British Literature Survey
Reference Pages: George Eliot Group

The Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829
by John Kim

On April 14, 1829 the Catholic Emancipation Act was passed due to the hard work of Daniel O’Connell and the Catholic Association. In 1828, he was elected to the House of Commons for the County Clare but he was not eligible for membership because he was Catholic (Hinde 73). This outraged the Irish Catholics and with the possibility of a political revolution, King George IV signed the act to pacify Ireland and to save the Union (New Catholic Encyclopedia 295). This law abolished the previous anti-Catholic laws, allowing Catholics to be elected in to the Parliament and public offices, except that no Catholic could be Regent, Lord Chancellor, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, or Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Also other restrictions were that no Catholic mayor could wear his civic robes at public worship. Catholics also had to take an oath of allegiance upholding the Protestant succession to the crown, denying the power of the Pope in England, and not to weaken the Protestant establishment (Reynolds 164). Some of the opponents of the Emancipation were leading literary figures of the time, such as Robert Southey, Samuel T. Coleridge, and William Wordsworth. To them it meant that Catholics could now have a vote and real influence in matters concerning the Church of England (Wohl).

Works Cited

Catholic Emancipation. New Catholic Encyclopedia. Volume 5. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Book Company. 1967.

Hinde, Wendy. Catholic Emancipation. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers. 1992.

Reynolds, James A. The Catholic Emancipation Crisis in Ireland, 1823-1829. Binghamton, NY: Yale University Press. 1954.

Wohl, Anthony S. Catholic Emancipation. July 6, 2002. Vassar College. http://www.victorianweb.org/religion/cath2.html

Paul Marchbanks
marchban@email.unc.edu