Editing Recusancy (section)

{{short description|Religious nonconformism in Britain, 16th–19th centuries}}{{Citations needed|date=April 2024}}{{Catholic Church in England and Wales sidebar}}
[[File:Catholics in England 1715-20.svg|thumb|Map of the [[historic counties of England]] showing the percentage of registered Catholics in the population in 1715–1720<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/MN5014ucmf_0|title=The English Recusants: A Study of the Post-Reformation Catholic Survival and the Operation of the Recusancy Laws|last=Magee|first=Brian|publisher=[[Burns & Oates|Burns, Oates & Washbourne]]|year=1938|location=London|ol=14028100M|via=[[Internet Archive]]}}</ref>]]

'''Recusancy''' (from {{langx|la|recusare|translation=to refuse}}<ref>Burton, Edwin. (1911). [https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12677a.htm "English Recusants"], ''[[The Catholic Encyclopedia]]''. New York: [[Robert Appleton Company]]; retrieved 11 September 2013 from ''[[New Advent]]''</ref>) was the state of those who remained loyal to the [[Catholic Church]] and refused to attend [[Church of England]] services after the [[English Reformation]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Collins|first=William Edward|author-link=William Edward Collins|title=The English Reformation and Its Consequences|publisher=[[BiblioLife]]|year=2008|page=256|isbn=978-0-559-75417-3}}</ref>

The [[Act of Uniformity 1558|1558 Recusancy Acts]] passed in the reign of [[Elizabeth I]], and temporarily repealed in the [[Interregnum (1649–1660)]], remained on the statute books until 1888.<ref>{{cite book|first=John|last=Spurr|title=English Puritanism, 1603–1689|publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]]|year=1998|page=117|isbn=978-0-333-60189-1}}</ref> They imposed punishments such as fines, property confiscation and imprisonment on '''recusants'''.<ref>See for example the text of the [https://history.hanover.edu/texts/engref/er80.html Act of Uniformity 1559]</ref> The suspension under [[Oliver Cromwell]] was mainly intended to give relief to [[Nonconformist (Protestantism)|Nonconformist]] Protestants rather than to Catholics, to whom some restrictions applied into the 1920s, through the [[Act of Settlement 1701]], despite the 1828&ndash;1829 [[Catholic emancipation]].<ref>[[James Wood (encyclopaedist)|Wood, Rev. James]]. (1920) ''The Nutall Encyclopædia'', London: F. Warne, p.{{nbsp}}537.</ref>

In some cases those adhering to Catholicism faced [[capital punishment]],<ref>{{cite book|last=O'Malley|first=John W.|author-link=John W. O'Malley|title=Early modern Catholicism: Essays in Honour of John W. O'Malley, S.J.|publisher=[[University of Toronto Press]] |year=2001|page=149|isbn=978-0-8020-8417-0|display-authors=etal}}</ref> and some English and Welsh Catholics who were executed in the 16th and 17th centuries have been [[Canonization|canonised]] by the Catholic Church as [[List of Catholic martyrs of the English Reformation|martyrs of the English Reformation]].<ref>{{cite book|author=Alban Butler|author1-link=Alban Butler|author2=David Hugh Farmer|title=Butler's Lives of the Saints: May|publisher=[[Burns & Oates]]|year=1996|page=22|isbn=0-86012-254-9}}</ref>

Today, ''recusant'' applies to the descendants of Catholic families of the British [[gentry]] and [[aristocracy]].