Crown versus church
Enjoys an accessible account of the Catholic struggle for religious freedom in 19th-century Britain
The 50-year fight for Roman Catholic emancipation across the turn of the 19th century has been rather overshadowed by momentous contemporary events such as the industrial revolution, the Napoleonic Wars and parliamentary reform. Yet it was as hard fought as any of them, pitting the struggle for religious rights against long-standing fears and bigotries over the true allegiances of Britain’s Catholics. At last, with Antonia Fraser’s latest book, there is an accessible account for a general readership.
Now that sectarianism is generally on the wane, it is hard to appreciate just how vehemently contested emancipation was. The first minor tinkering to remove legal prohibitions on Catholics in 1778 provoked the Gordon riots two years later, leaving 1,000 people dead and London in flames.
It was another 49 years before emancipation finally passed into law – and then only after the Duke of Wellington, as prime minister, and home secretary RobertPRobertPeellh had d a changeh of f heart and finallyfi accepted the need for change. As s Fraser highlights, they did so not becauseb of conversion n to liberalism or tolerance, butb because the ey recognised d the need to pac cify the largely Catholic population of Ireland, which had not only provided many of the troops who fought loyally under the Iron Duke but which was now also emigrating in increasing numbers to Britain’s industrial towns in search of work. Even so, they struggled to persuade George IV to accept the change and had to threaten to resign before the ailing monarch accepted their advice. The irony was that many people knew Catholics socially – the king had even secretly married one, Maria Fitzherbert, in his youth.
Wellington and Peel were probably finally convinced of the need for change by the result of a by-election in County Clare where the Irish politician Daniel O’Connell – the “Liberator” – heavily defeated the establishment candidate. However, all this did not stop the opposition of so-called ‘Tory Ultras’ to any moves allowing Catholics more civil rights – Wellington even fought a duel against one of them.
Fraser’s book is the first full length history of the emancipation struggle for nearly 20 years and she writes with informed sympathy for both sides, drawing on the experiences of her own Irish Protestant Packenham family history: one ancestor opposed reform and another came to support it.
She does not labour the point, but it is impossible to read the story without drawing modern paraparallels: anxiety about aan alien religion and being swamped by immi igrants, fear of foreiign contamination – rulle by the pope then, as oppposed to the EU now – and internecine feudin g among the Tories. Plus ça chhange.