ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES ASSUMP TION ACT, a law of the British Parliament, enacted in 1850 (14 and 15 Vict. chap. 60) to prohibit, under penalty, the assumption of eccle siastical titles (for example: Archbishop of Westminster, bishop of Clifton, dean of Shef field) by any persons not duly appointed to such stations according to the laws of the realm touching the Church establishment. There was already in the statute book a law of 10 Geo. IV, chap. 7, which provided that any person who should assume or use the name, style or title of archbishop of any existing ecclesiastical province, or bishop of any existing diocese, or dean of any existing deanery of the Established Church of Great Britain and Ireland, the same not having due legal right to such name, etc., should for each violation of the act forfeit f100.- But in the year 1850 Pope Pius IX, by apostolic brief, instituted an ecclesiastical province or archbishopric comprising all Eng land and Wales, with Nicholas Wiseman (after ward cardinal) as archbishop, with the style and title of archbishop of Westminster and with 12 suffragan bishops presiding over dioceses named: Beverley, Birmingham, Clifton, Hex ham, Liverpool, Newport and Menevia, North ampton, Nottingham, Plymouth, Salford, Shrewsbury and Southwark; none of these towns was then the see of any bishop of the Established Church; and therefore the prohi bition of the statute of George IV did not apply.
But the announcement of the setting up of these Roman Catholic dioceses provoked a fierce anti-popery agitation and the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, introduced in the Parlia ment a bill, which was speedily passed, extend ing the penalty of the act of George IV to per sons who should assume the titles archbishop, bishop or dean "in respect of any places within the United Kingdom." The new dignitaries ig nored the act, assumed their titles, braved pros ecution and not one of them ever called into court for contumacy. After the act had stood on the statute book as the law of the realm during 20 years it was amended by the act of 34 and 35 Vict. chap. 53. The penalty was dropped, but the so-called repealing act re cited again the legal grounds for the penal en actment and declares that "no ecclesiastical title of honor or dignity derived from any see, province, diocese or deanery recognized by law, or from any city, town, place or territory, within the realm can be validly created"; and that "no or coercive power can be conferred otherwise than under the authority of Her Majesty"; decisions of law that had never been impugned in England since the time of Henry VIII.