ABSTRACT
In 1778 Parliament passed the first of a series of measures aimed at alleviating some of the disabilities imposed by law on Roman Catholics in England and Wales. Anglican attitudes to Roman Catholics were more greatly affected by the presence in England of large numbers of émigré clergy and members of religious orders, who arrived from France following the anti-Christian purges of the 1790s. Charles Daubeny defended pre-Tractarian branch theory of the Catholic Church, which included not just the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Bishop Shute Barrington of Durham devoted his 1810 visitation charge to the Ground of Union between the Churches of England and of Rome Considered. Although he acknowledged the errors of Roman Catholicism, he felt that charity and gentle argument should be the tools to counteract them, rather than the tightening of the existing penal legislation.
