Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

Chapter Five
‘Nothing but a Popish Cabal’: 1 religion, politics and
antiquarianism
If George III did indeed use the words attributed to him in condemning the
Society of Antiquaries for its refusal to elect James Wyatt, then it was a fine example of
the old adage that just because you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get
you. George III’s dislike of Catholicism and his resistance to attempts to remove civil
disabilities from British Catholics are well known and amounted, arguably, to an
obsession. He refused even to discuss Emancipation, regarding it as an ‘improper
question’. 2 This might well account for his reaction. It was, however, true, whether he
knew it or not, that one of the most active and articulate opponents of Wyatt’s election
within the Society was the Roman Catholic priest, John Milner, Bishop of Castalba and
Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District. As explained earlier Milner’s opposition to
Wyatt had nothing directly to do with his religious beliefs, yet the connection between
antiquarianism and Catholicism which came so readily to the King’s mind, was a wellestablished
one. Since the Reformation itself an interest in the Middle Ages had been
associated, often justifiably, with an interest in and hence perhaps a sympathy for the old
faith and the social order that accompanied it. 3
In the sixteenth century religion and politics were synonymous. In the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries they were still intimately connected and if the
Georgian antiquaries did not risk imprisonment, as some of their Tudor predecessors had,
they might nevertheless encounter extreme opprobrium and censorship which has lasted
in some cases even to the present. Norman Davies has described the Catholic priest and
1
Quoted without a source in Crook, John Carter, p.58.
2
Briggs, Age of Improvement, p.195.
3
For the history of this association see Hill, ‘ “The ivi’d ruins of folorn Grace Dieu” ’.
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