A change to the penal laws against Roman Catholics: By Leo J. Deveau
On 13 December 1783 the Penal laws against Roman Catholics were repealed in Nova Scotia allowing them to practice their own religion and own land. Earlier, when the province’s first Representative Assembly had met in the fall of 1758, one of their first acts was to render Roman Catholics propertyless, enacting a law that stated, “…no Papist hereafter shall have any right or title to hold, possess or enjoy, any land or tenements other than by virtue of any grant or grants from the Crown, but that all deeds or wills, hereafter made, conveying lands or tenements to any Papist, shall be utterly null and void.” And further, that “Every Popish person exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction and every popish priest or persons exercising the functions of a popish priest, shall depart out of this Province on or before the twenty-fifth of March 1759.” (Source: Laws of Nova Scotia (1758-1803), 32 Geo II Cap 2).
It was estimated by 1760 that there were about 360 Acadia families in Cape Breton and eastern Nova Scotia, some of whom had returned from the Isle of Miquelon. There were also about 100 English-speaking Catholics, mainly Irish or Scottish residing in Halifax. The only Catholic priest tolerated in Nova Scotia till his death in Halifax in August 1762 was the Abbé Pierre Simon Maillard who had also been a missionary to the Mi’kmaq for over twenty-five years.
By the 1770’s, there were growing demands from the Mi’kmaq seeking another Catholic priest to replace the loss of Maillard. Further, the growing population of Scottish Catholics, as well as the Irish Catholics of Halifax and their non-sectarian society, the Charitable Irish Society, (founded in 1786 by Richard John Uniacke, Sr. and others, wishing “to promote friendship and goodwill,”) all began to allow for more contacts amongst Catholics, Protestants and government officials such as with Assemblyman and Anglican, Thomas Chandler Haliburton, which bore fruit to eventually move authorities to dismantle the Catholic penal laws.
By July 1784, a small wooden-framed Roman Catholic chapel was constructed on the corner of Barrington Street and Spring Garden Road called St. Peter’s (current site of St. Mary’s Cathedral). It would be the first Roman Catholic parish in Nova Scotia after the Deportation of the Acadians.
By 1786, Catholics were permitted to set up schools – the first would open in 1805 next to St. Peter’s Church by Bishop Edmund Burke. By 1815, the catholic population in Nova Scotia would be estimated at 8,500, more than double that of only fifteen years earlier.
On 17 April 1827, Nova Scotia’s Lieutenant-Governor Sir James Kempt, GCB, GCH, would sign the Nova Scotia Bill of Emancipation granting religious liberty to Nova Scotians. It was signed two years prior to the imperial Act of Emancipation coming into being and extended to all the British colonies.
Painting: Richard John Uniacke (1753-1830) by Robert Field, 1811. Nova Scotia Museum. Uniacke was a veteran of the American Revolution who later took up the cause of emancipation for Catholics in Protestant-dominated Nova Scotia in 1783 and the Abolition of Slavery. He devoted 49 years to public service in Nova Scotia.
About The Author:
Leo J. Deveau is a public historian, researcher, speaker and author of 400 Years in 365 Days-A Day by Day Calendar of Nova Scotia History {2017}. He can be reached at 400years@formac.ca