RECUSANTS. - The name "r." or non-conformists goes back to the time of Elizabeth, when the Anglican Church became established. This name served at first to designate the Catholics who remained faithful to the ancient religion of the country, but later it was also applied to the dissidents of the left, also called Puritans (v.), who still found too many Catholic elements in Anglicanism. During the 17th century the term r. was likewise applied to the new sects that rejected the worship of the Established Church.
The term r. would have had little significance had it not influenced legislation. Elizabeth had persecuted, more or less arbitrarily with the support of existing laws, both Catholics and Puritans. But in 1593, in order to secure greater resources for the treasury, she summoned Parliament. Elizabeth handled the question with incredible haughtiness and severity. Parliament accepted everything and, among other fiscal measures, voted against the r. the law: Act to retain her majesty's subjects in their due obedience: a law to keep the king's subjects in compulsory obedience (1593). It struck Puritans and Catholics with 1) a fine of 20 pounds, for every lunar month, on anyone who refused to attend the official religious service; 2) civil incapacity for any employment or office; 3) prohibition against keeping arms in the house; 4) incapacity to testify and to bring legal actions before the courts; 5) incapacity to act as guardian or executor of a will; 6) incapacity to practice the profession of lawyer and of physician and to serve in the military. In certain cases, the r. could be expressly struck with excommunication, whereby he was forbidden to move more than 5 miles from his domicile without having obtained regular permission, under penalty of being deprived of all his goods. The law likewise contemplated the case in which the r., expressly recognized as guilty of non-conformism, could be obliged to renounce, within the space of three months, the pope's supremacy over the Church, or, if four judges so decided, to leave the Kingdom. Once exiled from England, the r. could no longer re-enter it without permission, and in case of transgression he made himself guilty of a capital crime.
The Act remained theoretically in force until the accession of George III (1760). In practice, its application varied continually; generally certain fiscal agreements were made secretly between the government and the r., so that "recusancy" became a true and proper source of revenue for the State.
Bibliography
Leone Cristiani