CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Bloodless Revolution

‘It is one of the greatest triumphs recorded in history – a bloodless revolution’

Daniel O’Connell, 14 April 1829

THE STORY OF CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION began with blood: the Anti-Catholic Gordon Riots which followed a very mild form of Catholic Relief in 1780. But it did not end like that. Lord Byron had written that ‘Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow.’ The remarkable thing about Catholic Emancipation was how few blows as such were actually struck. Fifty-odd years after the Gordon Riots, Daniel O’Connell hailed the Emancipation Act as ‘one of the greatest triumphs recorded in history – a bloodless revolution more extensive in its operation than any other political change that could take place.’1

What, then, was achieved in the glorious and bloodless triumph? In the course of their long stand-off in March 1829, the King had spent much time rambling on to the Prime Minister about his various detailed objections to the projected bill. Wellington had to remind him that ‘everything’ was to be conceded to the Catholics; there would be infinite possibilities for them in the future. And he repeated the words: ‘Yes, everything.’ As Cardinal Wiseman would pronounce in 1863, ‘The year 1829 was to us what the egress from the catacombs was to the Christians.’

Wellington’s claim was not completely true, however. The elimination of the Irish Forty-shilling Freeholders from the electorate was one price O’Connell had to pay. As he had told his wife: ‘That that [sic] is the only blot.’2 The people who lost their vote were the kind of men who had brought him to power. ‘An Act for the Relief of His Majesty’s Roman Catholic Subjects (April 13 1829) 10. George IV. CAP. 7’, as it was officially termed, undoubtedly had particular areas of discrimination. Certain roles and offices were still denied by law to Catholics even if they now had the right to vote.

Foremost among them was the role of the British monarch, and those within the line of the royal succession. The Act of Settlement of 1701 establishing a Protestant sovereign and heirs was not repealed. The text of the Emancipation Act was rigorous on the subject. It was true that Roman Catholics would no longer have to take the Oaths and Declarations against Transubstantiation, the Invocation of the Saints and the Sacrifice of the Mass, ‘as practised in the Church of Rome’, in order to qualify for sitting in Parliament, and for ‘the Enjoyment of certain Offices, Franchises, and Civil Rights’. But the oath they would have to take instead promised to ‘maintain, support and defend... the Succession to the Crown... limited to the Princess Sophia, Electress of Hanover and the Heirs of her Body being Protestants’.

In its language the new oath also recalled old sixteenth-century battles with the Pope and his foreign Church. There were to be no more sanctified assassinations by Catholics, in so far as such had ever existed: ‘I do renounce, reject and abjure the Opinion, that Princes excommunicated or deprived by the Pope, or any other Authority of the See of Rome, may be deposed or murdered by their Subjects, or by any Person whatsoever.’

The Coronation Oath, in the form of the declaration in front of Parliament made by the sovereign, continued to cause dissension. William IV took the same effectively Anti-Catholic oath as his brother in 1831, and so did Queen Victoria. It was not until Edward VII revolted that the oath was altered for his successor George V in 1910. King Edward objected to the wording of the declaration he was forced to read at the opening of his first Parliament, which repudiated Roman Catholicism in unequivocal terms.3

Before reading the speech from the throne, Edward VII was called by the Lord Chancellor, in accordance with the Bill of Rights of 1689, to repeat a declaration repudiating the doctrine of Transubstantiation and asserting that ‘the invocation or adoration of the Virgin Mary or any other saint and the sacrifice of the Mass as they are now used in the Church of Rome are superstitious and idolatrous’. There was to be no evasion, equivocation or mental reservation whatever. King Edward saw it as a gratuitous insult to his Catholic friends, in which he resembled George III, with his Thomas Welds and Lord Petres. It was also, incidentally, the time of the Boer War in South Africa, in which Catholic soldiers were fighting on the British side. The Lovat Scouts, for example, recruited among Scottish Catholic Highlanders, was raised for service in the Second Boer War by the 14th Lord Lovat, descendant of Simon 11th Lord Lovat, executed for ‘a deliberate and malignant purpose to ruin and subvert our present government’ – in other words, for supporting the Stuart rebellion of 1745.4

King Edward compromised with a low voice which was scarcely audible, and then wrote to his Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, asking for a change in the ‘crude language’ which was not in accordance with public policy at the present time. Salisbury agreed with him personally, but believed that there might be a Protestant backlash.

It was not until the reign of his son George V (who took the oath in its old form) that a bill was passed in both Houses which abolished the old declaration of 1689 and substituted the positive for the negative: a declaration ‘that I am a faithful Protestant’ who would maintain the enactments which secured the Protestant Succession to the throne as well as the throne itself. The Coronation Oath taken by Queen Elizabeth II on 2 June 1953 consisted of a similar positive statement. She would do her utmost to maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion which had been established by law. She also swore to maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, as by law established in England; as well as preserve the rights and privileges by law of the (Protestant) bishops and clergy.^*1

Neither the Lord Chancellor specifically nor, by implication, the Prime Minister could be Roman Catholics. The latter would be precluded by the clause which forbade any Catholic to advise on ecclesiastical appointments, a duty which comes to the Prime Minister of a country in which there is an officially Established Church.^*2 Other specific offices excluded were the Regent of the United Kingdom under whatever designation, Lord Lieutenant or Lord Deputy, that is the Chief Governor of Ireland, and His Majesty’s High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

There were minor clauses which in the event did not have a great deal of practical effect, such as restrictions on the general wearing of ecclesiastical habits in public. These were to be kept for private houses, and Catholic places of worship. The Jesuits and other monastic orders were to be subject to ‘gradual Suppression and final Prohibition’, which meant entry being forbidden to new recruits into the country and existing members registered. The territorial names of existing Protestant dioceses could not be used by ‘any person’; that is to say, they could not be used for Catholic dioceses and there was a fine of £100 for anyone rash enough to persist in doing so. Catholic priests could not be Members of Parliament. At least the final clause showed a certain chivalry towards women: nothing here affected in any manner ‘any Religious Order, Community or Establishment consisting of Females bound by Religion or Monastic Vows’. Nuns evidently did not evoke the same primitive angry dread as monks.

When O’Connell hailed the glorious prospect of Emancipation, he added the caution that he was specifically referring to political rather than social change, which might break to pieces the framework of society. But his rejoicing in the lack of bloodshed was unrestrained. In an age which had seen the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars in Europe, rebellions in Ireland and wars in both North and South America, O’Connell’s triumphant emphasis is easy to understand. And he was right, along with his colleagues in Ireland, to take the credit, given their constant emphasis on non-violence during their campaigns in a way that surprised contemporaries expecting something very different from the ‘barbarian’ Irish. The banning of all violence, including alcohol as conducive to it, during the Clare by-election symbolized a resolute new approach to demagoguery unfettered by customs of the past.

George IV had muttered under his breath about that ‘blackguard O’Connell’ the first time he saw the new MP at court after the Act was passed; but compared to ‘blackguards’ of the past such as Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet, O’Connell’s methods were very different. Banning of violence was negative, if crucial; in contrast the formation of the Catholic Association was strongly positive. Thomas Attwood, the English Radical, who would soon be plunged into the campaign for Parliamentary Reform, appreciated the point immediately: in May 1829 he hailed the Irish people who by ‘union and organisation’ in the Catholic Association (as opposed to violence by day and night) had lately obtained ‘a glorious and bloodless victory’.5 That too owed much to the inspiration of Daniel O’Connell.

The influence of particular individuals on the course of history remains and will always remain a subject of fascinating conjecture; hence the eternal spell of biography. It is, however, possible to say with certainty that O’Connell’s charismatic character, his decisions, his gifts and the use he chose to make of them, his attitude to apparently insuperable obstacles, entitles him to emerge as one of the chief heroes of the fight for Emancipation. The ecstatic popular song which celebrated ‘the Catholic Victory’ is easy to understand:

The bondage of the Israelites our Saviour he did see,

He then commanded Moses for to go and set them free

And in the same we did remain suffering from our own

Till God he sent O’Connell, for to free the Church of Rome.6

What then of the obvious counterpart to O’Connell, on the side of the government? Greville commented at the time that the Duke of Wellington, being all-powerful, would receive all ‘the honour of the day’; whereas success was really due to O’Connell and those who fought the battle on both sides of the water. It was not so simple. The contribution of the Great Duke should not be eliminated. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, was also born in Ireland, like the Liberator, although a member of the Protestant Ascendancy. Nevertheless, his Irish background was one important element in his eventual realism on the subject of Emancipation. As Princess Lieven hissed at the Duke of Cumberland in a moment of aristocratic conservative revulsion, ‘How mistaken we have been about Wellington, after all he is no more than an Irish adventurer.’7 Since Ireland was all-important in the Catholic Question, it was certainly appropriate that at the end two Irishmen should face each other across the religious duelling ground with ritual pistols raised – which both finally decided not to use.

The pragmatic attitude of Wellington to politics would not always serve him (as his attitude to Parliamentary Reform, where he simply got it wrong, would shortly demonstrate). But it certainly served him on this occasion, and it served his country. Sir Francis Burdett, who supported Emancipation and would sit beside O’Connell at his first appearance in the Commons, was right to predict in May 1828 that if the bill passed, the Great Duke would add ‘another wreath to the laurel of victory’.8

The Great Duke was able to employ his extraordinary authority, to project ‘King Arthur’ in the real King’s bitter phrase, to bring about a change which a great many of his strongest supporters were loath to see. Just as Daniel O’Connell had his eye on the repeal of the Union as a consequence of Emancipation, the Duke of Wellington placed the peace and welfare of that actual United Kingdom above religious scruples and decided that Emancipation was necessary to secure it. The religious scruples included those of the sovereign, swept aside at the end in a masterly way that only Wellington could manage.

Sir Walter Scott, for example, had been a dedicated opponent of Relief for Catholics: Popery, he believed, was such a mean and depriving superstition. He would willingly have had ‘the Old Lady of Babylon’s mouth’ stopped with a plaster.9 Now he altered his mind in favour of Relief because his confidence was ‘entirely in the Duke of Wellington’. Having done so, Scott signed a Petition in favour of the bill – no half-measures which ‘do but linger out the feud’ – and there were loud cheers in Parliament when his name was read out. Wellington must also be allowed his place as, in a very different sense from O’Connell, a hero of the struggle: neither the Duke nor the demagogue would necessarily have succeeded without the other.

On the personal level, the Ultra-Tory Protestants lacked a brilliant leader comparable to an O’Connell or a Wellington. This was a weakness for their cause. The rantings of Lord Winchilsea and his like were in a different class, although the emotion behind them was surely also genuine, the emotion of certain dedicated conservatives down the ages in a time of change. The conversion of the brilliant politician Peel from intellectual and emotional support for the Church of England to a position of compromise, from a sense of duty if not untinged with ambition, damaged him personally; at the same time it robbed the extreme Protestants of any really effective ally. What has been described by one biographer as ‘a contemporary squib’ announced a new Catholic feast day celebrating ‘the Conversion of Saint Peel’.10

As for Peel himself, turncoats have never fared well at the hands of their former allies throughout history from Judas onwards. Peel was certainly no Judas: he was a man of honest conviction who had honestly changed his mind and had the courage to say so. Nevertheless, the slur would affect his standing in the Tory Party and the next great campaign for Reform.

There were other elements which contributed to the success of the struggle at that precise moment: the unlooked-for effect of the French Revolution in bringing Catholic refugees, including many in religious orders, to Britain was one. Papists were no longer necessarily the historic enemy, linked to that bogeyman the Pope. They were in fact fleeing England’s Continental enemy, which was forbidding their religion. In offering practical compassion to Papists, the hosts conceived a new image of monks, nuns and other co-religionists. Meanwhile the Pope himself became a fugitive at the orders of that new notorious bogeyman, Napoleon, dispossessed from the historically threatening religious fortress of Rome.

From exactly the opposite point of view, the need for soldiers brought about by these wars placed a proper practical emphasis on the welfare of Irish and Scottish men who might be recruited and asked to fight for their country – the country which denied them the day-to-day practice of their religion. The military seniors were the first to appreciate the point. What harm did it do the men to have their Mass before going into battle? It certainly did not hinder recruitment. This was a practical consideration, nothing to do with the long tentacles of Rome. The fact that Catholic soldiers could die for a country which denied them the worship they wanted was constantly and rightly emphasized during the campaign for Emancipation.

The role played by the ‘New World’ of the Americas was also significant. References were frequently made during the long debates on the subject of Emancipation to the religious liberty which was part of the original constitution of the United States. It was praised, for example, by Daniel O’Connell; a natural reference given the level of Irish emigration across the Atlantic at that period. These emigrants themselves in many cases remained supportive by word – and money and even the threat of armed intervention – of their fellow Catholics still in their native land. Similarly, the success of Simón Bolívar provided a living example that freedom was there for those who fought for it, and showed themselves to be heroes in the process.

The influence of a certain kind of cry for liberty, voiced by many poets of the time, was more complicated, however. Here the mythical machinations of the Popish Church could still be seen in medieval terms; cartoon monks could still be envisaged as up to no good at all, certainly not encouraging the spread of freedom. In the same way, the Whigs, roughly speaking, always stood in favour of Emancipation, as being a liberal attitude which chimed with their innate predisposition towards reform. But it should be remembered that Lord Holland, admirable, tolerant Whig grandee as he might be, was capable of outbursts in private against the Pope.

The lesson of history on the subject of prejudice is a painful one: so long as it lingers, the trickle of malice can always turn unexpectedly into a spring torrent. Anti-Catholicism in England was certainly not eliminated in 1829, just as permanent peace was certainly not achieved in Ireland. It was in 1829 that Thomas Wyse wrote in his Historical Sketch of the Late Catholic Association that the single word Emancipation ‘contained within itself the panacea for all the sufferings of Ireland’ – with hindsight, a touchingly optimistic view.11 It is for this reason that the discreet, enduring, long-term influence of the old Catholic families should not be overlooked. They might be insufficiently ardent in Sheil’s dismissive phrase, but in the words of Abbé Sieyès, asked how he fared in the Revolution: they survived. They had endured through hard times.

Once the complication of the Stuart challenge to the throne, military and otherwise, was over, their very endurance proved a factor in counterbalancing the image of Catholics as foreigners. They might be educated abroad, through no fault of their own, but foreigners they clearly were not: these were friends of the King at the highest part of established society, with their large country estates and discreet rooms or mausoleums or other dwellings which might just be Catholic chapels. It would also be wrong in this context to ignore the contribution of the people, nameless, who served them down the ages, nameless but faithful to their masters and the Catholic Faith. There were weavers and labourers such as the Wilcocks, Baldwins and Charnlys of Walton-le-Dale in Lancashire, as well as the Norfolks, Welds and Petres.

The influence of diplomat-clerics should not be forgotten. Cardinal Consalvi died five years before Emancipation was granted, but had played an important part both during his visit to London and generally in Rome at a very tricky time for the Papacy, including his handling of the estate of the last Stuart, Cardinal Henry of York. In his sophisticated way, he would surely have enjoyed the scene in Rome after Nicholas Wiseman, the new Rector, decorated the façade of the English College with lanterns spelling Emanzipazione Cattolica. Some Italian passers-by, believing that a new saint had been canonized, struck their breasts with the invocation Santa Emancipatione, ora pro nobis.12 Then there were the Protestant champions in Parliament at roughly the same period, such as Henry Grattan, whose oratory deserves acknowledgement in the achievement of legislation.

The attitudes of the earlier Catholic English clerics such as Bishop Milner in refusing to bow to suggestions of compromise like the Veto, although seemingly a dangerous game at the time, and one which delayed perhaps some form of Emancipation, resulted in the final Act being free of ‘securities’, which was generally regarded by Catholics as a triumph.

Lastly, returning to the biographical theme, the passions and prejudices of the two kings involved were obviously of crucial importance. Contrasted as they were in character, they united in the end in standing for what they perceived to be the immutable values of the Hanoverian Protestant dynasty. The whole story would have been very different if George III had not protested against the Emancipation which was half promised at the time of the Union of Britain and Ireland in 1801.

After that, the fact has to be faced that George IV remained unwilling to give his Royal Assent to the bill until the very end. He did so finally, ‘with pain and regret’, in what was a notable surrender by the Crown to the will of the government. Most of the population of the British mainland – although pollsters did not as yet exist to confirm it – probably agreed in their hearts with their monarch, not their Parliament. A caricature of April 1829 by the satirist William Heath gives that lurking national reluctance pungent expression. A huge, terrified John Bull – the patriotic symbol – lies helpless, held down by Robert Peel, while a demonic Wellington, as Dr Arthur, forcibly administers medicine down his throat with the words: ‘Hold him fast, Bob – I’ll soon make him swallow it – there it goes Johnny, you will be quite a different man after this.’ John Bull, in short, was on the side of the King, not the Catholics.

Let Sydney Smith, staunch Protestant friend of liberty, have the last word.13 When Emancipation became law, he wrote to a Catholic friend: ‘I rejoice in the temple which has been reared to Toleration and I am proud that I worked as a bricklayer’s labourer at it – without pay, and with the enmity and abuse of those who were unfavourable to its construction.’ There were many discreet labourers, as well as the political bricklayers themselves, who had the right to feel proud of the progress made in 1829. And there would be many toilers in the future on the ever-fragile structure of that temple to Toleration. In the meantime all honour is due to those who, with a variety of motives and in many different ways, laid the bricks for Catholic Emancipation.