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The Revival of the Anti-Maynooth Campaign in Britain, 1850–52

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

Frank Wallis
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In nineteenth century Britain, many evangelicals looked upon the Catholic Church as the incarnation of Antichrist. Their particular interpretation of the Protestant Bible, and especially the Book of Revelation, made it important for them to fight the enemy of true religion. During the 1850s and 1860s the most significant example of this struggle was the campaign to abolish state funding of the Catholic seminary at Maynooth in Ireland, a subsidy which parliament had approved in 1845 over the protests of a national anti-Maynooth crusade. It is the crisis of 1845 upon which historians have concentrated their studies. The furor over the endowment of Maynooth subsided, but when the Papal Aggression affair of 1850–51 stimulated “No Popery” sentiment, the ultra-Protestants of Britain revived their agitation against Maynooth. The impelling force behind this renewed campaign was principally doctrinal, based on a view of Biblical truth which cast the Catholic Church in the role of Antichrist and made Maynooth appear to be the center of rebellion, disloyalty, and immorality for all of Ireland. One scholar has written that the Antichrist idea intensified feelings of anti-Catholicism and influenced parliament as late as 1851. This essay will demonstrate that the utilization of the Antichrist motif, when combined with several other negative notions about the Catholic Church, helped produce and sustain a revival of anti-Catholicism in the form of the campaign against Maynooth, well beyond the events of 1851.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , Winter 1987 , pp. 527 - 547
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1987

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References

1 To put an end to sectarian debates over the Maynooth grant (which had to be approved annually), Sir Robert Peel's Tory government introduced a measure transforming the annual grant into a permanent annuity charged on the Consolidated Fund, raising the sum from £9,250 to £26,360 p.a. Peel urged parliament to act in a liberal spirit, hoping government liberality would result in a more enlightened and loyal Catholic priesthood. Despite the schism it caused in Tory ranks, the Maynooth Act was signed into law on 30 June 1845 (see Norman, E. R., Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England [New York, 1968], pp. 25–27, 30–32, 41–42, 46, 48–50Google Scholar). The Maynooth question was exploited by the Tories in the general election of 1847, but they did nothing about it next session. See Cahill, Gilbert, “The Protestant Association and the Anti-Maynooth Agitation of 1845,” Catholic Historical Review 43 (1957):273–308Google Scholar, which also examines the election of 1847. Also of value, Machin, G.I.T., “The Maynooth Grant, the Dissenters, and Disestablishment, 1845–47,” English Historical Review 82 (1967):61–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kerr, Donal, Peel, Priests, and Politics: Sir Robert Peel's Administration and the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, 1841–46 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 280–84, 289, 351Google Scholar. An extended discussion of the revived campaign is found in Wallis, Frank, “The Anti-Maynooth Campaign: A Study in Anti-Catholicism and Politics in the United Kingdom, 1851–69” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1987)Google Scholar.

2 Misner, Paul, “Newman and the Tradition Concerning the Papal Antichrist,” Church History 42 (1973): 380, 395CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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4 E. R. Norman's Anti-Catholicism is the best short treatment of anti-Catholicism in England. G.F.A. Best, “Popular Protestantism,” summarizes the bases of anti-Catholicism, see also idem., “The Protestant Constitution and its Supporters, 1800–1829,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 8 (1958): 105–27. Rennie, Ian S., “Evangelicalism and English Public Life, 1823–1850” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1962)Google Scholar, studied how ultra-Protestants associated themselves with the “No Popery” cry in an attempt to preserve a Protestant Britain; Machin, G.I.T., Politics and the Churches in Great Britain, 1832–68 (Oxford, 1977)Google Scholar, precisely surveys the political demands of several denominations and their anti-Catholic activities. Hempton, D. N., “Methodism and Anti-Catholic Politics, 1800–1864” (Ph.D. diss., University of St. Andrews, 1977)Google Scholar, examines Methodist participation in anti-Catholic movements from the time of John Wesley to 1845 and Maynooth. Hempton's, “Evangelicalism and Eschatology,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 31 (1980): 179–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar, explores millenarian theology and the Pope as Antichrist doctrine. See also, Wolffe, John, “Protestant Societies and Anti-Catholic Agitation in Great Britain, 1829–1860” (Ph.D. thesis, Oxford University, 1984)Google Scholar, and Arnstein, Walter L., Protestant versus Catholic in Mid-Victorian England: Mr. Newdegate and the Nuns (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1982)Google Scholar, which says more about anti-Catholicism than the title indicates.

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14 Ibid., pp. 502–3, 507.

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18 Ibid., pp. 519–520.

19 Ibid., pp. 561–62.

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38 Ibid.

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52 Ibid.

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55 SCPP (1852), pp. 29–30, 22, 33, 40, 66.

56 Ibid., p. 149.

57 Ibid., pp. 229, 253, 344, 395. The General Assembly of the Scottish Church agreed wholeheartedly with the position of the Free Church (SCPP [1852], p. 409.).

58 SCPP (1852), pp. 82, 363, 377.

59 Sandeen, , Roots of Fundamentalism, p. 41Google Scholar.