TheJournalofEcclesiastical History

http://journals.cambridge.org/ECH AdditionalservicesforTheJournalof

EcclesiasticalHistory:
Emailalerts:Clickhere Subscriptions:Clickhere Commercialreprints:Clickhere Termsofuse:Clickhere

WhenWasAntiCatholicism?TheCaseof NineteenthandTwentiethCenturyWales
PAULO'LEARY
TheJournalofEcclesiasticalHistory/Volume56/Issue02/April2005,pp308325 DOI:10.1017/S0022046904002131,Publishedonline:09May2005

Linktothisarticle:http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0022046904002131 Howtocitethisarticle: PAULO'LEARY(2005).WhenWasAntiCatholicism?TheCaseofNineteenthand TwentiethCenturyWales.TheJournalofEcclesiasticalHistory,56,pp308325 doi:10.1017/S0022046904002131 RequestPermissions:Clickhere

Downloadedfromhttp://journals.cambridge.org/ECH,IPaddress:78.150.138.232on23Jan2013

Jnl of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 56, No. 2, April 2005. f 2005 Cambridge University Press doi :10.1017/S0022046904002131 Printed in the United Kingdom

308

DEBATE

When Was Anti-Catholicism ? The Case of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Wales

by PAUL OLEARY

Anti-Catholicism was a pervasive inuence on religious and political life in nineteenth-century Wales. Contrary to the views of Trystan Owain Hughes, it mirrored the chronology of anti-Catholic agitation in the rest of Great Britain. Welsh exceptionalism lies in the failure of militant Protestant organisations to recruit in Wales, and the assimilation of anti-Catholic rhetoric into the frictions between the Church of England and Nonconformity over the disestablishment of the Church. Furthermore, whereas the persistence of anti-Catholicism in twentieth-century Britain is primarily associated with cities like Liverpool and Glasgow, its continuing inuence in Wales was largely conned to rural areas and small towns.

n a recent article in this JOURNAL Trystan Owain Hughes asserted that Wales did not participate in the fervent anti-Catholicism of the Victorian era that had been so characteristic of the wider British experience.1 His aim was to demonstrate that there was an upsurge in antipathy to Catholicism in Wales between 1900 and 1960, a period when the phenomenon was in retreat in the remainder of Britain. Furthermore, the same reasons that have been used to explain anti-Catholicism in nineteenthcentury England could be applied to elucidate similar developments in twentieth-century Wales. An increase in the number of Catholics, the triumphalism of the Catholic Church, a crisis in the national religion and the belief that Rome posed a threat to a traditional way of life, were the principal reasons underpinning anti-Catholic comment and behaviour in both periods. He maintained that What we have is a striking example of historical synchronicity: two eras, though out of phase, nevertheless seeming to illuminate one another.2 The elegant symmetry of this argument in favour
1

313.

Trystan Owain Hughes, Anti-Catholicism in Wales, 19001960 , this JOURNAL liii (2002), 2 Ibid.

? 309 of Welsh exceptionalism is seductive. However, it is based on a misconception about the religious cultures of Victorian Wales and makes the mistake of interpreting a lack of systematic research on Welsh antiCatholicism in that period for an absence of the phenomenon itself. Moreover, in his determination to demonstrate the strength and inuence of anti-Catholic thought in Wales between 1900 and 1960 he gives an exaggerated view of the inuence of Nonconformity in public life during this period. This article demonstrates the strength of anti-Catholic sentiment in nineteenth-century Wales and re-evaluates the signicance of the continuing use of such ideas during the twentieth century. Furthermore, it argues that a comparison with anti-Catholicism in particular regions of twentieth-century Britain is more instructive than a comparison of the whole of England with the whole of Wales. I Opposition to popery was not a new feature of life in nineteenth-century Wales. A number of studies have demonstrated that a fear of Catholicism has a longer lineage, extending back into the early modern period.3 This aversion on the part of Protestants to what was perceived as an alien creed intensied during the wars with France between 1793 and 1815, and in particular after the attempted French invasion of Pembrokeshire in 1797. By demonising Catholicism during the wars, the government stored up a thorny political problem for the ensuing peace. A combination of the Act of Union with Ireland in 1800 and the demonstrable loyalty of British Catholics to the crown during the wars ensured that the question of extending civil rights to Catholics would be a prominent part of the political agenda after 1815. Arguments for and against emancipation were avidly rehearsed in Welsh publications, but the evidence of sustained opposition to legal concessions is compelling, and the language in which this opposition was couched was often violent and uncompromising. A constant theme running though this literature is that Catholicism was instinctively oppressive and mercilessly persecuted its enemies. This was exemplied by the claim that priests prevented ordinary people from reading the Scriptures. The theme of persecution was mentioned frequently as a justication for denying civil rights to Catholics. The argument was that if Catholics denied civil rights to Protestants, why should Protestants not reciprocate in the same spirit? More than this, it was maintained that allowing Catholics a voice in the government of the land would inevitably lead to the curtailment of the

W H E N W A S A N T I-C A T H O L I C I S M

3 For example, Philip Jenkins, Anti-popery on the Welsh marches in the seventeenth century , HJ xxiii (1980), 27593.

310 P A U L O L E A R Y rights of free-born Protestants. Anglicans were prominent in defence of the Protestant constitution, with two bishops in Welsh dioceses, Thomas Burgess of St Davids (180325) and William van Mildert of Llanda (181926), playing a leading role among the Ultra-Tories.4 However, the agitation also encompassed many probably a majority of Nonconformists. While some argued in favour of toleration to all religious denominations, most were fearful of relaxing prohibitions against papists.5 Meetings were held throughout Wales to protest against the claims of Roman Catholics in 1807 and 1813,6 and Sir William Paxton claimed that his electoral defeat in Carmarthenshire in 1807 was due in part to a cry of no popery .7 A new edition of the Welsh translation of Foxes Book of Martyrs appeared in 1813.8 Much of the debate between 1815 and 1829 carries a strong whi of the war patriotism that had dominated public life in Britain for a generation after 1793. The inuence of the anti-Catholic editor of the Baptist journal Seren Gomer on its contents was particularly obvious. In December 1818 the periodical calculated that throughout history the Catholic Church had been responsible for the deaths of 16,390,277 people,9 whereas in 1822 a correspondent insisted that a hundred Irish Catholic MPs at Westminster would be a more terrible band than one hundred thousand armed French soldiers in our country .10 A great deal of ink was spilt in the religious press emanating from both Church and Chapel supporters on the iniquities of popery, in an attempt to persuade Protestants of the physical as well as moral dangers of admitting Catholics to full participation in public life. Writers constantly drew attention to Y Bwystl (the Beast)11 and Y Butain (the Whore),12 as they described the Catholic Church, and Yr Annghrist (the AntiChrist),13 as they described the pope. In their lurid descriptions of the inquisition they underscored the bloody and persecutory history of the Church. More than anything else, they were determined to demonstrate that the character of Catholicism remained the same as it had been at the time of the Reformation. The implication was clear : the Catholic Church remained intolerant of those who disagreed with its doctrines and, given the opportunity, would repress such dissent as violently as it had done in previous centuries.

4 John Wole, The Protestant crusade in Great Britain, 18291860, Oxford 1991, 24 ; Thomas Burgess, Christ and not Saint Peter a letter to the clergy of the diocese of St. Davids, Carmarthen 1812. 5 R. T. Jenkins, Hanes Cymru yn y bedwaredd ganrif ar bymtheg, Cardi 1972 edn., 747. 6 The Cambrian, 11, 15 Apr. 1807 ; 16, 30 Jan., 6, 13 Feb. 1813. 7 R. D. Rees, Electioneering ideals current in south Wales, 17901832 , Welsh History Review (hereinafter cited as WHR) ii (19645), 240. 8 A. H. Williams, Efengyliaeth yng Nghymru, c. 18401875, Cardi 1982, 21. 9 10 Seren Gomer, 16 Dec. 1818, 373. Ibid. Aug. 1822, 236. 11 12 Ibid. Jan. 1825, 35. Gwyliedydd, Mar. 1826, 88. 13 Seren Gomer, Sept. 1825, 258.

311 Petitions from Wales during these years were notable for opposing emancipation. In 1825 the overwhelming majority were hostile to Catholic ambitions,14 and news of parliaments rejection of the bill of that year was met with lively demonstrations of joy and the ringing of bells at Carmarthen.15 This agitation had an impact on a number of parliamentary contests during the general election of 1826. In Pembrokeshire, John Hensleigh Allen lost his seat in the Commons because of his advanced views on emancipation.16 In Anglesey, the issue divided the more liberal landed magnates from the squires and Nonconformists, who were diametrically opposed to relief measures. In neighbouring Carnarvon boroughs there was a similar divide between the anti-Catholic burgesses and the more liberal Pagets of Plasnewydd.17 In some cases, such as that of Lord James Stuart in Glamorgan boroughs, a pro-emancipation candidate was able to ride out hostility to his views.18 The volume of anti-Catholic publishing in Welsh increased during the 1820s as emancipation edged closer to realisation. During these years there appeared translations of anti-Catholic tracts into Welsh from other languages as well as a variety of indigenous publications.19 The anti-emancipation agitation reached its crescendo in 1829. More than twenty petitions hostile to emancipation were sent to parliament from Anglesey alone, a number that has been attributed to the islands proximity to Ireland and its role as a gateway to Britain for many Irish migrants at this time.20 The Calvinistic Methodists of Caernarfonshire sent a petition with 11,000 signatures in opposition to the measure.21 In such cases, opposition was actuated by a fear of the unknown; in fact, outside the border counties of Flintshire and Monmouthshire few of those who opposed the measure with such vehemence would have encountered a Catholic. As Thomas Stephens of Carmarthen wrote in an anti-Catholic tract of 1829, No Catholics live in my district, and I have not seen them worship either.22 The potential of no popery rhetoric to iname passions was demonstrated by events at Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire in March 1829, when an anti-Catholic
15 The Cambrian, 19 Mar., 2, 30 Apr. 1825. Ibid. 11 June 1825. Roland Thorne, Pembrokeshire and national politics, 18151974 , in David W. Howell (ed.), Pembrokeshire county history, Haverfordwest 1993, iv. 22931. 17 G. I. T. Machin, Catholic emancipation as an issue in north Welsh politics , Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1962), 8192 ; Frank Price Jones, Radicaliaeth ar werin Gymreig yn y bedwaredd ganrif ar bymtheg, Cardi 1975, 1356, 1503. 18 Rees, Electioneering ideals, 241. 19 For example, John Williams, Y Chwil-lys, Llanrwst 1825 ; David Owen, Cwymp Babilon fawr, Llandovery 1829 ; anon., Ymddiddanion am grefydd rhwng Thomas a William, Merthyr Tydl 1829 ; anon., Hanes cywir am gywr arswydus Francis Spira, Caernarfon 1817. 20 Linda Colley, Britons : forging the nation, 17071837, London 1992, 330. 21 Lleuad yr Oes, Jan. 1829, 523. 22 Thomas James, Anghyssondeb daliadau Eglwys Rhufain, Swansea 1829, 5. 16 14

W H E N W A S A N T I-C A T H O L I C I S M

312 P A U L O L E A R Y meeting organised by the sheri to collect signatures for a petition ended in violence.23 Few petitions in favour of emancipation were reported in the press.24 Despite the fact that emancipation was achieved in 1829, and that some people celebrated it as another step on the road to general reform, antiCatholicism did not disappear from public life. On the contrary, the following decades witnessed the true heyday of no popery sentiment. These were years when organised religion made great advances in Wales and the relationship between the Anglican Church and the Nonconformist chapels deteriorated markedly. For many commentators Catholicism remained antithetical to the religious and civil freedoms enjoyed by Protestants in Britain, and Welsh Anglicans attempted to mobilise anti-Catholicism in their attacks on radicals.25 The bitter and protracted debate over the government subsidy to Maynooth College in Ireland was a topic that greatly exercised the press during the 1830s and 1840s. Moreover, the spread of Puseyism in the Church of England provoked outrage among evangelicals, both inside and outside the Church. During these years many Nonconformist commentators came to view the Church of England as a half-way house to popery, rather than as a bulwark against it.26 The word Puseyaeth (Puseyism) was usually a term of abuse in the Welsh press. In fact, the inuence of the Oxford Movement has been identied as one of the reasons why Methodism roused itself from political quietism and developed a greater anity to the other Nonconformist denominations.27 During the 1840s anti-Catholicism was clothed in appeals to Welsh nationality. Thus, when Henry Wilcox of St Davids implored the dierent denominations to unite against the errors of Rome in 1847, he made his appeal specically to the Welsh as a people, declaiming: God preserve the Welsh, as a nation, from BELIEVING IN ERRONEOUS SPIRITS AND DEVILISH PHILOSOPHIES.28 That same year the Congregational minister and journalist Ieuan Gwynedd, warned that divisions in Nonconformist ranks held out the prospect of Catholic triumphalism. Catholicism takes advantage of the party spirit in our midst, and of our minor squabbles, he averred, it howls until the stones echo that Rome is united, while the Nonconformists bite and devour each other.29 He oered this counsel in the spirit of freedom and truth and the happiness of the whole
24 The Cambrian, 21 Mar. 1829. Ibid. 7, 14 Mar. 1829. Yr Haul, Apr. 1837, 124. 26 At y darllenyddion , Tarian Rhyddid, Jan. 1839, and p. 4. 27 Peter Freeman, The response of Welsh Nonconformity to the Oxford Movement, WHR xx (2001), 43565. 28 Henry Wilcox, Cyfeiliornadau y grefydd babaidd, Llanidloes 1847, 48. 29 Y Dysgedydd, Sept. 1847. 25 23

? 313 nation. It is clear from the context that the nation in question was Wales, not Britain. Such statements should not be taken as evidence of Welsh separatism, but they do demonstrate that anti-Catholicism developed hand in hand with a developing national consciousness.31 Further evidence of the intensity of anti-Catholic sentiment can be found in responses to the news of revolution on the continent in 1848. Reactions were heavily coloured by the implications of this upheaval for the temporal power of the Catholic Church in the Vatican states. Some writers depicted these events in millenarian terms.32 For example, in a poem entitled Cwymp Babilon ( The fall of Babylon), William Rees ( Gwilym Hiraethog) celebrated the destruction of this great whore.33 Such comments must be seen in the context of the growth of religion in mid-Victorian Wales. Historians have customarily emphasised the increasing strength and inuence of a demotic Protestant Nonconformity at the expense of an elitist and anglicised Church of England. The results of this can be seen in the religious census of 1851.34 Although that enumeration fuelled enormous controversy about the meaning of the statistics collated, certain broad generalisations can be made. First, a little over 50 per cent of the population attended a place of worship on census Sunday; second, the Church of England now catered for a minority of the population; and, third, Protestant Nonconformity accounted for three-quarters of those who attended a place of worship. Moreover, it was clear that the gap between religious observance in town and country was much narrower in Wales than in England. It was these facts that caused many Nonconformists to equate their own cause with that of the Welsh nation as a whole and to depict the Anglican Church as an alien Other.35 By comparison, the Catholic Church had a minor presence.36 The conict between Church and Chapel is one of the dominant themes in the historiography of religion in nineteenth-century Wales. But it was not the only fault line in religious life. In 1850 public opinion responded vigorously to the news that a Catholic hierarchy of bishops with territorial dioceses had been created for England
30
31 Ibid. 47. See also Y Genedl Gymreig, 8 Feb. 1877. Robert Fleming, Mynegiadau prophwydol tra hynod mewn perthynas i gwymp teulu Bourbon ar babaeth yn 1848, Caernarfon 1848. 33 O. M. Edwards (ed.), Gwaith Gwilym Hiraethog, n.p. 1911, 3940. 34 I. G. Jones Introduction , to I. G. Jones and David Williams (eds), The religious census of 1851 : a calendar of the returns relating to Wales, I: South Wales, Cardi 1976 ; E. T. Davies, Religion e 1981 ; I. G. Jones, Explorations and explanations : essays in and society in the nineteenth century, Llandyb the social history of Victorian Wales, Llandysul 1981, chs i, ii, vi. 35 K. O. Morgan, Wales in British politics, 18681922, 3rd edn, Cardi 1980 ; Paul OLeary, The languages of patriotism in mid-nineteenth century Wales , in Geraint H. Jenkins (ed.), The Welsh language and its social domains, 18011914, Cardi 1999, 53366. 36 Paul OLeary, Irish immigration and the Catholic Welsh district, 18401850 , in J. B. Smith and G. H. Jenkins (eds), Politics and society in Wales, 18401922, Cardi 1988, 2646. 32 30

W H E N W A S A N T I-C A T H O L I C I S M

314 P A U L O L E A R Y and Wales in place of the more innocuous system of vicars apostolic, who had been responsible for dierent regions of the country. The assumption of territorial titles was interpreted as an attempt to usurp the legitimate authority of a Protestant state over its own territory, and the triumphal tone of the announcement in Rome incensed British Protestants.37 Welsh Protestants were no exception to this. A series of well-attended protest meetings were arranged throughout the country to arrange petitions of protest to be sent to parliament. What is striking about these meetings is that they attracted the support of a cross-section of society, in terms of social status, language and religious aliation. At least 112 petitions were organised from twelve of the thirteen Welsh counties (Radnorshire was the exception). It is dicult to calculate how many individuals supported these petitions in total because occasionally a representative individual signed on behalf of the whole meeting. But where the number of signatories is known, there is evidence of widespread and deep-seated hostility to the establishment of Catholic bishoprics. Small rural villages, like Llangain in Carmarthenshire and Aberdy in Merionethshire, each collected hundreds of signatures in protest, while small towns, such as Amlwch in Anglesey and Dolgellau in Merionethshire, produced even more. Signatures to petitions from each of the larger urban centres, such as the iron-manufacturing townships of Merthyr Tydl and Dowlais, were numbered in their thousands.38 By any standards, this is an impressive political mobilisation and evidence of how anti-Catholicism in Wales responded to the same stimuli as those that excited public opinion in the rest of Britain. The controversy provided a stimulus for a wave of new anti-Catholic publications in Welsh.39 The cross-class response to the agitation is a notable feature of the Papal Aggression incident, and it provides evidence of how easily such controversies bridged the putative divide between formal politics and popular culture. At St Asaph the agitation infused new life into the local Guy Fawkes celebration, with egies of Fawkes and Cardinal Wiseman reported to be rife , and a ag inscribed with the words no popery was carried through the streets. Its appearance was greeted with cheers from the large crowd.40 At Llandegai a Guy Fawkes demonstration paraded around
37 D. G. Paz, Popular anti-Catholicism in mid-Victorian England, Stanford 1992 ; Robert J. Klaus, The pope, the Protestants, and the Irish: Papal Aggression and anti-Catholicism in mid-nineteenth century England, London 1987 ; W. G. Rawls, The Papal Aggression crisis of 1850 : a study in Victorian anti-Catholicism , in Gerald Parsons (ed.), Religion in Victorian Britain, IV: Interpretations, Manchester 1988, 11534. 38 Return of the number of addresses on the subject of the recent measures taken by the pope, Parliamentary papers lix (1851), passim. 39 For example, Evan Davies, Pabyddiaeth ar bibl, n.p. 1850 ; Owen Williams, Drych yr oen ar bwystl, Caernarfon 1851; D. D. Roberts, Y Dichell oeiriadol, Caernarfon 1851; John Owen, Annghrist, Caernarfon 1851; anon., Ychydig eiriau plaen ynghylch pabyddiaeth ar Pab, Holywell 1851. 40 Carnarvon and Denbigh Herald, 9 Nov. 1850.

? 315 the village carrying an egy of Cardinal Wiseman, with the usual honours and cries of No Popery ! . The local newspaper concluded its report with the wish : May all Wales be a Llandegai. 41 Anti-Catholic agitation would never again reach the same heights as it did in 18501, but neither did it disappear from public life. Fear of the popish tendencies of Puseyism embittered relationships between Nonconformists and Anglicans in a number of constituencies during the 1850s and 1860s,42 while several developments during the 1870s infused new life into antiCatholic sentiment in Britain. Once again, Wales was no exception. The Vatican Council of 1870 and the popes promulgation of the doctrine of papal infallibility caused Protestants considerable anxiety, while denominational rivalries following the Education Act of 1870 also contributed to hostility to the Catholic Church.43 At this time an Anglican journal asserted that The Welsh have been taught to hate Popery since they were on their mothers breasts. 44 Henry Richard, the Liberal and Nonconformist MP for Merthyr Tydl described the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Church of England as bastard Catholicism, and raised the odious spectre of Catholic priests gaining access to denominational schools to inuence the minds of children.45 He represented a town with a signicant Irish population, and his criticism of denominational education in these terms was clearly acceptable to the majority of non-Catholic voters. His speech conrms a view that by the 1870s education was the main battleground for opponents of Catholicism in Wales. By the 1870s the majority of Welsh Nonconformists supported the Liberal Party, and the chapels exercised a powerful inuence over the partys political programme. Support for disestablishment, temperance and nondenominational education are evidence of this.46 As a High Church Anglican, William Gladstones support in Wales was potentially precarious. Indeed, one nineteenth-century Welsh biographer noted that Gladstones standing among Nonconformists during the 1870s was jeopardised by accusations that he was a closet sympathiser with Catholicism.47 However, Gladstone reinforced his credibility among doubting Protestants by publishing attacks on the pope and the Vatican decrees in the early 1870s, pamphlets that were translated into Welsh.48 Gladstone subsequently acquired heroic status among the Welsh people, supporting the national demands of the
North Wales Chronicle, 9 Nov. 1850. Peter Freeman, The eect of the Oxford Movement on some election campaigns in Wales in the mid-nineteenth century , National Library of Wales Journal xxxi (19972000), 36980; Jones, Explorations and explanations, 11011. 43 E. R. Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England, London 1968, 80104. 44 45 Yr Haul, June 1870, 189. Baner ac Amserau Cymru, 18 Dec. 1872. 46 Morgan, Wales in British politics. 47 Grith Ellis, William Ewart Gladstone, Wrexham 1898, 28995. 48 W. E. Gladstone, Dedfrydau llys y Pab, Wrexham 1875, and Faticaniaeth, Wrexham ? 1875.
42 41

W H E N W A S A N T I-C A T H O L I C I S M

316 P A U L O L E A R Y country in the 1880s and 1890s. However, the only other publication of his to be translated was the Midlothian speeches; more of his anti-Catholic publications were translated into Welsh than those on any other subject.49 The force of public opinion on this topic should not be underestimated. II It has been shown that Welsh Protestants responded to the perceived threat of Catholicism at the same times as Protestants in other parts of Britain during the nineteenth century. That antipathy to Rome occupied a central place in the culture of Nonconformity can be seen from the work of prominent intellectuals as well as the popular journalism that appealed to less cerebral passions. At one end of the spectrum was the Methodist divine Dr Lewis Edwards, editor of the weighty religious periodical Y Traethodydd [The Essayist], the premier Welsh periodical of its day. Lewis was an essayist and theologian who exercised considerable inuence on Welsh intellectual life. During the 1840s and 1850s he wrote a series of articles ferociously attacking Catholicism. In 1845 he asserted that the government grant to Maynooth seminary in Ireland would mean that a portion of the fruit of the daily labour of Welsh paupers would now be spent on maintaining Popery of the worst kind .50 He followed this with articles on the dire inuence of the Jesuits, the cruelties of the inquisition, and the insanity of monasticism. In his heated response to the Papal Aggression crisis of 1850 he stressed the deception, oppression, injustice and villainy of Catholicism, and implored Nonconformists and Anglicans to unite against a common foe.51 A collection of his essays interspersed pieces on the perils of popery with articles on Homer, Shakespeare, Milton and Goethe.52 In his determined and vocal opposition to popery, Edwards was at one with the majority of his Nonconformist contemporaries. What they saw as the dire moral and political consequences of the Catholic Churchs inuence informed their view of the world. However, the character of anti-Catholic writing varied widely in tone and content. Books, pamphlets and articles in religious periodicals that dealt with the perils of popery might be considered a minority taste, although their messages were disseminated more widely through lectures and sermons.53 At the other end of the spectrum, and in some ways of greater signicance, is the pervasive presence of anti-Catholic statements, sometimes of a casual kind, in
Idem, Anerchiad Mr Gladstone at etholwyr Midlothian, n.p. 1885. Lewis Edwards, Maynooth, Y Traethodydd, July 1845, 327. 51 Idem, Yr ymgyrch pabyddol , Y Traethodydd, Jan. 1851, 12932. 52 Idem, Traethodau llenyddol, Wrexham n.d. 53 Cf. G. F. A. Best, Popular Protestantism in Victorian Britain , in R. Robson (ed.), Ideas and institutions of Victorian Britain, London 1967, 11542.
50 49

? 317 newspapers in both the Welsh and English languages. These included a large body of verse that lyrically denigrated the pope and everything he stood for. Much of this output was no better than doggerel, but its lack of literary quality did not prevent it from both reecting and reinforcing popular attitudes.54 It underlines the point that anti-Catholicism was a pervasive cultural assumption in the period. The growth of literacy and the press ensured that antipathy to Rome was disseminated more widely than ever before. The fact that many newspaper editors were Nonconformist ministers is of some relevance here. While the attitudes of readers cannot be assumed to mirror those of newspapers in any simple or straightforward way, the sheer pervasiveness of anti-Catholic comment in apparently secular as well as religious publications is surely signicant. As might be expected, reports of religious matters frequently made reference to the depredations of the Roman Church, but so too did analyses of international politics. Developments in France, Spain and Germany in the 1860s and 1870s were scrutinised for their implications for the strength or weakness of the inuence of the Catholic Church. In the period before 1869 Ireland was included in this category of countries imperilled by Roman inuences, although as we shall see that attitude began to change, if slowly, after Irish disestablishment in 1869. Similarly, in his opposition to disestablishment, Dean H. T. Edwards of Bangor used the cautionary example of the separation of Church and State in the United States of America. The growth of the Catholic Church was so great that he foresaw it capturing the reins of government and electing a popish president by 1900.55 Fear of the evil Jesuits featured strongly in this journalistic output. They were condemned as a group of secretive and scheming clerics who conspired against civil authority in order to achieve their own ends.56 As one writer insisted in 1880, The Pope has his treason being carried out by the Jesuits in nearly every state.57 The treasonable nature of Catholicism was widely accepted, so much so that the institution was described as a kind of religious Fenianism.58 This reference to the armed Irish republicans who had terrorised some British cities during the 1860s had powerful resonances for many contemporaries, even in those areas that were free from Irish immigration. Much journalistic output was couched in a vitriolic idiom that was calculated to iname passions. Indeed, it is the violence and sexual connotations of this writing that are most striking. Descriptions of the
54 For example, Y Gwyliedydd, Sept. 1828, 282 ; Y Diwygiwr, Feb. 1872, 501 ; Y Tyst ar Dydd, 19 Apr. 1878. 55 H. T. Edwards, The position and resources of the national Church, Cardi, 1876, 7. 56 For example, Baner ac Amserau Cymru, 17 July, 30 Oct., 20 Nov., 18 Dec. 1872. 57 58 Y Diwygiwr, Dec. 1880, 378. Ibid.

W H E N W A S A N T I-C A T H O L I C I S M

318 P A U L O L E A R Y Catholic Churchs alleged depredations were detailed in bloodthirsty and sensationalist terms. Perhaps it was the routine use of this kind of language that increased Protestants credulity in dealing with outlandish stories about Catholicism. On numerous occasions rather unlikely stories were printed in lascivious detail by newspapers, only for it to be discovered later that the incident either had not occurred or that its details had been embroidered to such an extent that it was no longer recognisable. Such was the case in March 1872 when the Star of Gwent reported in almost pornographic detail the fate of a woman who, allegedly, had been kidnapped, molested and murdered in an Italian monastery, together with her child who, it was claimed, had been fathered by her confessor. Later that month the paper discovered that the story had been fabricated and it was forced to apologise to its Catholic readers. The story had been copied from another publication without checking its veracity, a practice common among newspapers at the time.59 Stories of this kind were common in the Welsh-language and Englishlanguage newspapers of the country and were readily believed by journalists and readers alike, partly because they concerned the private space of the monastery, which was closed to the eyes of outsiders. In the absence of veriable facts, a lively imagination supplied salacious titbits about life in these institutions. Such stories originated in the anti-Catholic tracts of the period. Following the Papal Aggression agitation, John Rees of Llanelli outlined the oppressive and insidious nature of convents, while nuns were women who profess widowhood [sic], and separate themselves from family and relations. He asserted that hundreds of comely and wealthy ladies were deceived into entering these institutions and were required to service the corrupt passions of Catholic priests. Any nun who became pregnant by a priest was administered poison. Consequently, Rees expressed his support for the public inspection of convents.60 Charles Newdegates abortive attempts in the 1850s and 1860s to secure government inspections of convents and monasteries must be seen against this ideological background.61 Welsh newspapers frequently reported the abominations that allegedly occurred in convents and monasteries on the continent,62 while as late as 1909 a conference of Free Churchmen in Cardi called for the inspection of monasteries, convents and other Roman Catholic private institutions.63 Such anxieties reveal a great deal about contemporaries uncertainties about gender relations. The middle class in mid-Victorian Wales as in mid-Victorian Britain more generally was obsessed with the delineation of
59 Star of Gwent, 2, 23 Mar. 1872 ; Aled G. Jones, Press, politics and society : a history of journalism in 60 Wales, Cardi 1993. John Rees, Y Drych pabyddol, Llanelli 1852, 10. 61 Walter L. Arnstein, Protestant versus Catholic in Victorian England, London 1982. 62 For example, Baner ac Amserau Cymru, 4, 16, 18, 21 Aug. 1869. 63 Welsh Catholic Herald, 1 May 1909.

? 319 separate spheres for men and women. The role of family patriarch was an increasingly important feature of this ideology, and it was one that came into conict with the perceived threat from the alternative father , the Catholic priest. Also, the implication was that celibate men were either unnatural or, in reality, predatory on unsuspecting and trusting womenfolk. At a meeting held at Caernarfon to protest at Papal Aggression in November 1850, the presence of so many heads of families was contrasted with other religious and charitable meetings, which attracted more ladies and children than male auditors , while the local vicar was applauded for his frank and manly declaration on the subject.64 Earlier, the prime minister, Lord John Russell, had been commended by a local newspaper for his manly and indignant declaration.65 Normative ideas of manliness were central to this protest. A composition about the pope by the popular poet John Jones (Talhaiarn ) dwelt on the inability of the bishop of Rome to love a wife or fair maiden.66 It is in this context that the force of references to the pope as yr Hen Langc (the bachelor),67 and the Catholic Church as the whore, should be seen. These themes are discernible in the anti-Catholic literature of the remainder of Britain, and it is clear that there was considerable crossfertilisation of ideas and motifs between the dierent language groups. It is dicult to determine how much of the literature published in English circulated among bilingual Welsh men and women, but it is reasonable to assume that at least some tracts and books did. A number of Englishlanguage publications were demonstrably a product of activity in Welsh towns,68 and the growth of the local English-language newspaper press should not be discounted either. III It is tempting to link the upsurge in anti-Catholic sentiment in the 1840s and 1850s to the increase during those years of Irish migration as a result of the tragic Great Famine. The arrival of tens of thousands of destitute and starving migrants, many of whom were baptised if not practising Catholics, appeared to bring the threat of popery closer to home. And yet there is no simple correlation between the number of Catholics in a particular town or region and the incidence of anti-Catholic comment or behaviour. Indeed, as has been seen, the signicance of anti-Catholicism in Welsh life preceded the arrival of signicant numbers of Irish migrants.

W H E N W A S A N T I-C A T H O L I C I S M

64 66 67 68

65 Carnarvon and Denbigh Herald, 23 Nov. 1850. Ibid. 9 Nov. 1850. [John Jones], Gwaith Talhaiarn, London 1855, 39. Baner ac Amserau Cymru, 7 Sept. 1872. For example, Hugh Jones, The evil of consenting to popery, Holywell ? 1849.

320 P A U L O L E A R Y It is true that some people saw the establishment of Catholic places of worship as a tangible and immediate threat to the freedoms of a Protestant people. During the 1830s and 1840s there was an increasing tendency to warn Protestants against the spread of Catholicism in Wales. Catholics in Cardi encountered diculties in acquiring land for the construction of a chapel because of opposition to their religion.69 In 1839 the Reformation Society warned about the presence of Roman Catholics in Holywell,70 while in 1840 the bishop of Llanda preached against the spread of Catholicism in Newport.71 In 1851 the Revd B. Richards published a Protestant catechism for the use of schools and families in order to counteract the inuence of a Catholic seminary that had recently been established in north-east Wales.72 In 18534 Catholics at Newport encountered so much determined opposition to their request for a separate portion of the new municipal burial ground that the issue was only settled by the intervention of Lord Palmerston.73 And in 1854 the Methodist leader, Lewis Edwards, issued a dire warning about the establishment of a Catholic monastery at Pantasaph in north Wales. Many other examples of friction could be added to this list. One index of tension between the dierent sections of society is intercommunal violence. There can be no question about the intensity of hostility shown towards Irish migrants in dierent parts of Wales, with at least twenty ethnic riots of various sizes and degrees of violence taking place between 1826 and 1882.74 However, only one of these was unequivocally sectarian and few of the others had a religious dimension. A Catholic chapel was sacked during the anti-Irish riot at Cardi in 1848 and the priest was forced to ee the town, but this can probably be explained by the crowds determination to nd an escaped Irish murderer, whom they believed had sought sanctuary in the chapel. The disturbance was not motivated by religion as such.75 An incident in Mold in 1850 was more explicitly anti-Catholic. Following a meeting to protest at Papal Aggression, a crowd paraded the town before burning an egy of the pope, as well as egies of several local people who had expressed support for Catholics. They then attacked seven houses occupied by Irish migrants, breaking windows and destroying furniture, before moving on to attack the local priests lodgings.76 At neighbouring St Asaph the police steered an anti-Catholic crowd away from the houses of Irish immigrants.77 During the last major anti-Irish disturbance in Wales, at Tredegar in 1882, the church was attacked and the priest was forced to ee for safety ; however,
John V. Hickey, Urban Catholics, London 1967, 125. Statistics of popery in Great Britain and the colonies, London 1839, 63. 71 Monmouthshire Merlin, 14 Nov. 1840; Edward Copleston, False liberality and the power of the keys, London 1841. 72 B. Richards, Holwyddoreg Protestanaidd at wasanaeth ysgolion a theuluoedd, Ruthin 1851. 73 74 75 OLeary, Immigration and integration, 2323. Ibid. Ibid. 959. 76 77 Liverpool Mercury, 13 Dec. 1850. Carnarvon and Denbigh Herald, 9 Nov. 1850.
70 69

? 321 this target appears to have been chosen because it was a symbol of the Irish community rather than because of a sectarian impulse.78 Other anti-Irish disturbances arose from workplace tensions or more diuse community tensions in which religion did not play an obvious or documented part. By the mid-1880s Irish integration in Welsh life was progressing apace. Increasing numbers of Irishmen were joining and organising some of the mass trade unions that grew up as part of the New Unionism, while the decision of the overwhelming majority of Welsh Liberals to support Irish Home Rule ensured that Irish Catholics appeared on political platforms with Nonconformist politicians. Attempts were made by a minority to push the Home Rule=Rome Rule message, but it found few sympathetic listeners.79 In the elds of sport and other leisure activities there is no evidence of the ghetto existence that Hughes identies as persisting until the Second World War.80 A clear conceptual distinction needs to be made here between assimilation and integration. Assimilation implies that a minority increasingly takes on the characteristics of the majority, in the process diluting or eacing cultural characteristics that mark them out as dierent. According to this denition, the evidence for Irish assimilation in nineteenth-century Wales is patchy. By contrast, integration allows for the possibility that a minority can participate fully in public life without necessarily discarding those characteristics that mark them out as dierent. Indeed, some institutions that shore up cultural dierence can, under certain circumstances, become conduits for integration. This was increasingly the case in Wales from the mid-1880s onwards. Direct opposition to Catholics must be sought in other areas. IV When compared with the evident strength of anti-Catholicism in Welsh culture, the paucity of violent sectarianism and the inability of militantly Protestant societies to recruit in Wales raise broader questions about the nature and meaning of anti-Catholicism. In his study of the Protestant crusade in mid nineteenth-century Britain, John Wole noted The almost total absence of organised anti-Catholicism in Wales .81 As this survey has shown, the emphasis in this statement should be on the organisation of Protestants in specically anti-Catholic societies. In this context, Woles explanation of the dierence between Wales on the one hand and England and Scotland on the other requires further consideration. The weakness of Anglicanism in Wales clearly did not aect the strength of no popery
78 Louise Miskell, Custom, conict and community: a study of the Irish in south Wales and Cornwall, 18611891, unpubl. PhD diss. Wales 1981. 79 80 OLeary, Immigration and integration, 25579. Hughes, Anti-Catholicism . 81 Wole, Protestant crusade, 311.

W H E N W A S A N T I-C A T H O L I C I S M

322 P A U L O L E A R Y agitation. In fact, from the late 1840s in particular Nonconformists fear of the Romanising tendencies of the Church of England helped create a sense of solidarity between the Methodists and Old Dissent and stiened their resolve to campaign for severing the link between Church and State. Rather than ChurchChapel tensions undermining or displacing antipathy to Catholicism, no popery agitation was assimilated to that divide. As late as 1885 the Liberal MP Henry Richard, a doughty campaigner for disestablishment, described Anglicanism as Popery in disguise .82 Concern with achieving disestablishment of the Church of England in Wales did have an important impact on one feature of anti-Catholicism that distinguished Wales from England. From the 1860s support in Wales for disestablishment of the Church of England as a whole increasingly narrowed to the demand for disestablishment of that part of the Establishment that covered Wales. This was a product of the strength of Nonconformity and the decisive intervention of the Liberation Society in Welsh politics during the 1860s.83 Because there was no separate Welsh Church to disestablish, the debate revolved around the question of precedents for recognising the strength of non-Establishment religions. The obvious example was Irish disestablishment in 1869, a development that was warmly welcomed in Wales, despite the fact that the measure was enacted because of the strength of Catholicism in Ireland. Whereas Ireland had customarily been depicted as a symbol of the worst moral eects of a priest-ridden country, it came to be seen as an exemplar for constitutional change in Wales. By the 1880s, when Gladstone renounced his earlier opposition to Welsh disestablishment, it was dicult to combine a defence of Irish disestablishment with opposition to Home Rule because of the supposed perils for Protestantism.84 The intensive petitioning of 18259 and 18501 would seem to support Woles contention that the absence of militant Protestant societies from Wales was a product of cultural, as opposed to organisational, considerations. One relevant factor here might be the reluctance of Protestant societies based outside of Wales to translate their material into Welsh. Equally, however, it might be argued that there was little need for additional translated material given the vigorous publishing activity that already occurred in Wales, producing both indigenous material and translations from other languages. Outside assistance was superuous. Other English-based contemporary campaigning organisations, such as the Anti-Corn Law League and the
South Wales Daily News, 18 Nov. 1885. I. G. Jones, The Liberation Society and Welsh politics, 18441868, WHR i (1961), 193224. 84 Paul OLeary, Religion, nationality and politics : disestablishment in Ireland and Wales, 18681914 , in John R. Guy and W. G. Neely (eds), Contrasts and comparisons : studies in Irish and Welsh church history, Llandysul 1999, 89114 ; K. O. Morgan, Modern Wales : politics, places and people, Cardi 1995, 14276.
83 82

? 323 Liberation Society, appointed Welsh agents and translated their propaganda for dissemination among Welsh speakers.85 The dierence between these and militant Protestant societies is that the former were attempting to create a public opinion in favour of their causes, whereas the case against popery was already well established. There was no need for additional activity from outside to shore up the cause. A similar point could be made about itinerant anti-Catholic lecturers. By the end of the century anti-Catholicism was most likely to surface in public life in matters pertaining to the politics of local school boards and boards of guardians. This was mainly because candidates in the elections for these bodies divided on denominational lines. Thus, in many cases, parish priests stood for election to defend Catholic interests, just as representatives of the Nonconformist denominations and the Anglican Church stood as representatives of their constituencies.86 This could provoke a hostile reaction. In the Board of Guardians election at Aberdare in 1898, for example, three Liberal candidates issued a handbill urging the electorate to vote as Protestants: Protestants, arouse! Have we forgotten the suerings of our Protestant Forefathers?87 The full extent and signicance of such attitudes can be gauged only by detailed local studies. V How does this evidence of the pervasive presence of anti-Catholic sentiment in nineteenth-century Wales aect the way we appraise the persistence, rather than the genesis, of similar sentiments in the twentieth century? The starting-point must be that the public inuence of Nonconformity indeed of religion in general was a great deal less marked during the rst half of the twentieth century than it had been during the nineteenth. The high point of chapel membership was in 1926,88 although in some parts of the country the chapels inuence was being progressively eroded from the late nineteenth century onwards as a result of new forms of leisure activity which came into conict with the ethos of Nonconformity.89 By 1905 nearly two-thirds of the Welsh population professed no religious allegiance, although there were
85 Ryland Wallace, Organise ! organise ! organise ! Reform agitations in Wales, 18401886, Cardi 1991, 323, 42, 76, 119, 127, 161n., 177. 86 OLeary, Immigration and integration, 2567, 2756 ; G. V. Williams, Wrexham school board elections, 18711901, Transactions of the Denbighshire Historical Society xl (1991), 4359. 87 Collections, R. J. J., Aberdare , Cardi Central Library, MS 4.204, 4. 88 D. Densil Morgan, The span of the cross: Christian religion and society in Wales, 19142000, Cardi 1999, 162. 89 David Smith and Gareth Williams, Fields of praise: the ocial history of the Welsh Rugby Union, 18811981, Cardi 1980; Andy Croll, Civilizing the urban : popular culture and public space in Merthyr, c. 18701914, Cardi 2000, ch. vi ; Tim Williams, Language, religion, culture , in Gareth Elwyn Jones and Dai Smith (eds), Wales, 18801914, Cardi 1988, 73106.

W H E N W A S A N T I-C A T H O L I C I S M

324 P A U L O L E A R Y considerable variations from one county to another.90 The spectacular religious revival of 1904 was a brief eorescence of exuberant spirituality, but its ame faded quickly and had been extinguished entirely by 1914. The support of many Nonconformist ministers for the war eort between 1914 and 1918 tarnished their public reputation after the war ended. Thereafter, Nonconformity went into steep decline, particularly in the towns, and the role of the minister in most parts of Wales declined with it. When Nonconformists bewailed the Catholic threat to the Welsh way of life during the twentieth century, they were referring to an experience that had already been rejected by a majority of the Welsh people. Hughess claim that Protestantism was still very much the driving force in Welsh society91 is applicable to some areas alone and does not reect reality for the overwhelming majority of Welsh people. An assessment of religion in twentieth-century Wales must take account of the considerable cultural and linguistic dierences between dierent parts of the country. Whereas a credible case can be made for viewing Victorian Nonconformity as a phenomenon that transcended regional dierences, the same cannot be said of religion after 1914. In fact, much of the evidence presented by Hughes derives from areas outside the major centres of population. A consideration of politics underlines this point. The conversion to Catholicism of the president of the Welsh Nationalist Party was an issue that excited vitriolic responses in some quarters between the wars, but this controversy was marginal to the broader political life of the period, which was characterised by the growth of secular left-wing politics. This point is reinforced by an examination of attitudes to the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Whereas in parts of the slate-quarrying areas of north-west Wales support for the Spanish Aid movement was rooted in opposition to the Catholic Church, the movement found its strongest backing in the populous south Wales coaleld, where support for the republic was rooted in the Communist party and the labour movement.92 For the majority of Welsh people in the inter-war period, religious aliation and outlook had ceased to determine how they interpreted domestic and international aairs.93 Similarly, Hughess claims about the dimensions of Irish immigration in post-1945 Wales must be seen in terms of a regionalised economy. No statistics are presented and the qualitative evidence relates to north-east Wales alone, where the Irish-born accounted for 0.9 per cent of the
90 Neil Evans, Regional dynamics : north Wales, 17501914 , in Edward Royle (ed.), Issues of regional identity, Manchester 1998, 216; Morgan, Wales in British politics, 316. 91 Hughes, Anti-Catholicism , 313. 92 Hywel Francis, Miners against fascism: Wales and the Spanish Civil War, London 1984, 123. 93 Cf. John Wole, Change and continuity in British anti-Catholicism, 18291982 , in Frank Tallett and Nicholas Atkin (eds), Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789, London 1996, 83.

? 325 population in Flintshire at their most numerous in 1951. Claims that Irish immigration reached levels close to those for the mid-nineteenth century must be regarded with scepticism. It makes more sense to compare both Irish migration and anti-Catholicism in the regional cultures within Wales with regional cultures in England and Scotland. It is clear, for example, that towns and cities like Cardi, Newport and Swansea did not suer from the sectarian divisions that aicted Liverpool and Glasgow, whereas antiCatholicism persisted in rural Wales. Comparative history must address these dierences and arrive at adequate explanations of them, rather than making broad-brush comparisons between England as a whole and Wales as a whole. As in the remainder of Britain, Welsh anti-Catholicism had largely retreated to particular areas rather than carrying equal weight in all parts of the country. The one exception to this generalisation is education. The politics of education continued to be infected by the spirit of hostility to denominational schools, at least until 1945, and in some areas even later. However, this phenomenon was not a product of the twentieth century, and ourished following the inception of state education in 1870. Hughes has already illuminated these debates,94 but this issue requires further research, especially on the anti-Catholic schools that were established in Flintshire in the 1870s.95 This article has demonstrated that, far from being a product of the twentieth century, anti-Catholicism played a central role in Welsh public life at the time of Catholic Emancipation, Papal Aggression and the Vatican decrees, and that its chronology mirrors that of the British experience. Moreover, the character of the Welsh press ensured that anti-Catholicism remained a pervasive assumption in the wider culture at least until the end of the 1870s. After 1914 anti-Catholicism, like organised religion more generally, was marginalised in much of the country and had few signicant resonances in most aspects of public life apart from the politics of education. Welsh exceptionalism from the British pattern lay in three areas. First, in the absence of support for the militant Protestant organisations that recruited in England and Scotland. Second, in the way that anti-Catholic rhetoric was increasingly assimilated into the ChurchChapel conict over disestablishment (which was nally achieved in 1919). And, third, in twentieth-century Wales anti-Catholicism was most evident in mainly rural areas, unlike in England and Scotland, where it appears to have thrived mainly in a few large cities. Rather than a sign of continuing vitality up to 1960, the virulent rhetoric of anti-Catholicism in twentieth-century Wales is more accurately seen as a howl of rage against the dying of Nonconformitys light in its last few strongholds.
94 Trystan Owain Hughes, Winds of change : the Roman Catholic Church and society in Wales, 19161962, Cardi 1999, 13157. 95 See J. Pugh, Ysgolion gwrth-babaidd sir Fint, n.p. 1878 ?

W H E N W A S A N T I-C A T H O L I C I S M