Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829

Common card · No. 280034

The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 (10 Geo. 4. c. 7), also known as the Catholic Emancipation Act 1829, is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that removed the sacramental tests that barred Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from Parliament and from higher offices of the judiciary and state. It was the culmination of a fifty-year process of Catholic emancipation during which Catholics had been progressively relieved of their civil and political disabilities under the penal laws of what had been, until 1801, the formally separate kingdoms of Great Britain and of Ireland. Convinced that the measure was essential to maintain order in Catholic-majority Ireland, the prime minister, the Duke of Wellington, helped to overcome the opposition of George IV and the House of Lords by threatening to resign and retire the Tory government he led in favour of what would have been a new, reform-minded Whig ministry. In Ireland the Protestant Ascendancy had the...

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