Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian EnglandAnti-Catholic sentiment was a major social, cultural, and political force in Victorian England, capable of arousing remarkable popular passion. Hitherto, however, anti-Catholic feeling has been treated largely from the perspective of parliamentary politics or with reference to the propaganda of various London-based anti-Catholic religious organizations. This book sets out to Victorian anti-Catholicism in a much fuller and more inclusive context, accounting for its persistence over time, disguishing it from anti-Irish sentiment, and explaining its social, economic, political, and religious bases locally as well as nationally. The author is principally concerned with determining what led ordinary people to violent acts against Roman Catholic targets, violent acts against Roman Catholic petitions, joining anti-Catholic organizations, and reading anti-Catholic literature. All too often, English history, and even British history, turns out to be the history of what was happening in the West End. One of the special distinctions of this book is that it shows the interplay between national issues and their local conditions. The book covers the period ca. |
Contents
Organized AntiCatholic Protest | 23 |
Cultural Images | 49 |
Militant Roman Catholicism | 81 |
Defensive Anglicanism | 103 |
The Tractarian Factor | 131 |
Nonconformity in Tension | 153 |
AntiCatholicism as a Political Issue | 197 |
Bonfires Revels and Riots | 225 |
Who Were the AntiCatholics? | 267 |
Common terms and phrases
active Anglican Anglo-Catholicism anti-Catholic Anti-Catholic Agitations anti-Tractarian attack Baptist Birmingham Bishop Boase Bonfire Night British Reformation Society Catholic Church Catholicism chapel Charles Chartist Christian Church of England classes clergy Committee Congregationalists Connexion Cotton Masters crowd denominational Derby Dissent Ecclesiastical Edward election English Evangelical Alliance Family Herald History Hugh McNeile Hugh Stowell Ibid Ireland Irish John Journal July June Kettering Lancashire lectures Leeds Mercury Liberal Liverpool London Lord Magazine Manchester Courier Manchester Guardian Maynooth memorial memorialists nineteenth century no-popery Nonconformists Northampton Northamptonshire organized Oxford Oxford Movement parish percent petitions police political Pope popery Popular Presbyterian Preston priest Protestant Association Protestant Witness Protestantism public meeting Radical Record Office religion religious riots Roman Catholic Roman Catholic Church Rome Salford Sept signatures social Societies and Anti-Catholic tholic Tory town Tractarianism Unitarian vicar Victorian violence Weekly Miscellany Whig William Wiseman Wolffe working-class