By 1870 the Church of England could no longer claim to be the Church of the English nation. It has been conventional to regard the most significant moments in this transition from national Church to denomination as those that altered the Anglican character of Parliament; the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828, Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the admission of Jews to Parliament in 1858 and of the atheist Charles Bradlaugh in 1886. At the level of local politics, these changes are seen as mirrored by the reform of the Municipal Corporations in 1835 and the ending of compulsory church rate in 1868. Important though these developments were, the process had ramifications beyond those implied by a political realignment. There were other, equally significant steps on the road from national Church to denomination. One came in 1824, when the final parliamentary grant was made for church building; after that, the money had to be raised by Anglicans themselves. Another was the implementation of the Civil Registration Act in 1837, which gave people the freedom to opt out of Anglican rites at birth and marriage. A third was in 1853, when Palmerston ended the issuing of royal letters in support of the National Society, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and the Incorporated Church Building Society, on the grounds that they made too close a link between Church and Crown.