Researching RC ancestors

[Nick Carver]

I believe that until a certain date, a marriage not conducted in a CofE church was not recognised as being legal. Can anyone help with information about when that date occurred and whether the same applied to baptisms and burials? My research is stumbling because my Sullivan ancestors appear to have been baptised in the local CofE church in the 1818-1828 period and family legend holds that as (reputedly) first generation immigrants from Co Cork, they were solidly catholic.

Any guidance gratefully received. I am of course aware that I may be looking at the wrong baptisms, but I thought the answer to this question might help others.

[Clincher]

I can hear my splendid history teacher right now giving us it large about the Catholic Emancipation Act 1829. He concentrated mostly on the political side of things which meant that, until then, you could not be an MP or a councillor or hold public office or military rank unless you were a practising member of the C of E. There were exceptions to that for some Dissenters and Jews but for Catholics you were disqualified from lots of things.
For ordinary people the biggest consequence was that the only form of "social security" (a massive exaggeration I know) was the poor law relief which was raised through and distributed by the Church of England parish vestries. If you had fallen on hard times (and many people did of course) and you had not darkened the doorstep of your local Church of England church then chances were that the vicar would ignore the fundamental reason why he was a vicar and leave you and yours to starve. So, many Catholics were obliged to keep up the pretence of being Protestants as a kind of insurance policy and who could blame them. After 1829, gradually things began to change
because Catholics began to have a say in local and national government. So the dates you mention for your relatives tie in with that time-line.

[MrsLizzy]

I was reading in my Ancestors magazine today about the law and customs of marriage in England.  It says:

Between Hardwicke's Marriage Act of 1754, and the introduction of civil registration in 1837, following the previous year's Marriage Act, marriage was a ceremony . . . . conducted in an Anglican church or chapel.  The only exceptions were Quakers and Jews who could marry according to their own rites.  After 1837, marriage could also take place in nonconformist and RC chapels in the presence of a registrar, and in civil register offices. 

The article, by Peter Park, goes on to state that these marriages are all recognised by the particular denominations, but as far as the state is concerned, it is the actual registration by the superintendant registrar or his/her proxy, that is important.