Population.—No trustworthy figures are forthcoming as to the numbers of the English Roman Catholics at the different stages of their history. At the accession of Elizabeth they undoubtedly formed a large proportion of the population. During her reign they greatly decreased, and the decrease continued during the 17th century. A return, made with some apparent care soon after the accession of William III., estimates their total number at barely 30,000. During the 18th century they began to increase; a return presented to the House of Lords in 1780 estimates their number at nearly 70,000. Joseph Berington, himself a distinguished Catholic priest, considers that this number was above the mark; he reports that his co-religionists were most numerous in Lancashire and London; next came Yorkshire, Northumberland and Staffordshire. In many of the southern counties there were scarcely any Catholics at all. Even in Berington's time, however, there was a certain tendency to increase; and the great number of conversions that followed the Relief Act of 1791 was a stock argument of opponents of the act of 1829. Of late years, notably since the Oxford Movement within the Established Church, the number of converts has been much increased; for some time past it has averaged about 8000 souls a year. But a far more potent factor in swelling the numbers of the Catholics has been the immigration of the Irish, which be an early in the 19th century, but was enormously stimulated by the famine of 1846. In 1870 Mr Ravenstein reckoned the total number of Roman Catholics in England as slightly under a million, of whom about 750,000 were Irish, and 50,000 foreigners. By 1910 the general total is considered to have risen to about a million and a half.
- (St C.)
Authorities.-Alphons Bellesheim, Cardinal Allen und die Englischen Seminare (Mainz, 1885); Katholische Kirche in Schottland (Mainz, 1886; translated and enlarged by D. O. Hunter-Blair, O.S.B., Edinburgh, 1887); Katholische Kirche in Irland (1890); Charles Dodd (a pseudonym of Hugh Tootell), Church History of England (1737); edited by M. A. Tierney, London, 1839); Joseph Berington, State and Behaviour of the English Catholics 1780); Charles Butler, Historical Memoirs respecting the English, Irish and Scottish Catholics (London, 1819); T. F. Knox, The Douay Diaries (1878) and Letters of Cardinal Allen (1882); J. Morris, Catholic England in Modern Times (1892); T. Murphy, Catholic Church in England during the Last Two Centuries (1892); W. J. Amherst, History of Catholic Emancipation (2 vols., London, 1886); F. C. Husenbeth, Life of John [Bishop] Milner (Dublin, 1862); Wilfrid Ward, Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman (2 vols., London, 1897); E. S. Purcell, Life of Cardinal Manning (2 vols., London, 1895); Bernard Ward, Dawn of the Catholic Revival in England, 1781-1803 (2 vols., 1909). For the sufferings under the penal laws see, for general reference, R. Stanton, A Menology of England and Wales (with supplement, London, 1892), and Bishop Challoner's Missionary Priests (1741 ff.), which still remains the standard work on the subject.
English Law relating to Roman Catholics.—The history of the old penal laws against Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom has been sketched above and in the article Ireland, History.[1] The principal English acts directed against “popish recusants”[2] will be found in the list given in the acts repealing them (7 & 8 Vict. c. 102, 1844; 9 & 10 Vict. c. 59, 1846). The principal Scottish act was 1700, c. 3; the principal Irish act, 2 Anne c. 3. Numerous decisions illustrating the practical operation of the old law in Ireland are collected in G. E. Howard's Cases on the Popery Laws (1775). The Roman Catholic Emancipation Act 1829 (10 Geo. IV. c. 7), although it gave Roman Catholic citizens in the main complete civil and religious liberty, at the same time left them under certain disabilities, trifling in comparison with those under which they laboured before 1829. Nor did the act affect in any way the long series of old statutes directed against the assumption of authority by the Roman see in England. The earliest of these which is still law is the Statute of Provisors of 1351 (25 Edw. III. st. 4). The effect of the Roman Catholic Charities Act 1832 is to place Roman Catholic schools, places of worship and education, and charities, and the property held therewith, under the laws applying to Protestant nonconformists. The Toleration Act does not apply to Roman Catholics, but legislation of a similar kind, especially the Relief Act of 1791 (31 Geo. III. c. 32), exempts the priest from parochial offices, such as those of churchwarden and constable, and from serving in the militia or on a jury, and enables all Roman Catholics scrupling the oaths of office to exercise the office of, churchwarden and some other offices by deputy. The priest is, unlike the nonconformist minister, regarded as being in holy orders. He cannot, therefore, sit in the House of Commons, but there is nothing to prevent a peer who is a priest from sitting and voting in the House of Lords. If a priest becomes a convert to the Church of England he need not be re-ordained. The remaining law affecting Roman Catholics may be classed under the following five heads:—
(1) Office.—There are certain offices still closed to Roman Catholics. By the Act of Settlement a papist or the husband or wife of a papist cannot be king or queen. The act of 1829 provides that nothing therein contained is to enable a Roman Catholic to hold the office of guardian and justice of the United Kingdom, or of regent of the United Kingdom; of lord chancellor, lord keeper, or lord commissioner of the great seal of Great Britain or Ireland or lord lieutenant of Ireland; of high commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, or of any office in the Church of England or Scotland, the ecclesiastical courts, cathedral foundations and certain colleges. The disability in the case of the lord chancellor of Ireland was removed by statute in 1867, with necessary limitations as to ecclesiastical patronage. The act of 1829 preserved the liability of Roman Catholics to take certain oaths of office, but these have been modified by later legislation (see 29 & 30 Vict. c. 19; 30 & 31 Vict. c. 75; 31 & 32 Vict. c. 72; 34 & 35 Vict. c. 48). Legislation has been in the direction of omitting words which might be supposed to give offence to Roman Catholics. The only offices which Roman Catholics are not legally capable of holding now are the lord chancellorship of England and the lord lieutenancy of Ireland (see, however, Lilly and Wallis, pp. 36-43).
(2) Title.—The act of 1829 forbids the assumption by any person, other than the person authorized by law, of the name, style or title of an archbishop, bishop or dean of the Church of England, The Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851 went further, and forbade the assumption by an unauthorized person of a title from any place in the United Kingdom, whether or not such place were the seat of an archbishopric, bishopric or deanery. This act was, however, repealed in 1867, but the provisions of the act of 1829 are still in force.
(3) Religious Orders.—It was enacted by the act of 1829 that “every Jesuit and every member of any other religious order, community or society of the Church of Rome bound by monastic or religious vows” was, within six months after the commencement of the act, to deliver to the clerk of the peace of the county in which he should reside a notice or statement in the form given to the schedule to the act, and that every Jesuit or member of such religious order coming into the realm after the commencement of the act should be guilty of a misdemeanour and should be banished from the United Kingdom for life (with an exception in favour of natural-born subjects duly registered). A secretary of state, being a Protestant, was empowered to grant licences to Jesuits, &c., to come into the United Kingdom and remain there for a period not exceeding six months. An account of these licences was to be laid annually before parliament. The admission of any person as a regular ecclesiastic by any such Jesuit, &c., was made a misdemeanour, and the person so admitted was to be banished for life. Nothing in the act was to extend to religious orders of females. These provisions exist in posse only, and have, it is believed, never been put into force.
(4) Superstitious Uses.—Gifts to superstitious uses are void both at common law and by statute. It is not easy to determine what gifts are to be regarded as gifts to superstitious uses. Like contracts contrary to public policy, they depend to a great extent for their illegality upon the discretion of the court in the particular case. The act of 23 Hen. VIII. c. 10 makes void any assurance of lands to the use (to have obits perpetual) or the continual service of a priest for ever or for threescore or fourscore years. The act of 1 Edw. VI. c. 14 (specially directed to the suppression of chantries) vests in the crown all money paid by corporations and all lands appointed to the finding or maintenance of any priest, or any anniversary or obit or other like thing, or of any light or lamp in any church or chapel maintained within five years before 1547. The act may still be of value in the construction of old grants, and in affording examples of what the legislature regarded as superstitious uses. Gifts which the courts have held void on the analogy of those mentioned in the acts of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. are a devise for the good of the soul of the testator, a bequest to certain Roman Catholic priests that the testator may have the benefit of their prayers and masses, a bequest in trust to apply a fund to circulate a book teaching the supremacy of the pope in matters of faith, a bequest to maintain a taper for evermore before the image of Our Lady. The court may
