to Christianity from
Anglo-Saxon paganism, from two main directions: •
Iona, through its subordinate house
Lindisfarne (founded by
Aidan of Lindisfarne), linking the
Northumbrian element of the Church (and subsequently
Mercia through
Chad of Mercia) to the culture of the
Church in Ireland; and • in the south, first through
Kent and then spreading out to
Wessex, the
Gregorian mission of the late 6th century, when
Pope Gregory the Great sent
Augustine of Canterbury (at the time, Prior of the Abbey of St. Andrew or
San Gregorio Magno al Celio) and 40 missionaries directly from Rome. This element, linked to the Continent through marriage alliances, had more of a Romano-
Frankish orientation. Although the
Celtic Britons (known mainly from the Middle Ages onwards as the
Welsh)
de facto retained their Christian religion even after the Romans pulled out, unlike the Gaels and the Romans the Welsh did not make any significant effort to evangelise the pagan Anglo-Saxons and indeed greatly resented them, as is related by
Bede in his
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. The
Gregorian mission, as it is known, is of particular interest in the Catholic Church, as it was the first official Papal mission to found a church. With the help of Christians already residing in
Kent, particularly
Bertha, the
Merovingian Frankish consort of the then pagan King
Æthelberht, Augustine established an archbishopric in
Canterbury, the old capital of Kent. Having received the
pallium earlier (linking his new diocese to Rome), Augustine became the first in the series of Catholic
archbishops of Canterbury, four of whom, (
Laurence,
Mellitus,
Justus and
Honorius), were part of the original band of
Benedictine missionaries. (The last Catholic archbishop of Canterbury was
Reginald Pole, who died in 1558.) During this time of mission, Rome looked to challenge some different customs that had been retained in isolation by the Celts (the Gaels and the Britons), owing in part to their geographical distance from the rest of Western Christendom. Of particular importance was the
Easter controversy (on which date to celebrate it) and the manner of monastic
tonsure.
Columbanus, his fellow countryman and churchman, had asked for a papal judgement on the Easter question, as did abbots and bishops of Ireland. This was particularly important in Northumbria, where the issue was causing factionalism. Later, in his
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum,
Bede explained the reasons for the discrepancy: "He [Columba] left successors distinguished for great charity, Divine love, and strict attention to the rules of discipline following indeed uncertain cycles in the computation of the great festival of Easter, because far away as they were out of the world, no one had supplied them with the synodal decrees relating to the Paschal observance." A series of
synods were held to resolve the matter, culminating with the
Synod of Whitby in 644. The missionaries also introduced the
Rule of Benedict, the continental rule, to Anglo-Saxon monasteries in England.
Wilfrid, a Benedictine consecrated archbishop of York (in 664), was particularly skilled in promoting the Benedictine Rule. Over time, the Benedictine continental rule became grafted upon the monasteries and parishes of England, drawing them closer to the Continent and Rome. As a result, the pope was often called upon to intervene in quarrels, affirm monarchs and decide jurisdictions. In 787, for example,
Pope Adrian I elevated
Lichfield to an archdiocese and appointed
Hygeberht its first archbishop. In 808,
Pope Leo III helped restore King
Eardwulf of
Northumbria to his throne, and in 859,
Pope Leo IV confirmed and anointed
Alfred the Great king, according to
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Individual Benedictines seemed to play an important role throughout this period. For example, before Benedictine monk
St. Dunstan was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury in 960,
Pope John XII had him appointed legate, commissioning him (alongside
Ethelwold and Oswald) to restore discipline in the existing monasteries of England, many of which were destroyed by Danish invaders.
Norman Conquest of England and part of Wales Control of the English Church passed from the Anglo-Saxons to the
Normans following the
Norman conquest of England. The two clerics most prominently associated with this change were the continental-born
Lanfranc and
Anselm, both Benedictines. Anselm later became a
Doctor of the Church. A century later,
Pope Innocent III had to confirm the primacy of Canterbury over four
Welsh churches for many reasons, but primarily to sustain the importance of the Gregorian foundation of Augustine's mission. During mediaeval times, England and Wales were part of western Christendom: monasteries and convents, such as those at
Shaftesbury and
Shrewsbury, were prominent institutions, and provided lodging, hospitals and education. Likewise, centres of education such as the
University of Oxford and the
University of Cambridge were important. Members of
religious orders, notably the
Dominicans and
Franciscans, settled in both universities and maintained houses for students. Archbishop
Walter de Merton founded
Merton College, Oxford, and three different popes –
Gregory IX,
Nicholas IV and
John XXII – gave Cambridge the legal protection and status to compete with other European
medieval universities.
Augustinians also had a significant presence at Oxford. Osney Abbey, the parent house of the college, lay on a large site to the west, near the current railway station. Another Augustinian house, St Frideswide's Priory, later became the basis for
Christ Church, Oxford. Pilgrimage was a prominent feature of mediaeval Catholicism, and England and Wales were amply provided with many popular sites of pilgrimage. The village of
Walsingham in Norfolk became an important shrine after a noblewoman named
Richeldis de Faverches reputedly experienced a vision of the Virgin Mary in 1061, asking her to build a replica of the
Holy House at
Nazareth. Some of the other holiest shrines were those at
Holywell in Wales, which commemorated St
Winefride, and at Westminster Abbey to
Edward the Confessor. In 1170,
Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered in his cathedral by followers of
King Henry II and was quickly canonised as a martyr for the faith. This resulted in
Canterbury Cathedral attracting international pilgrimage and inspired the
Canterbury Tales by
Geoffrey Chaucer. , the only Englishman to be Pope An Englishman, Nicholas Breakspear, became
Pope Adrian IV (also known as Hadrian IV), reigning from 1154 to 1159. Fifty-six years later,
Cardinal Stephen Langton, the first of
English cardinals and later Archbishop of Canterbury (1208–1228), was a pivotal figure in the dispute between
King John and Pope Innocent III. This critical situation led to the creation of the
Magna Carta in 1215, which, among other things, insisted that the English church should be free of ecclesiastical appointments fixed by the king.
Tudor period and Catholic resistance of
Jesus Christ which was carried by partisans during the
Pilgrimage of Grace The dynamics of the pre-Reformation bond between the Catholic Church in England and the Apostolic See remained in effect for nearly a thousand years. That is, there was no doctrinal difference between the faith of the English and the rest of Catholic Christendom, especially after calculating the date of Easter at the
Council of Whitby in 667 and formalising other customs according to the See of Rome. The designation "English Church" (
Ecclesia Anglicana in Latin) was made, but always in the sense of the term as indicating that it was part of one Catholic Church in communion with the Holy See and localised in England. Other regions of the church were localised in Scotland (
Ecclesia Scotticana), France (
Ecclesia Gallicana), Spain (
Ecclesia Hispanica), etc. These regional cognomens or designations were commonly used in Rome by officials to identify a locality of the universal church but never to imply any breach with the Holy See. When
King Henry VIII "suddenly became alerted to the supposedly ancient truth" that he was truly the "Supreme Head of the Church within his dominions", he backed a series of legislative acts through the English Parliament between 1533 and 1536 that initiated an attack on papal authority and English Catholics. "The centrepiece of the new legislation was an Act of Supremacy of 1534." In some cases, those adhering to
Catholicism faced
capital punishment. In 1534, during the reign of Henry VIII, the English church became independent of the Holy See for a period owing to "continued" innovations with Henry declaring himself its Supreme Head. This breach was in response to the Pope's refusal to annul Henry's marriage to
Catherine of Aragon. Henry did not himself accept
Protestant innovations in doctrine or liturgy. For example, the Six Articles of 1539 imposed the Death Penalty on those who denied Transubstantiation. Conversely, failure to accept his break from Rome, particularly by prominent persons in church and state, was regarded by Henry as treason, resulting in the execution of
Thomas More, former Lord Chancellor, and
John Fisher,
Bishop of Rochester, among others. The
See of Rome Act 1536 legitimised the separation from Rome, while the
Pilgrimage of Grace of 1536 and
Bigod's Rebellion of 1537, risings in the North against the religious changes, were bloodily repressed. Throughout 1536–1541, Henry VIII engaged in a large-scale
dissolution of the Monasteries in order to gain control of most of the wealth of the church and much of the richest land. He disbanded
monasteries,
priories,
convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland, appropriated their income, disposed of their assets, sold off artefacts stolen from them, and provided pensions for the robbed monks and former residents. He did not turn these properties over to his local Church of England. Instead, they were sold, mostly to pay for the wars. The historian G. W. Bernard argues that the dissolution of the monasteries in the late 1530s was one of the most revolutionary events in English history. There were nearly 900 religious houses in England, around 260 for monks, 300 for regular canons, 142 nunneries and 183 friaries; some 12,000 people in total, 4,000 monks, 3,000 canons, 3,000 friars and 2,000 nuns. One adult man in fifty was in religious orders in a country of two and one half million. In the Catholic narrative, Henry's action was sacrilegious, a national violation of things consecrated to God, and evil. The fate of the English Carthusians was one of the worst of the period. Thomas Cromwell had them "savagely punished" with their leaders "hanged and disembowelled at Tyburn in May 1535, still wearing their monastic habits." Even today, Henry's act is still considered controversial. Anglicans such as
Giles Fraser have noted that the property "was stolen" from the Roman Catholic Church and that "this theft of land is the really dirty stuff – the original sin of the Church of England". Nevertheless, Henry maintained a strong preference for traditional Catholic practices and, during his reign, Protestant reformers were unable to make more radical changes to the practices and the "continued innovation" of his own "personally devised religious 'middle way'". Indeed, Henry "cruelly emphasized his commitment" to his innovations "by executing three papal loyalists and burning three evangelicals" The 1547 to 1553 reign of the boy
King Edward VI saw the Church of England become more influenced by Protestantism in its doctrine and worship. In 1550,
John Laski, a
Polish ex-Catholic cleric and nephew of the Polish primate, whose Catholic career came "to an abrupt end in 1540 when he married", and who later become a
Calvinist, arrived in London and became superintendent of the
Strangers' Church of London. He, among other Protestants, became an associate of
Thomas Cranmer and of
John Hooper. He had some influence on ecclesiastical affairs during the reign of Edward VI. For instance, the
Tridentine Mass was replaced by the (English)
Book of Common Prayer, representational art and statues in church buildings destroyed, and Catholic practices that had survived during Henry's reign, such as public prayers to the Virgin Mary – for example, the
Salve Regina – ended. In 1549, the Western Rising in Cornwall and Devon broke out to protest the abolition of the Mass – the rebels called the 1549 Holy Communion Service, "commonly called the Mass", a Christian game. The rebellion – resistance to Protestantism – was put down ruthlessly.
Reign of Mary I by Master John Under
Queen Mary I, in 1553, the fractured and discordant English Church was linked again to continental Catholicism and the See of Rome through the doctrinal and liturgical initiatives of
Reginald Pole and other Catholic reformers. Mary was determined to return the whole of England to the Catholic faith. This aim was not necessarily at odds with the feeling of a large section of the populace; Edward's Protestant reformation had not been well received everywhere, and there was ambiguity in the responses of the parishes. Mary also had some powerful families behind her. The Jerningham family, with other East Anglian Catholic families such as the
Bedingfelds,
Waldegraves,
Rochesters and the Huddlestons of
Sawston Hall, were "the key to Queen Mary's successful accession to the throne. Without them she would never have made it". However, Mary's execution of 300 Protestants by burning them at the stake proved counterproductive, as this measure was extremely unpopular with the populace. For example, instead of executing
Archbishop Cranmer for treason for supporting
Queen Jane, she had him tried for heresy and burned at the stake. ''
Foxe's Book of Martyrs, which glorified the Protestants killed at the time and vilified Catholics, ensured her a place in popular memory as Bloody Mary'', though some recent historians have noted that most of the Protestants that Foxe highlights in his book, who were tried for heresy, were primarily Anabaptists, which explains why mainstream Protestants such as Stephen Gardiner and William Paget (who were members of Philip's "consejo codigo") went along with it. These historians also note that it was Bartolome Carranza, an influential Spanish Dominican of Philip II's workforce, who insisted that Thomas Cranmer's sentence be put into effect. "It was Carranza, not Mary, who insisted that the sentence against Cranmer be carried out." For centuries after, the idea of another reconciliation with Rome was linked in many English people's minds with a renewal of Mary's fiery stakes. Ultimately, her alleged harshness was a success but at the cost of alienating a fairly large section of English society that had been moving away from some traditional Catholic devotional practices. These English were neither Calvinist nor Lutheran, but certainly leaning towards
Protestant Reformation (and, by the late sixteenth century, were certainly Protestant).
Reign of Elizabeth I When Mary died and
Elizabeth I became queen in 1558, the religious situation in England was confused. Throughout the alternating religious landscape of the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Mary I, a significant proportion of the population, especially in the rural and outlying areas of the country, were likely to have continued to hold Catholic views, or were conservative. Nevertheless, Elizabeth was a Protestant and the "very rituals with which the parish had celebrated her accession would be swept away". Thus, Elizabeth's first act was to reverse her sister's re-establishment of Catholicism by
Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity. The
Act of Supremacy 1558 made it a crime to assert the authority of any foreign prince,
prelate or other authority, and was aimed at abolishing the authority in England of the
Pope. A third offence of
high treason became punishable by death. The
Oath of Supremacy, imposed by the Act of Supremacy 1558, provided for any person taking public or church office in
England to swear allegiance to the monarch as
Supreme Governor of the
Church of England. Failure to so swear was a crime, although it did not become treason until 1562, when the Supremacy of the Crown Act 1562 made a second offence of refusing to take the oath treason. by
Nicholas Hilliard (called) - During the first years of her reign from 1558 to 1570, there was relative leniency towards Catholics who were willing to keep their religion private, especially if they were prepared to continue to attend their parish churches. The wording of the official prayer book had been carefully designed to make this possible by omitting aggressively "heretical" matter, and, at first, many English Catholics did, in fact, worship with their Protestant neighbours, at least until this was formally forbidden by
Pope Pius V's 1570 bull,
Regnans in Excelsis, which also declared that Elizabeth was not a rightful queen and should be overthrown. It formally excommunicated her and any who obeyed her, and obliged all Catholics to attempt to overthrow her. In response, the "Act to retain the Queen's Majesty's subjects in their obedience", passed in 1581, made it high treason to reconcile anyone or to be reconciled to "the Romish religion", or to procure or publish any papal bull or writing whatsoever. The celebration of Mass was prohibited under penalty of a fine of two hundred
marks and imprisonment for one year for the celebrant, and a fine of one hundred marks and the same imprisonment for those who heard the Mass. This act also increased the penalty for not attending the Anglican service to the sum of twenty pounds a month, or imprisonment until the fine was paid or until the offender went to the Protestant Church. A further penalty of ten pounds a month was inflicted on anyone keeping a schoolmaster who did not attend the Protestant service. The schoolmaster himself was to be imprisoned for one year. England's wars with Catholic powers such as France and Spain culminated in the attempted invasion by the
Spanish Armada in 1588. The Papal bull had unleashed nationalistic feelings that equated Protestantism with loyalty to a highly popular monarch and made Catholics "vulnerable to accusations of being traitors to the crown". The
Rising of the North, the
Throckmorton Plot and the
Babington Plot, alongside other subversive activities of supporters of
Mary, Queen of Scots, all reinforced the association of Catholicism with treachery in the minds of many, notably in middle and southern England. The climax of Elizabeth's anti-Catholic legislation was in 1585, two years before the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, with the
Act against Jesuits, Seminary priests and other such like disobedient persons. This statute, under which most of the
English Catholic martyrs were executed, made it high treason for any Jesuit or any seminary priest to be in England at all, and a felony for any one to harbour or relieve them. The last of Elizabeth's anti-Catholic laws was the Act for the Better Discovery of Wicked and Seditious Persons Terming Themselves Catholics, but Being Rebellious and Traitorous Subjects. Its effect was to prohibit all
recusants from going more than five miles from their place of abode, and to order all persons suspected of being Jesuits or seminary priests, and not answering satisfactorily, to be imprisoned until they did so. by
Nicholas Hilliard 1578 However, Elizabeth did not believe that her anti-Catholic policies constituted religious persecution, though "she strangled, disembowelled, and dismembered more than 200" English Catholics and "built on the actions of Mary". In the context of the uncompromising wording of the Papal bull against her, she failed to distinguish between those Catholics in conflict with her from those with no such designs. The number of English Catholics executed under Elizabeth was significant, including
Edmund Campion,
Robert Southwell and
Margaret Clitherow. Elizabeth herself signed the regicidal death warrant of her cousin,
Mary, Queen of Scots, after 19 years as Elizabeth's prisoner. As MacCulloch has noted, "England judicially murdered more Roman Catholics than any other country in Europe, which puts English pride in national tolerance in an interesting perspective". So distraught was Elizabeth over Catholic opposition to her throne, she was secretly in touch with the Ottoman Sultan
Murad III, "asking for military aid against Philip of Spain and the 'idolatrous princes' supporting him". Because of the persecution in England, Catholic priests were trained abroad at the
English College, Rome, the
English College, Douai, the
English College, Valladolid, and the English College, Seville. Given that Douai was located in the
Spanish Netherlands, part of the dominions of Elizabethan England's greatest enemy, and Valladolid and Seville in Spain itself, they became associated in the public eye with political as well as religious subversion. It was this combination of nationalistic public opinion, sustained persecution and the rise of a new generation, which could not remember pre-Reformation times and had no pre-established loyalty to Catholicism, that reduced the number of Catholics in England during this period – although the overshadowing memory of Queen Mary I's reign was another factor that should not be underestimated (the population of the country was 4.1 million). Nevertheless, by the end of Elizabeth's reign, probably 20% of the population were still Catholic, with 10% dissident "Puritan" Protestants and the remainder more or less reconciled to the Anglican church as "parish Anglicans". By then, most English people had largely been de-catholicised but were not Protestant. Religious "uniformity", however, "was a lost cause", given the presence of Dissenting, Nonconformist Protestants, and Catholic minorities. During Elizabeth's reign,
Dorothy Lawson was a Catholic noblewoman who used her autonomy, financial independence and social status as a widow to harbour priests in her household. Another notable Elizabethan Catholic, possibly a convert, was composer
William Byrd.
Stuart period The reign of
James I (1603–1625) was marked by a measure of tolerance, though less so after the discovery of the
Gunpowder Plot conspiracy of a small group of Catholic conspirators who aimed to kill both King and Parliament, and establish a Catholic monarchy. A mix of persecution and tolerance followed:
Ben Jonson and his wife, for example, in 1606, were summoned before the authorities for failure to take communion in the Church of England, yet the King tolerated some Catholics at court; for example,
George Calvert, to whom he gave the title
Baron Baltimore (his son,
Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, founded, in 1632, the
Province of Maryland as a refuge for persecuted Catholics), and the
Duke of Norfolk, head of the
Howard family. The reign of
Charles I (1625–1649) saw a small revival of Catholicism in England, especially among the upper classes. As part of the royal marriage settlement, Charles's Catholic wife,
Henrietta Maria, was permitted her own royal chapel and chaplain. Henrietta Maria was, in fact, very strict in her religious observances, and helped create a court with continental influences, where Catholicism was the official religion of many countries, and tolerated, if not somewhat fashionable, in others. Some anti-Catholic legislation became, in effect, a dead letter. The
Counter-Reformation on the continent had created a more vigorous and magnificent form of Catholicism (that is,
Baroque, notably found in the architecture and music of Austria, Italy and Germany) that attracted some converts, such as the poet
Richard Crashaw. Ironically, this explicitly Catholic artistic movement ended up "providing the blueprint, after the fire of London, for the first new Protestant churches to be built in England". While Charles remained firmly Protestant, he was personally drawn towards a consciously "High Church" Anglicanism. This affected his appointments to Anglican bishoprics, in particular that of
William Laud as
Archbishop of Canterbury. How many Catholics and Puritans there were is still open to debate. Religious conflict between Charles and other "High" Anglicans and
Calvinists – at this stage mostly still within the Church of England (the
Puritans) – formed a strand of the anti-monarchical leanings of the troubled politics of the period. The religious tensions between a court with "
Papist" elements and a Parliament in which the Puritans were strong was one of the major factors behind the
English Civil War, in which almost all Catholics supported the King. The victory of the Parliamentarians meant a strongly Protestant, anti-Catholic regime, content for the English Church to become "little more than a nationwide federation of Protestant parishes". The restoration of the monarchy under
Charles II (1660–1685) also saw the restoration of a Catholic-influenced court like his father's. However, although Charles himself had Catholic leanings, he was first and foremost a pragmatist and realised the vast majority of public opinion in England was strongly anti-Catholic, and so he agreed to laws such as the
Test Act, requiring any appointee to any public office or member of Parliament to deny Catholic beliefs such as
transubstantiation. As far as possible, however, he maintained tacit tolerance. Like his father, he married a Catholic,
Catherine of Braganza. (He would become Catholic himself on his deathbed.) was the last Catholic to reign as monarch of England (and Scotland and Ireland). Charles's brother and heir, James, Duke of York (later
James II), converted to Catholicism in 1668–1669. When
Titus Oates in 1678 alleged a (totally imaginary) "
Popish Plot" to assassinate Charles and put James in his place, he unleashed a wave of parliamentary and public hysteria that led to the execution of 17 Catholics on the scaffold, and the deaths of many more over the next two years, which Charles was either unable or unwilling to prevent. Throughout the early 1680s, the
Whig element in Parliament attempted to remove James as successor to the throne. Their failure saw James become, in 1685, Britain's first openly Catholic monarch since Mary I (and last to date). He promised religious toleration for Catholic and Protestants on an equal footing, but it is in doubt whether he did this to gain support from
Dissenters or whether he was truly committed to tolerance (seventeenth-century Catholic regimes in Spain and Italy, for example, were hardly tolerant of Protestantism, while those in France and Poland had practised forms of toleration). James earnestly tried "to improve the position of his fellow Catholics" and did so "in such an inept way that he aroused the fears of both the Anglican establishment and the Dissenters. In the process, he encouraged converts like the poet
John Dryden, who wrote "
The Hind and the Panther", to celebrate his conversion. Protestant fears mounted as James placed Catholics in the major commands of the existing standing army, dismissed the Protestant Bishop of London and dismissed the Protestant fellows of Magdalen College and replaced them with a wholly Catholic board. The last straw was the birth of a Catholic heir in 1688, portending a return to a pre-Reformation Catholic dynasty. Observing this was Princess Mary, James' daughter by his first wife, and her husband Stadhouder Willem,' whose wife stood to lose her future thrones through this new arrival".
William and Mary and the Catholic Church In what came to be known as the
Glorious Revolution, Parliament deemed James to have abdicated (in effect deposing him, though Parliament refused to call it that) in favour of his Protestant daughter,
Mary II, and son-in-law and nephew,
William III. Although this affair is celebrated as solidifying both English liberties and the Protestant nature of the kingdom, some argue that it was "fundamentally a coup spearheaded by a foreign army and navy". James fled into exile, and with him many Catholic nobility and gentry. The
Act of Settlement 1701, which remains in operation today, established the royal line through
Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and specifically excludes any Catholic or anyone who marries a Catholic from the throne. In 2013, this law was partially changed, when the disqualification of the monarch marrying a Catholic was eliminated (alongside male preference in the line of succession). The law was also changed to limit the requirement that the monarch "must give permission to marry to the six persons next in line to the throne". Still, Catholics today once again are permitted to hold Wolsey and More's office of Lord Chancellor as did Catholics before the Reformation.
Henry Benedict Cardinal Stuart, the last
Jacobite heir publicly to assert a claim to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland, died in Rome in 1807. A
monument to the Royal Stuarts exists today at Vatican City. In the 21st century,
Franz, Duke of Bavaria, head of the Wittelsbach family, is the most senior descendant of King Charles I, and is considered by Jacobites to be heir of the Stuarts. Though a direct descendant of the House of Stuart, Franz has said being king is not a claim he wishes to pursue.
Recusants and moves towards Emancipation The years from 1688 to the early 19th century were in some respects the lowest point for Catholicism in England. Deprived of their dioceses, four
apostolic vicariates were set up throughout England until the re-establishment of the diocesan episcopacy in 1850. Although the persecution was not violent as it had been previously, Catholic numbers, influence and visibility in English society reached their lowest point. The percentage of the population that was Catholic may have declined from 4% in 1700 (out of a population of 5.2 million) to 1% in 1800 (out of a population of 7.25 million) with absolute numbers halved. By 1825, however, the Bishop of Chester estimated that there were "about a half a million Catholics in England". Their civil rights were severely curtailed: their right to own property or inherit land was greatly limited; they were burdened with special taxes; they could not send their children abroad for Catholic education; they could not vote; and priests were liable to imprisonment. Writing about the Catholic Church during this time, historian
Antonia Fraser notes: The harsh laws and the live-and-let-live reality were two very different things. This world was divided into the upper classes, the aristocracy and the gentry, and what were literally the working classes. Undoubtedly, the survival of Catholicism in the past [up until 1829] was due to the dogged, but hopefully inconspicuous, protection provided by the former to the latter. Country neighbours, Anglicans and Catholics, lived amicably together in keeping with this "laissez-faire" reality. There was no longer, as once in Stuart times, any notable Catholic presence at court, in public life, in the military and in the professions. Many of the Catholic nobles and gentry, who had preserved on their lands among their tenants small pockets of Catholicism, had followed James into exile, and others, at least outwardly in cryptic fashion, conformed to Anglicanism, meaning fewer such Catholic communities survived intact. For "obvious reasons", Catholic aristocracy at this time was heavily intermarried. Their great houses, however, still had chapels called "libraries", with priests attached to these places (shelved for books) who celebrated Mass, which worship was described in public as "Prayers". Interestingly, one area where the sons of working-class Catholics could find religious tolerance was in the army. Generals, for example, did not deny Catholic men their Mass and did not compel them to attend Anglican services, believing that "physical strength and devotion to the military struggle was demanded of them, not spiritual allegiance". Fraser also notes that the role of the working class among themselves was important: ...servants of various degrees and farm workers, miners, mill workers and tradesmen, responded with loyalty, hard work and gratitude for the opportunity to practice the faith of their fathers (and even more importantly, in many cases, their mothers). Their contributions should not be ignored, even if it is for obvious reasons more difficult to uncover than that of their theoretical superiors. The unspoken survival of the Catholic community in England, despite Penal laws, depended also on these loyal families unknown to history whose existence is recorded as Catholics in Anglican parish registers. That of Walton-le-Dale parish church, near Preston in Lancashire in 1781, for example, records 178 families, with 875 individuals as 'Papists'. Where baptisms are concerned, parental occupations are stated as weaver, husbandman and labourer, with names such as Turner, Wilcock, Balwin and Charnley. A bishop at this time (roughly from 1688 to 1850) was called a
vicar apostolic. The officeholder was a
titular bishop (as opposed to a diocesan bishop) through whom the pope exercised jurisdiction over a
particular church territory in England. English-speaking
colonial America came under the jurisdiction of the
Vicar Apostolic of the London District. As titular bishop over Catholics in British America, he was important to the government not only in regard to its English-speaking North American colonies, but also made more so after the
Seven Years' War when the
British Empire, in 1763, acquired the French-speaking (and predominantly Catholic) territory of Canada. Only after the
Treaty of Paris in 1783, and in 1789 with the consecration of
John Carroll, a friend of
Benjamin Franklin, did the United States of America have its own diocesan bishop, free of the Vicar Apostolic of London,
James Robert Talbot. The introduction of vicars apostolic or titular bishops in 1685 was very important at the time and ought not be misprized. For example, when John Leyburn, formerly of the English College, Douai, was appointed Vicar Apostolic of England, it was the first time a Catholic bishop had been present in England for nearly sixty years. Until that time,
archpriests were overseeing the church. to look like a house at
Lulworth Castle, East Lulworth,
Dorset In Leyburn's combined tour north and visitation to administer Confirmation, in 1687, some 20,859 Catholics received the sacrament. Most Catholics, it could be said, retreated to relative isolation from a popular Protestant mainstream, and Catholicism in England in this period was politically invisible to history. However, culturally and socially, there were notable exceptions.
Alexander Pope, owing to his literary popularity, was one memorable English Catholic of the 18th century. Other prominent Catholics were three remarkable members of the Catholic gentry:
Baron Petre, who wined and dined
George III and
Queen Charlotte at Thorndon Hall;
Thomas Weld, the bibliophile and friend of
George III, who, in 1794, donated his
Stonyhurst estate to the Jesuits to establish a college, alongside 30 acres of land; and the Duke of Norfolk, the Premier
Duke in the
peerage of England and, as
Earl of Arundel, the Premier
Earl. In virtue of his status and as head of the Howard family, which included some Church of England, though many Catholic, members, the Duke was always at Court. It seemed as if the values and worth of aristocracy "trumped those of the illegal religion". Pope, however, seemed to benefit from the isolation. In 1713, when he was 25, he took subscriptions for a project that filled his life for the next seven years, the result being a new version of Homer's
Iliad.
Samuel Johnson pronounced it the greatest translation ever achieved in the English language. Over time, Pope became the greatest poet of the age, the
Augustan Age, especially for his mock-heroic poems,
The Rape of the Lock and
The Dunciad. Around this time, in 1720,
Clement XI proclaimed Anselm of Canterbury a Doctor of the Church. In 1752, Great Britain adopted the
Gregorian calendar decreed by Pope
Gregory XIII in 1582. Later in the century, there was some liberalisation of the anti-Catholic laws on the basis of Enlightenment ideals. In 1778, the
Catholic Relief Act allowed Catholics to own property, inherit land and join the army, provided that they swore an oath of allegiance. Hardline Protestant mobs reacted in the
Gordon Riots in 1780, attacking any building in London that was associated with Catholicism or owned by Catholics. The
Catholic Relief Act 1791 provided further freedoms on condition of swearing an additional oath of acceptance of the Protestant succession in the
Kingdom of Great Britain. This allowed Catholic schooling and clergy to operate openly, and, thus, allowed permanent missions to be set up in the larger towns.
Stonyhurst College, for example, was able to be established in 1794, as the successor establishment for the fleeing English Jesuits, previously at the
Colleges of St Omer, Bruges and Liège, owing to a timely and generous donation by a former pupil,
Thomas Weld (of Lulworth), as Europe became engulfed in war. This act was followed in
Ireland with the
Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793, an Act of the
Irish Parliament with some local provisions such as allowing Catholics to vote in elections to the
Irish House of Commons and to take degrees at
Trinity College Dublin. . British troops served in Italy during the
French Revolutionary Wars In 1837,
James Arundell, 10th Baron Arundell of Wardour, bequeathed to Stonyhurst the Arundel Library, which contained the vast Arundel family collection, including some of the school's most important books and manuscripts such as a Shakespeare
First Folio and a manuscript copy of Froissart's
Chronicles, looted from the body of a dead Frenchman after the
Battle of Agincourt. However, Catholic recusants, as a whole, remained a small group, except where they stayed the majority religion in various pockets, notably in rural
Lancashire and
Cumbria, or were part of the Catholic aristocracy and squirearchy. Finally, the famous recusant
Maria Fitzherbert, who during this period secretly married the
Prince of Wales,
prince regent and future
George IV in 1785. The
British Constitution, however, did not accept it, and George IV later moved on. Cast aside by the establishment, she was adopted by the town of Brighton, whose citizens, both Catholic and Protestant, called her "Mrs. Prince". According to journalist Richard Abbott, "Before the town had a [Catholic] church of its own, she had a priest say Mass at her own house, and invited local Catholics", suggesting the recusants of Brighton were not very undiscovered. In a 2009 study of the English Catholic community in 1688–1745, Gabriel Glickman notes that Catholics, especially those whose social position gave them access to the courtly centres of power and patronage, had a significant part to play in 18th-century England. They were not as marginal as one might think today. For example, Alexander Pope was not the only Catholic whose contributions (especially,
Essays on Man) helped define the temper of an early English Enlightenment. In addition to Pope, Glickman notes a Catholic architect,
James Gibbs, who built the
Radcliffe Camera and returned baroque forms to the London skyline, and a Catholic composer,
Thomas Arne, who composed "
Rule, Britannia!". According to reviewer
Aidan Bellenger, Glickman also suggests that "rather than being the victims of the Stuart failure, 'the unpromising setting of exile and defeat' had 'sown the seed of a frail but resilient English Catholic Enlightenment'". University of Chicago historian
Steven Pincus likewise argues in his book
1688: The First Modern Revolution that Catholics under William and Mary, and their successors, experienced considerable freedom.
Nineteenth century and Irish immigration , influenced the passage of the
Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 After this moribund period, the first signs of a revival occurred as thousands of French Catholics fled France during the
French Revolution. The leaders of the Revolution were virulently anti-Catholic, even singling out priests and nuns for
summary execution or massacre, and England was seen as a haven from
Jacobin violence. In 1801, a new political entity was formed, the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, which merged the Kingdom of Great Britain with the
Kingdom of Ireland, thus increasing the number of Catholics in the new state. Pressure for abolition of anti-Catholic laws grew, particularly with the need for Catholic recruits to fight in the
Napoleonic Wars. Despite the resolute opposition of
George IV, which delayed fundamental reform, 1829 brought a major step in the liberalisation of most anti-Catholic laws, although some aspects were to remain on the statute book into the 21st century. Parliament passed the
Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, giving Catholic men almost equal civil rights, including the right to hold most public offices. If Catholics were rich, however, exceptions were always made, even before the changes. For example, American ministers to the
Court of St. James's were often struck by the prominence of wealthy American-born Catholics, titled ladies among the nobility, such as Louisa (Caton), granddaughter of
Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and her two sisters,
Mary Ann and Elizabeth. After Louisa's first husband,
Sir Felton Bathurst-Hervey, died, Louisa married
Francis D'Arcy-Osborne, 7th Duke of Leeds (then Marquess of Carmarthen as heir of the 6th Duke of Leeds), and had the
Duke of Wellington as her European protector. Her sister Mary Ann married
Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, the brother of the Duke of Wellington and then the
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; her other sister, Elizabeth (Lady Stafford), married another British nobleman. Although British law required, until 1837, an Anglican marriage service (after the
Clandestine Marriages Act 1753), each of the sisters and their Protestant spouses had a Catholic ceremony afterwards. At Louisa's first wedding, the Duke of Wellington escorted the bride. In the 1840s and 1850s, especially during the
Great Irish Famine, while much of the large outflow of migration from Ireland was heading to the United States to seek work, hundreds of thousands of Irish people also migrated across the channel to England and Scotland, and established communities in cities there, including London,
Liverpool,
Manchester and
Glasgow, but also in towns and villages up and down the country, thus giving Catholicism in England a numerical boost.
Re-establishment of dioceses At various points after the 16th century hopes had been entertained by many English Catholics that the "reconversion of England" was at hand. Additionally, with the arrival of Irish Catholic migrants (Ireland was part of the UK until the partition, in 1922), some considered that a "second spring" of Catholicism across Britain was developing. Rome responded by
re-establishing the Catholic hierarchy in 1850, creating 12 Catholic dioceses in England from existing
apostolic vicariates and appointing diocesan bishops (to replace earlier titular bishops) with fixed sees on a more traditional Catholic pattern. The Catholic Church in England and Wales had had 22 dioceses immediately before the Reformation, but none of the current 22 bear close resemblance (geographically) to the 22 earlier pre-Reformation dioceses. The re-established Catholic episcopacy specifically avoided using places that were sees of the Church of England, in effect temporarily abandoning the titles of Catholic dioceses before Elizabeth I because of the
Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851, which in England favoured a state church (i.e., Church of England) and denied
arms and legal existence to territorial Catholic sees on the basis that the state could not grant such "privileges" to "entities" that allegedly did not exist in law. Some of the Catholic dioceses, however, took the titles of bishoprics which had previously existed in England but were no longer used by the Anglican Church (e.g. Beverley – later divided into Leeds and Middlesbrough, Hexham – later changed to Hexham and Newcastle). In the few cases where a Catholic diocese bears the same title as an Anglican one in the same town or city (e.g., Birmingham, Liverpool, Portsmouth, and Southwark), this is the result of the Church of England ignoring the prior existence there of a Catholic see and of the repeal in 1871 of the Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851. The act applied only to England and Wales, not Scotland or Ireland; thus official recognition afforded by the
grant of arms to the
Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, brought into being by Lord Lyon in 1989, relied on the fact that the
Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851 never applied to Scotland. In recent times, the former Conservative Cabinet Minister
John Gummer, a prominent convert to Catholicism and columnist for the
Catholic Herald in 2007, objected to the fact that no Catholic diocese could have the same name as an Anglican diocese (such as London, Canterbury, Durham, etc.) "even though those dioceses had, shall we say, been borrowed".
Converts A proportion of the Anglicans who were involved in the
Oxford Movement or "Tractarianism" were ultimately led beyond these positions and converted to the Catholic Church, including, in 1845, the movement's principal intellectual leader,
John Henry Newman. More new Catholics would come from the Anglican Church, often via high Anglicanism, for at least the next hundred years, and something of this continues. As anti-Catholicism declined sharply after 1910, the church grew in numbers, grew rapidly in terms of priests and sisters, and expanded their parishes from inner city industrial areas to more salubrious suburbs. Although underrepresented in the higher levels of the social structure, apart from a few old aristocratic Catholic families, Catholic talent was emerging in journalism, literature, the arts, and diplomacy. A striking development was the surge in highly publicised conversion of intellectuals and writers including most famously
G. K. Chesterton, as well as
Robert Hugh Benson and
Ronald Knox,
Maurice Baring,
Christopher Dawson,
Eric Gill,
Graham Greene,
Manya Harari,
David Jones,
Sheila Kaye-Smith,
Arnold Lunn,
Rosalind Murray,
Alfred Noyes,
William E. Orchard,
Frank Pakenham,
Siegfried Sassoon,
Edith Sitwell,
Muriel Spark,
Graham Sutherland,
Oscar Wilde,
Ford Madox Ford, and
Evelyn Waugh. Pre-1900 famous converts included Cardinals Newman and
Henry Edward Manning, the less famous like
Ignatius Spencer as well as the leading architect of the
Gothic Revival,
Augustus Pugin, historian
Thomas William Allies, and
Jesuit poet
Gerard Manley Hopkins.
G. E. M. Anscombe was also a notable convert during the early 20th century. Prominent cradle Catholics included the film director
Alfred Hitchcock, writers such as
Hilaire Belloc,
Lord Acton and
J. R. R. Tolkien and the composer
Edward Elgar, whose oratorio
The Dream of Gerontius was based on a 19th-century poem by Newman. In 1994,
Katharine, Duchess of Kent became the first member of the
British royal family to convert to Catholicism since 1685. Former Prime Minister
Sir Tony Blair also converted to the Catholic Church, doing so in December 2007 after he had left office. ==Contemporary English Catholicism==