BUTLER, CHARLES

BUTLER, CHARLES. - Born on 14 Aug. 1750 in London, died there on 2 June 1832, B. attended a Catholic school at Hammersmith and then entered the English College at Douai. Having completed his studies, he returned from France to England and in 1769 began the study of law under the guidance of a Catholic lawyer. Of ultra-Gallican tendencies, B. became secretary of the Catholic Committee in 1782; when this was reconstituted in 1788 with ecclesiastical members as well, including Bishop Charles Berington, it entrusted B. with drafting a “bill” for the repeal of the laws against Catholics. On this occasion B. also drew up a professio fidei, further maintaining the necessity of taking the oath of allegiance required by the government of Catholics, and the advisability of removing the English episcopate from the direct authority of the Holy See, entrusting the appointment of English bishops to the clergy and laity of the island and withdrawing it from the Pope. This attempt by the Catholic Committee to reach an agreement with the government on these grounds of discussion having failed, and the Committee itself having dissolved, B. founded the Cisalpine Club “to resist every ecclesiastical interference that might oppose the freedom of English Catholics.” B. always remained faithful to these Gallican ideas, but he always had in Bishop Milner an uncompromising antagonist. Only in the final years of his life did B. become, as an intimate friend wrote of him, “a Gallican within the limits of orthodoxy.”