Jesuits, etc. Act 1584
Act of Parliament | |
Status: Repealed | |
---|---|
Revised text of statute as amended |
An act against Jesuits, seminary priests, and such other like disobedient persons, also known as the Jesuits, etc. Act 1584, (
Anyone who was brought up as a
Enforcement of the Act
Under Elizabeth I
The Act was enforced with great severity in the last decades of Elizabeth's reign. It may be that at first, the English Government believed that
Of the
After Elizabeth I
After the death of
Although
Prosecutions of members of the Catholic laity for harbouring priests ceased after about 1616. Protestant sheriffs and
No priests were executed in the period 1618-1625, only one was executed in the period 1625-1640, and after a brief revival of stringent persecution during the English Civil War, only two more were executed between 1646 and 1660.[10]
The Popish Plot
Following the
In theory, Scots and Irish priests were exempt from the statute, if they could show that their presence in England was temporary. Even during the Popish Plot, a number of priests were acquitted on that ground, although the Irish
Although it was not technically a defence under the statute of 1584, a priest who could prove that he had taken the
No serious effort was made to revive prosecutions of the laity for harbouring priests. The Government did issue two proclamations reminding the public that this was a felony which in theory rendered them liable to the death penalty, but no action was taken against those laymen, like Thomas Gunter, Gervaise Pierrepont, Sir John Southcote and Sir James Poole, 1st Baronet, in whose houses priests were arrested.[15]
Anti-Catholic sentiment gradually died away, more speedily in the provinces where many of the priests who died were venerable and respected local figures. In June 1679 the King issued an order that all priests condemned under the statute of 1584 after 4 June should be reprieved until his further will was known. Kenyon suggests that the Government at this point simply had no idea what to do next.[16] In the event, the reprieve for priests condemned after that date became permanent. This however was too late to save those already condemned, and over the summer of 1679, despite mounting public unease, at least fourteen priests were executed or died in prison. Persecution continued to wane in 1680: at least ten more priests were prosecuted under the statute of 1584, but it seems that all of them were acquitted or reprieved.[17]
After the Plot
Under the openly Catholic King James II, all persecution of Catholics ceased early in 1685. A revival of anti-Catholic feeling after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 caused the Government to pass one final Penal Law, the Popery Act 1698. This sought to strengthen the statute of 1584 by providing that anyone who apprehended a Catholic priest should receive a reward of £100: in effect, this was a bounty for catching priests. The severity of this provision was mitigated by Section III, commuting the death sentence for priests to perpetual imprisonment.[18]
There is little evidence that the 1698 Act was enforced strictly. Kenyon suggests that the obvious decline in numbers of the English Catholic community in the eighteenth century was due to financial penalties, such as the double
The end of the Penal Laws
The "bounty" provisions of the 1698 Act were repealed by the first Catholic relief measure, the Papists Act 1778. However, the 1778 Act produced a revival of anti-Catholic feelings which erupted in the Gordon Riots of 1780, in which hundreds of people died. This reaction may have delayed further relief measures, but by 1791 the Government felt it safe to finally legalise the Catholic priesthood. Under the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 the Elizabethan Laws were repealed, and it became lawful, although under strictly controlled conditions, to act as a priest in England and to celebrate Mass.[19]
1995 court case
The execution of a Catholic priest under the Act in 1594 became the subject of a court case 401 years later. In 1995 a church applied to the
in the absence of a posthumous pardon the court could not properly sanction a memorial to a person lawfully convicted of high treason; and that, accordingly, since no question had been raised as to the legal propriety either of the priest's conviction as a traitor or his execution and there had been no pardon, the faculty sought could not be granted, notwithstanding the subsequent repeal of the Act of 1584.[20]
In 2008 the Oxford Consistory Court (presided over by the same judge) declined to follow that case as a precedent,[21] on the grounds that "that decision had failed to take account of the commemoration of English saints and martyrs of the Reformation era in the Church of England's calendar of festivals. As such a commemoration was permitted in an authorised service, it would have been inconsistent not to permit commemoration of similar persons by a memorial."[22]
See also
- High treason in the United Kingdom
- Religion Act 1580
- Safety of the Queen, etc. Act 1584 (27 Eliz.1, c. 1)
- Penal law (British)
References
- OCLC 612680148. Retrieved 22 October 2014.
- ISSN 0027-0172. Retrieved 22 October 2014.
- ^ Kenyon 2000 p.121
- ^ Sir John Neale Queen Elizabeth I Pelican Books edition 1960 p.271
- ^ Medley pp.638-9
- Fraser, AntoniaThe Gunpowder Plot- Terror and Faith in 1605 Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1997 pp.29-30
- ^ Fraser p.21
- ^ a b c Fraser p.38
- ^ Kenyon The Popish Plot Phoenix Press reissue 2000 p.30
- ^ a b Kenyon 2000 pp.6-7
- ^ Kenyon 2000 p.121
- ^ a b Kenyon 2000 pp.203-5
- ^ Kenyon 2000 p.264
- ^ Kenyon 2000 p.220
- ^ Kenyon 2000 p.255
- ^ Kenyon 2000 p.190
- ^ Kenyon 2000 p.223
- ^ a b Kenyon, J.P. The Stuart Constitution Cambridge University Press 2nd Edition 1985 p.379
- ^ Medley p.643
- ^ In re St Edmund's Churchyard, Gateshead (1995) 3 WLR 253; 4 All ER 103
- ^ In re St Mary the Virgin, Oxford (2009) 2 WLR 1381
- ^ Lawtel (subscription required).
External links
- Old Bailey Proceedings Online (accessed 2019-01-24), Trial of Lionel Anderson, James Corker, William Marshal, William Russel, Henry Starky, Charles Parry, Alexander Lunsden.. (t16800117-1, 17 January 1680).