BUTLER, CHARLES

CHARLES BUTLER. — Born on 14 Aug. 1750 in London, died there on 2 June 1832. B. attended a Catholic school in Hammersmith and later went to the English College in Douai. After completing his studies, he returned from France to England and in 1769 began studying law under the guidance of a Catholic barrister. Of ultragallican tendencies, B. became in 1782 secretary of the Catholic Committee, which, reconstituted in 1788 with ecclesiastical members including Bishop Charles Berington, commissioned B. to draft a “bill” for the repeal of anti-Catholic laws. On this occasion B. also drew up a profession of faith, advocating the necessity of taking the oath of allegiance required by the government of Catholics, and the expediency of removing the English mission from the direct authority of the Holy See, transferring the appointment of English bishops to the clergy and laity of the island and withdrawing it from the Pope. When this attempt by the Catholic Committee to reach an agreement with the government on such terms failed and the Committee itself was dissolved, B. founded the Cisalpine Club “to resist any ecclesiastical interference that might oppose the liberty of English Catholics.” To these Gallican ideas B. remained always faithful, but he had as an intransigent antagonist Bishop Milner. Only toward the end of his life did B., as one intimate friend wrote of him, become “a Gallican within the limits of orthodoxy.”