Catholic Emancipation

Catholic emancipation or Catholic relief was a process in the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the late 18th century and early 19th century that involved reducing and removing many of the restrictions on Roman Catholics introduced by the Act of Uniformity, the Test Acts and the penal laws. Requirements to abjure (renounce) the temporal and spiritual authority of the Pope and transubstantiation placed major burdens on Roman Catholics.

The penal laws started to be dismantled from 1766. The most significant measure was the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829, which removed the most substantial restrictions on Roman Catholicism in the United Kingdom.

In Canada, British since 1763, the Quebec Act of 1774 ended some restrictions on Roman Catholics, so much so that it was criticized in the Congress of the Thirteen Colonies.

In Great Britain and, separately, in Ireland, the first Relief Act, called the "Papists Act", was passed in 1778; subject to an oath renouncing Stuart claims to the throne and the civil jurisdiction of the Pope, it allowed Roman Catholics to own property, to inherit land, and to join the army. Reaction against this led to riots in Scotland in 1779 and then the Gordon Riots in London on June 2, 1780.

Further relief was given by an Act of 1782 allowing the establishment of Roman Catholic schools and bishops. The British Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 was adopted by the Irish Parliament in 1792–93. Since the electoral franchise at the time was largely determined by property, this relief gave the votes to Roman Catholics holding land with a rental value of £2 a year. They also started to gain access to many middle-class professions from which they had been excluded, such as the legal profession, grand jurors, universities and the lower ranks of the army and judiciary.

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