What is a recusant in history?
A recusant was someone who (from about 1570-1791) refused to attend services of the Church of England, and therefore violated the laws of mandatory church attendance. The name derives from the Latin verb recusare, meaning “reject” or “oppose.” The adjective recusant has been in use since the late 16th century.
What was a recusant in Elizabethan England?
Those who refused to attend Church of England services (recusants) were forced to pay a fine of a shilling a week for not attending church on Sundays or holy days.
What is a recusant family?
During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, those who refused to attend Anglican church services were known as recusants. Most were Roman Catholics.
What were recusants seen as?
Recusancy, from the Latin recusare (to refuse), was the state of those who remained loyal to the Catholic Church and refused to attend Church of England services after the English Reformation.
Is Lancashire Catholic?
Historians are generally agreed that Lancashire was the most Catholic and the most Jacobite county in England at the time of the 1715 rebellion. Monod also discovered the religious affiliations of four-fifths of the Lancashire rebels and noted that 76 per cent of them were Roman Catholics.
How many recusants were there?
Between 1581 and 1603 180 recusants, including 120 priests, were executed. Nevertheless the catholic aristocracy, strong in the north and west, who preferred a quietist approach continued to practise; others, ‘church papists’, nominally attended church, while secretly practising catholicism.
What was the crime of Recusancy?
The definition of recusancy was the refusal to submit to established authority. The Recusancy Law was originally directed the refusal of Roman Catholics to attend the services of the Church of England.
How many Catholics were killed during Elizabeth’s reign?
In this fascinating interview, she explores the Catholic predicament in Elizabethan England – an age in which their faith was criminalised, and almost two hundred Catholics were executed.
What was the crime of recusancy?
How many recusants are there?
What parts of England are Catholic?
In the North East, North West, Outer London, and the West Midlands, roughly three in every ten born-and-raised Catholics now regard themselves as having no religion. In the East Midlands, Wales, and Yorkshire and Humberside, it is around half.
What is the meaning of recusant?
Definition of recusant 1 : an English Roman Catholic of the time from about 1570 to 1791 who refused to attend services of the Church of England and thereby committed a statutory offense 2 : one who refuses to accept or obey established authority
When was the offense of recusancy abolished in England?
The offense of recusancy was abolished by the Catholic Relief Act of 1791. Bibliography: m. d. r. leys, Catholics in England, 1559–1829: A Social History (London 1961).
Where are the names of convicted recusants found in the Rolls?
Names of convicted recusants, fined by the county sheriffs, occur first in the Pipe Rolls and then, from 1592 to 1691, in a separate series of Recusant Rolls. Acts of 1593 (35 Eliz.
What are the consequences of being a recusant?
Recusants might be prosecuted in both civil and ecclesiastical courts and, if convicted, became liable not only to financial penalties but to expulsion from London, restriction to their own dwelling-places, and excommunication (possibly involving loss of civil rights and refusal of burial).