Following the death of the Jacobite claimant to the British throne James Francis Edward Stuart on 1 January 1766, the pope recognised the legitimacy of the Hanoverian dynasty, which began a process of rapprochement between the Catholic Church and the United Kingdom.
3. c. 4) effective 25 March 1700, offered a reward of one hundred pounds was to anyone who should give information leading to the conviction of a Popish priest or bishop, who was made punishable by imprisonment for life.
These penal laws remained on the statute book unmitigated till late in the 18th century, and although there was less and less disposition to put them in force, there was ever the danger, which upon occasion grew more acute.
In 1768 the Reverend James Webb was tried in the Court of King's Bench for saying Mass but was acquitted, the Chief Justice, Lord Mansfield, ruling that there was no evidence sufficient to convict.
In 1769 and on other occasions, seemingly as late as 1771, Dr. James Talbot, coadjutor to Bishop Challoner, was tried for his life at the Old Bailey, on the charge of his priesthood and of saying Mass, but was acquitted on similar grounds.
In 1778 a Catholic committee was formed to promote the cause of relief for their co-religionists, and though several times elected afresh, continued to exist until 1791, with a short interval after the Gordon Riots.
By this, an oath was imposed, which besides a declaration of loyalty to the reigning sovereign, contained an abjuration of the Pretender, and of certain doctrines attributed to Catholics, as that excommunicated princes may lawfully be murdered, that no faith should be kept with heretics, and that the pope has temporal as well as spiritual jurisdiction in this realm.
Catholics were no longer to be summoned to take the Oath of Supremacy, or to be removed from London; the legislation of George I, requiring them to register their estates and wills, was repealed; while the legal professions were opened to them.
These concerned first the question of veto on the appointment of bishops in Ireland, which it was proposed to confer on the British government, and belongs chiefly to the history of Catholic emancipation in that country.
it likewise added something in the way of penal legislation by a clause prohibiting religious orders of men to receive new members, and subjecting those who should disobey to banishment as misdemeanants.
But when the pope excommunicated the queen, and the Spanish king made war on her, and both in attempting to dethrone her found that the Irish Catholics were ready to be instruments and allies, the latter, regarded as rebels and traitors by the English sovereign and her ministers, were persecuted and hunted down.
It excluded them from Parliament, from the corporations, from the learned professions, from civil and military offices, from being executors, or administrators, or guardians of property, from holding land under lease, or from owning a horse worth £5.
They were deprived of arms and of the franchise, denied education at home and punished if they sought it abroad, forbidden to observe Catholic Holy Days, to make pilgrimages, or to continue to use the old monasteries as the burial places of their dead.
The French Revolution was in progress, and a young and powerful republic had arisen preaching the rights of man, the iniquity of class distinctions and religious persecution, and proclaiming its readiness to aid all nations who were oppressed and desired to be free.
The Ulster Presbyterians celebrated with enthusiasm the fall of the Bastille, and in 1791 founded the Society of United Irishmen, having as the two chief planks in its programme parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation.
The Catholics and Dissenters, so long divided by religious antagonism, were coming together, and if they made a united demand for equal rights for all Irishmen, without distinction of creed, the ascendency of the Episcopalian Protestants, who were but a tenth of the population, must necessarily disappear.
The king received the Catholics, and William Pitt and Dundas, the Home Secretary, warned the Irish junta that the time for concessions had come, and that if rebellion broke out in Ireland, Protestant ascendency would not be supported by British arms.
They were still excluded from Parliament in the sense that the oath required before taking a seat was repugnant to them, and from the higher offices, and from being king's counsel, but in all other respects they were placed on a level with Protestants.
At once he dismissed Cooke, the Under Secretary, a determined foe of concession and reform, and also John Beresford who, with his relatives, filled so many offices that he was called the "King" of Ireland.
Of all that he did or intended to do, he informed the English Ministry, and got no word of protest in reply, and then when the hopes of the Catholics ran high, Pitt turned back and Fitzwilliam was recalled.
Beresford and Cooke were restored to office, Foster favoured more than ever, FitzGibbon made Earl of Clare, Grattan and Ponsonby regarded with suspicion, and the corrupt majority in Parliament petted and caressed.
Others followed the lead of Foster, incorruptible amidst corruption; Grattan and his friends returned to Parliament; and the opposition became so formidable that Castlereagh was defeated in 1799, and had to postpone the question of a union to the following year.
During this interval, with the aid of Cornwallis who succeeded Camden as viceroy in 1798, he left nothing undone to ensure success, and threats and terrors, bribery and corruption were freely employed.
Cornwallis was strongly in favour of emancipation as part of the union arrangement, and Castlereagh was not averse; and Pitt would probably have agreed with them had not Clare visited him in England and poisoned his mind.
In 1798 the latter favoured a union provided there was no clause against future emancipation, and, early in the following year, he induced nine of his brother bishops to concede to the Government a veto on episcopal appointments in return for a provision for the clergy.
In Parliament Pitt explained that he and his colleagues wished to supplement the Act of Union by concessions to the Catholics, and that, having encountered insurmountable obstacles they resigned, feeling that they could no longer hold office consistently with their duty and their honour.
To evade the Convention Act the new association, specially formed to obtain emancipation "by legal and constitutional means", was merely a club, but it gradually made headway.
As no Catholic could sit in Parliament if elected, it was at first resolved to nominate Major Macnamara, a popular Protestant landlord of Clare; but after some hesitation he declined the contest.
Under its provisions Catholics were admitted to Parliament and to the corporations; but they were still excluded from some of the higher offices, civil and military, such as those of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Commander-in-chief of the Army, and Lord Chancellor both in England and Ireland; priests were forbidden to wear vestments outside their churches, and bishops to assume the titles of their dioceses; Jesuits were to leave the kingdom, and other religious orders were to be rendered incapable of receiving charitable bequests.
Further, the franchise being raised to ten pounds, the forty-shilling freeholders were disfranchised; and the act not being retrospective O'Connell on coming to take his seat was tendered the old oath, which he refused and then had to seek re-election for Clare.