Anti-Catholicism in the United Kingdom nor was a Protestant heir any longer empowered to enter and enjoy the estate of his Catholic kinsman. However, the passing of this act was the occasion of the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots (1780) in which the violence of the mob was especially directed against Lord Mansfield who had balked at various prosecutions under the statutes now repealed. The anti-clerical excesses of the French Revolution and the consequent emigration to England of Catholic priests from France led to a softening of opinion towards Catholics on the part of the English Anglican establishment, resulting in the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791 which
Anti-Catholicism in the United States increasing waves of Catholic immigrants, particularly from Ireland, Italy, Poland, and Mexico. It often focused on the alleged intrigues of Catholic states or Catholic peoples against the majority Protestant United States. Historians have studied the motivations for anti-Catholicism. The historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr. characterized prejudice against the Catholics as "the deepest bias in the history of the American people." The conservative writer Peter Viereck once commented that (in 1960) "Catholic baiting is the anti-Semitism of the liberals." The historian John Higham described anti-Catholicism as "the most luxuriant, tenacious tradition of paranoiac agitation in American history". The historian Joseph G.