The
penal times were hard times and yet in every decade between the 1570’s and
1680’s the number of Catholics increased – and the proportion of the population
who were Catholics increased. Growth had
a lot to do with the power of Catholic witness, not just the powerful witness
of the martyrs but also the quiet witness of neighbours or relatives trying to
maintain loyalty to the monarch and to their faith. It is interesting that the wife of James I,
Anne of Denmark who was a Catholic, was given a dispensation by Pope Clement
VIII to attend the Chapel Royal – and to have their children baptised as
Protestants. In 1610 the English
Catholic nobility accounted for thirty two out of eighty one peers who sat in
the House of Lords. Over the next two
years eighty eight new Barons were created of whom twenty six were Catholic or
close associates. In 1654 John
Southworth was the last Catholic priest to be executed until 1679. Cromwell paid for his body – one of the Forty
Martyrs - to be returned to Douai.
During the French Revolution the saint’s mortal remains were hidden and
not rediscovered until 1927. They are
now enshrined in Westminster Cathedral.
The
last of the English Martyrs lost their lives in 1679 as a result of the Titus
Oates conspiracy. In 1677 he concocted
the ‘Popish Plot’. He infiltrated Jesuit
seminaries on the Continent pretending to be a Catholic. He had previously been dismissed from his
curacy as an Anglican priest for misconduct.
Now he told a magistrate about a Catholic plot to massacre Protestants,
burn London and assassinate Charles II, replacing him with his brother James
Duke of York, who became James II. Oates
was considered a hero for bringing such a ‘plot’ to light. His evidence led to thirty five judicial
murders. The ‘Popish Plot’ led to
renewed persecution of Catholics. All
Members of Parliament now had to repudiate Catholicism. Around one hundred priests were arrested, twenty
three of whom died in gaol and eighteen were executed, six of whom are among
the Forty Canonised Martyrs of England and Wales. In 1683 Oates was fined £100,000 for calling
the Duke of York a traitor. He was found
guilty of perjury and was imprisoned for life.
Five years later he was set free in the Revolution of 1688 which brought
William of Orange and Mary to the throne.
Mary was the eldest daughter of James II of England (and James VII of
Scotland) In Elizabethan England there
were about one hundred and ninety Catholic Martyrs. By contrast the number of Catholic Martyrs in
the 17th Century was seventy five.
At
the beginning of the 18th Century Catholics no longer faced
immediate threat of persecution from ‘dungeon, fire and sword’. But Catholics still could not vote or hold
public office. To receive an education
Catholics had to be schooled abroad (though this was technically illegal) at
the English Catholic Colleges in Lisbon, Valladolid or Rome or the Jesuit
College of St Omers near Calais or Douai in Northern France. These colleges abroad were still educating
priests for the English mission as well as other students whose parents could
afford it. The alleviation of the Penal
Laws in 1778 was greeted in 1780 with the Gordon Riots, a conflagration of
anti-Catholicism and popular discontent.
This remains England’s largest urban uprising. In 1785 the Prince of Wales (later George IV)
clandestinely married an English Catholic widow, Maria Fitzherbert, in St John
the Baptist Church, Brighton. Catholic
churches could now be built provided they were small and discrete. George III stood in the way of Catholic
Emancipation which came in 1829 and finally allowed Catholics in all of Britain
and Ireland to sit in Parliament. A
massive flow of Irish immigration following the Great Famine of 1847 brought more
and more Catholics into England. The
French Revolution brought many priests and Religious to England fleeing
persecution there and the English College at Douai could no longer
function. Now Catholic Colleges were
established in such places as Oscott and Stonyhurst. A revival of English Catholicism was under
way.
