The Revival of the Anti-Maynooth Campaign in Britain, 1850–52

Abstract

In nineteenth century Britain, many evangelicals looked upon the Catholic Church as the incarnation of Antichrist. Their particular interpretation of the Protestant Bible, and especially the Book of Revelation, made it important for them to fight the enemy of true religion. During the 1850s and 1860s the most significant example of this struggle was the campaign to abolish state funding of the Catholic seminary at Maynooth in Ireland, a subsidy which parliament had approved in 1845 over the protests of a national anti-Maynooth crusade. It is the crisis of 1845 upon which historians have concentrated their studies. The furor over the endowment of Maynooth subsided, but when the Papal Aggression affair of 1850–51 stimulated “No Popery” sentiment, the ultra-Protestants of Britain revived their agitation against Maynooth. The impelling force behind this renewed campaign was principally doctrinal, based on a view of Biblical truth which cast the Catholic Church in the role of Antichrist and made Maynooth appear to be the center of rebellion, disloyalty, and immorality for all of Ireland. One scholar has written that the Antichrist idea intensified feelings of anti-Catholicism and influenced parliament as late as 1851. This essay will demonstrate that the utilization of the Antichrist motif, when combined with several other negative notions about the Catholic Church, helped produce and sustain a revival of anti-Catholicism in the form of the campaign against Maynooth, well beyond the events of 1851.