Catholic Emancipation

Catholic Emancipation, in British history, the freedom from discrimination and civil disabilities granted to the Roman Catholics of Britain and Ireland in a series of laws during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. After the Reformation, Roman Catholics in Britain had been harassed by numerous restrictions. In Britain, Roman Catholics could not purchase land, hold civil or military offices or seats in Parliament, inherit property, or practice their religion freely without incurring civil penalties. A Roman Catholic in Ireland could not vote in Parliamentary elections and could be readily dispossessed of his land by his nearest Protestant relative.

By the late 18th century, however, Roman Catholics had ceased to be considered the social and political danger that they had represented at the beginning of the Hanoverian succession. The first Relief Act (1778) enabled Roman Catholics in Britain to acquire real property, such as land. Similar legislation was enacted in Ireland in a series of measures (1774, 1778, and 1782). In 1791 another bill was passed that enabled British Catholics to practice their religion without fear of civil penalties, a measure applied on a much wider scale by the Irish Parliament with the Relief Act of 1793, which granted Irish Roman Catholics the franchise and admission to most civil offices.

Further emancipatory measures following the Act of Union (1801), which united Great Britain with Ireland, foundered in the face of resistance from the bitterly anti-Catholic George III and from powerful Irish Protestants and British Tories who feared Roman Catholic participation in Britain’s public life. In the next two decades, however, the charismatic Irish lawyer and orator Daniel O’Connell began to mobilize the Irish Roman Catholic peasantry and middle class to agitate for full emancipation. He formed the Catholic Association to this end in 1823, bringing into its ranks hundreds of thousands of members in Ireland. By 1828 the British government was faced with the threat of a nationwide rebellion in Ireland if action was not taken to conciliate this broad-based and energetic movement intent on the alleviation of Catholic grievances. O’Connell himself forced the issue when he entered a Parliamentary by-election in County Clare in 1828, insisting that he would not take his seat until the anti-Roman Catholic oath required of members of Parliament was abolished. O’Connell’s ensuing triumphant election compelled the British prime minister, the Duke of Wellington, and Sir Robert Peel to carry the Emancipation Act of 1829 in Parliament. This act admitted Irish and English Roman Catholics to Parliament and to all but a handful of public offices. With the Universities Tests Act of 1871, which opened the universities to Roman Catholics, Catholic Emancipation in the United Kingdom was virtually complete.