RECUSANTS are persona who refuse or neglect to attend divine service on Sundays and holidays, according to the forms of the Established Church. Before the Reformation, ecclesiastical censure. were directed at different times by provincial councils against those whe absented themselves from the services of the church. But the noticing of recusency in the temporal courts, and probably the use of the term itself, cannot be traced higher than the 16th century. By the 1 Elie. c. 2, all persons having no lawful excese are to resort to their parish church upon pain of punishment by the censures of the church, and a forfeiture of twelve pence. By 21 Eliz., c. 1, every person above the age of sixteen years who shall not repair to church, forfeits for every month which he forbears, twenty pounds, and by 35 Elia., c. 1, if recusants within three months after conviction refuse to submit, they may be compelled to abjure the realm; and if they do not depart, or if they return without licence from the crown, they are guilty of felony, and liable to suffer death.
The law recognised four classes of offenders under the statutes against recusancy :—those who absented themselves from the public service of the church from indifference, irreligion, or dissent, were termed " recusants " simply — after conviction they were styled "recusants convict " ; those absentees who professed the Roman Catholic religion were called " Popish recusants" ; and those who had been convicted in a court of law of being Popish recusants were called " Popish recusants convict." The laws against Popish recusants convict were of a very severe character. Blackstone says that these laws were enacted principally in terrarem. The truth appears to be that the first penal statutes passed for the purpose of compelling the adherents of the old religion to adopt the new, provoked resistance on their part ; and this resist ance caused severer enactments, producing in their turn increased resistance, followed by the imposition of still more rigorous penalties.1 Popish recusants, in addition to the general penalties enacted against recusants, were disabled from taking lands, either by descent or by purchase, after eighteen years of age, until they renounced their errors. They were bound at the age of twenty-one to register the estates which they bad already acquired, and were bound also to register all future conveyances and wills relating to them. They were and are
[Qualm latrEntr] incapable of presenting to any living, or of making a grant of the right of presenting at any avoidance of the benefice. They could not keep or teach any school, on pain of perpetual im prisonment, and for the offence of saying or hearing mass, forfeited certain sums, and were in each case subjected to a year's imprison ment.
Popish recusants convict incurred additional disabilities, penalties, and forfeitures. They were considered as persona excommunicated : could not hold any public office ; were not allowed to keep arms ; were prohibited from coming within ten miles of London; could bring no action at law or suit in equity ; and were not permitted to come to court, or to travel above five miles from home except by licence, upon pain of forfeiting all their goods. Penalties were also imposed in respect of the marriage or burial of the Popish recusant convict, or the baptism of his child, if the ceremony were performed by any other than by a minister of the Church of England. Such a recusant, if a married woman, forfeited two-thirds of her dower or jointure, was disabled from being executrix or administratrix of her husband, and from having any part of his goods, and she might be kept in prison, unless her husband redeemed her at the rate of 101. per month, or by the profits of the third part of all his lands.
Protestant dissenters were relieved from the penalties of recusancy at the Revolution, by the Toleration Act, I William & Mary, c. 18. This statute contained a proviso depriving of its benefit any Papist or Popish recusant, or any person that should deny the doctrine of the Trinity. But in 1791, by 31 Geo. III., c. 32, Roman Catholics were exempted from prosecution ; and in 1813, by 53 George III., c. 160, the exemption in the Toleration Act, as to persons denying the doctrine of the Trinity, was repealed. The statutes against recusancy, though never enforced, still subsist with respect to persons who, not being Roman Catholics or Protestant dissenters, absent themselves from the service of the Church.