The King and the Catholics: England, Ireland, and the Fight for Religious Freedom, 1780–1829

Fraser (Cromwell) provides a brisk popular history of the fight for Catholic emancipation in England and Ireland. She begins with the Gordon Riots in 1780 and takes readers through the complexities of nearly 40 years of politicking around the question of religious rights in the United Kingdom, leading up to the passage of the Catholic Relief Act in 1829. The Act was designed to ease penalties that had been on Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom since the 17th century. Fraser discusses a variety of these laws—they included restrictions on the ownership of private property and the education of children—and how they affected the Catholic population from peasant to aristocrat. Although some small pieces of legislation to relieve Catholics had been passed prior to 1829, general relief legislation always foundered on resistance in the House of Lords and from monarchs. Fraser traces how the conditions arose in the 1820s to allow this resistance to be overcome, including the convincing of two dedicated opponents of relief, Arthur Wellington and Robert Peel, leaders of the Conservative Party government in the House of Commons. Fraser’s account, which entertains with fine descriptions of London’s heated political and religious climate, will interest any reader of popular histories. (Sept.)