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Walpole's Tax On Catholics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Eveline Cruickshanks
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Extract

General Cadogan, who had succeeded the Duke of Marlborough as commander-in-chief of the Army asked for an increase of 10,000 men in the armed forces, after the discovery of the Atterbury Plot in 1722. Robert Walpole knew that additional taxation for the standing army was unpopular in Parliament and in the country at large. He, therefore, decided to impose a tax of £100,000 on Catholics to pay for it. This was over and above the double land tax which Catholics and Protestant Nonjurors had paid since 1689. The land tax at the time stood at 4s in the pound. The Atterbury Plot was a Tory Anglican plot, not a Catholic plot, as Walpole well knew. Walpole suspected, probably rightly, that Catholics were generous in sending money to the Stuart Court in Rome. He could not prove it and neither can we for the receipts of money in the Stuart papers in Windsor Castle do not reveal the names of the donors.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , May 2006 , pp. 95 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2006

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References

Notes

1 History of Parliament, The House of Commons 1715–54, ed. Sedgwick, Romney (2 vols. London 1970) [HC] i. p. 34.Google Scholar

2 Cobbett, William, The Parliamentary History of England (36 vols. 1806–20) [Cobbett] viii. pp. 51–2.Google Scholar HC ii. pp. 57–8, 161–2, 200–1, 308–9, 467–8, 567–8.

3 The Parliamentary Diary of Sir Edward Knatchbull 1722–1730, ed. Newman, A. N. (Royal Historical Society, Camden Society 3rd series XCIV 1963) p. 7.Google Scholar

4 Royal Archives, State Papers [RASP] 63/64 Thomas Southcott to James III, 13 Dec. 1722.

5 Cobbett, viii. pp. 52–3. HC ii. p. 174.

6 See. Calthorp, M. M. C., Recusant Roll No. 1 1592–3. Exchequer Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer Pipe Office Series (Catholic Record Society 18, 1916) pp. xi–xxiv.Google Scholar I am grateful to Father Francis Edwards S.J. for this reference and for comments on the text of this article.

7 Archives etrangeres, Correspondance politique Angleterre [AECP Ang.] 343 ff. 370–1.

8 Knatchbull, pp. 21–2.

9 AECP Ang. 343 ff. 117–22.

10 Cobbett viii. pp. 44–6.

11 RASP 63/20 Lord Lansdowne to James III, 16 Nov. 1722.

12 AECP Ang. 343 ff. 114–6, 117–22.

13 RASP 63/110 to Gen. Dillon, 14 Dec. 1722.

14 See Cruickshanks, Eveline and Erskine-Hill, Howard, The Atterbury Plot (2004), p. 70.Google Scholar

15 AECP Ang. 343 ff. 117–22.

16 RASP 63/53, Lewis Innes to James III, 29 Nov. 1722.

17 AECP Ang. 343 ff. 358–9.

18 AECP Ang. 343 ff. 135–6. RASP 63/177 James III to Gen. Dillon, 1 Dec. 1722.

19 RASP 63/128 Andrew Ramsay to Fleury, 7 Dec. 1722.

20 RASP 63/128 Thomas Southcott to James III, 7 Dec. 1722.

21 AECP Ang. 344 ff. 217–21.

22 AECP Ang. 345 ff. 39–41.

23 Knatchbull p. 22.

24 Cobbett viii. pp. 354–61. HC ii. pp. 231, 531, 466.

25 Cobbett viii. pp. 361–2. HC ii. pp. 481, 163–4.

26 Cobbett viii. pp. 362–3.

27 AECP Ang. 345 ff. 96–8.

28 AECP Ang. 345 ff. 86–7, 94–5.

29 AECP Ang. 345 ff. 123–5, 132–4.

30 AECP Ang. 345 ff. 132–4.

31 AECP Ang. 274–5.

32 Commons Journal XX p. 214.

33 AECP Ang. 343 ff. 370–3.

34 Cobbett viii. pp. 353–56. Coxe, William, Memoirs of the Life and Administration of Sir Robert Walpole (3 vols. 1798) ii. p. 555.Google Scholar

35 AECP Ang. 346 ff. 250–2.