This article by Alexander Lock and Jonathan Sims describes the context in which Magna Carta was obtained. It distinguishes different versions of the charter and signposts particular documents and publications in the history of its transmission and interpretation up to the early nineteenth century. It also identifies various texts and objects which have indicated the charter's significance for groups and individuals at particular junctures. These include information carrying objects which might support research on Magna Carta within the context of the circulation and reception of legal meaning. A major focus of the article is a chronological account of the charter's invocation from the thirteenth century to the early nineteenth century.
Apostasy among the English Catholic gentry in the late eighteenth century was not uncommon. In this period contemporary Catholic observers were concerned by what they perceived to be a great qualitative decrease of English Catholic gentry and they regarded apostasy as ‘a major and catastrophic cause of the decline’. Conformity to the established religion was a social virtue and was rewarded with social advantages; it was part and parcel of one's rise in the social scale and so was a great temptation for gentlemen outside the Anglican fold who were desirous of a service or parliamentary career. In almost every county in England many heads of old English Catholic families conformed. Indeed, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, of the twenty-four Catholic gentry families that existed in the Riding in. 1706 only twelve remained by 1780. Between the years 1754–1790 seven members of the House of Commons had renounced Roman Catholicism in order to pursue political careers and according to the contemporary Catholic priest Joseph Berington, by 1780 there were but 177 landed Catholic families in England ten of which had either died out or recently abjured their faith. Just a few conversions could have devastating consequences for Catholic communities. As David Butler points out, often ‘Catholic missions were over-dependent on the Catholic aristocracy and gentry for the continuance of Catholic worship’ and for Butler, in eighteenth-century London alone, if ‘just eight prominent families had apostatised … the Catholic missions would have lost about half of their numbers’.
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