Daniel O’Connell, campaigner for Catholic Emancipation, stood for parliament and refused to take the Oath of Supremacy.
I’m a purist when it comes to historical fact. Not that I get every single detail right myself, but when I hit something in a story that is factually incorrect, it takes me right out of the story and spoils my enjoyment. Sometimes, as with calling a duchess ‘Lady Surname’ or a duke ‘my lord’, it’s such a fundamental part of the culture of the peerage of historical times that I find it hard to forgive and keep reading. Sometimes, it seems to me that what I’m seeing is leakage from modern assumptions.
Recently, I’ve read a couple of stories that completely ignore the status of Catholics at the time (and nearly everyone that wasn’t Church of England, but in this case, Catholics). Set in the early Regency, one had the heroine sent to a convent (in England) for three years as a punishment and the other had the heroine taking refuge with some nuns who were running an orphanage. Catholic nuns were out, because before the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829, Catholic convents were outlawed, and before the Victorian era, Anglican convents didn’t exist.
Being a Catholic between 1558 and 1829 meant penalties, punishments, and various exclusions. The details varied from monarch to monarch and from year to year, as a succession of statutes tried to keep all but Anglicans from the public life of the nation. Charles Butler, a lawyer who was the first Catholic to be appointed King’s Council after the 1829 Act, wrote that the law meant Catholics:
…were deprived of many of the rights of English subjects, and the common rights of mankind. They were prohibited, under the most severe penalties, from exercising any act of religion, according to their own mode of worship.
They were subject to heavy punishments for keeping schools, for educating their children in their own religious principles at home ; and to punishments still more severe for sending them for education to foreign establishments.
They were incapacitated from acquiring landed property by descent or purchase, from serving in his majesty’s armies and navies, from all offices, civil or military, from practicing the law or physic, and from being guardians and executors.
They were liable to the ignominious and oppressive annual fine of a double land-tax, deprived of the constitutional right of voting for members of parliament, and disqualified from setting in house of commons.
Their peers were deprived of their hereditary seats in the house of lords, and their clergy, for exercising their religious functions, were exposed to the heaviest penalties and punishments and, in some cases, to death.
A popular mechanism for separating the Anglicans from everyone else was a series of tests and oaths that people had to take when joining the armed forces, taking public office, or joining a trade corporation. The Test Acts required people to do something to show they were practicing members of the Church of England: from 1672, this meant submitting a certificate that confirmed they’d taken Holy Communion according to Anglican rites. The oaths of allegiance, supremacy and abjuration required the oath taker to swear allegiance to the monarch as supreme governor of the Church of England. They had, in other words, to say that the monarch was the highest spiritual authority of all.
Sometimes, the oath was part of the process of joining a profession, and refusing to take it meant you couldn’t get into your preferred trade, the army, the navy, parliament, or local government. At other times, a local justice could require anyone over the age of 18 to take the oath, and those who wouldn’t could be punished for high treason, which meant:
- drawing, hanging and quartering
- corruption of blood, by which heirs became incapable of inheriting honours and offices, and
- forfeiture of all property.
So no nuns, then.
UPDATE: On the Historical Novel Society FaceBook page, one commenter has pointed out that the Discalced Carmelites, an order of contemplative nuns, arrived back in England in 1794. They kept a very low profile, wore secular clothes, and lived in hired houses supported by local benefactors. But nuns were in England before the date I gave, even if they were outlawed. They were hiding and living the Carmelite life of prayer, silence, and solitude. They weren’t running orphanages or providing secure prisons for recalcitrant aristocratic daughters. I stand by my assumption that the plot lines I read were ridiculous, but I have to concede that there were at least three tiny communities of nuns in England during the Regency. I just love the way history never fails to surprise!
Thanks for all of this… the history and the reminder. Great article! I’m a stickler for wanting history conveyed correctly, as a reader and as an author. Three cheers!
My pleasure!
Well researched historical fiction is pleasing to many of us. However, I wonder about the future for this field of endeavor. In my seventies, I went back to college to take a few graduate courses out of interest and to some degree the challenge. Most classmates were motivated students, in their early twenties, just starting studies for a masters degree. They were bright and engaging, but shockingly lacking in historical knowledge. At times, it was jaw dropping how little these wonderful young people knew about any aspect of world history. It was troubling, from the standpoint that these were not just average millennials. They were students who had pretty much all excelled in academic studies, from a young age. In many cases, they had taken courses in Social Studies rather than History in elementary school. Their ability to discern errors in statements about historical facts appears to be close to nonexistent. In my opinion, this presents challenges well beyond the realm of our own personal enjoyment in quality historical fiction.
When my office does the pop-quiz in the newspaper, I’m their ace in the hole for the historical questions — and these are highly intelligent consultants in plain language, mostly people with post-graduate degrees who are passionate about reading. So most readers are not going to get the details, I’m guessing. However, those same people love to know those details. I don’t expect writers to get every detail right. I do expect them to research anything they’re not sure about, and to question even the things they think they know.