Editing John Russell, 1st Earl Russell (section)

=== Relations with the Roman Catholic Church ===
In the first half of his premiership Russell aimed to improve the British government's relations with the papacy and the Catholic clergy in Ireland, which he saw as one of the keys to making Ireland a more willing part of the United Kingdom. Russell proposed to make an annual grant of £340,000 to the Catholic Church in Ireland, with the aim of ameliorating Irish Catholic opinion towards [[Acts of Union 1800|the Union]]. In 1847, Russell's father-in-law the [[Gilbert Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 2nd Earl of Minto|Earl of Minto]] was dispatched on a confidential mission to Rome to seek the [[Pius IX|Pope's]] support for the grants plan. In the end, the idea had to be abandoned due to Catholic objections to what they saw as an attempt to control their clergy.{{sfn|Scherer|1999|pp=158-159}}

However, Russell pressed ahead with plans to re-establish formal diplomatic relations between the [[Court of St James's]] and the [[Holy See]], which had been severed when [[James II of England|James II]] was deposed in 1688. Russell managed to pass an Act to authorise an exchange of ambassadors with Rome, but not before the bill was amended by Parliament to stipulate that the Pope's ambassador must be a [[layman]]. The Pope refused to accept such a restriction on his choice of representative and so the exchange of ambassadors did not take place.{{sfn|Prest|2009}} It would not be until 1914 that formal [[Holy See–United Kingdom relations|UK-Vatican diplomatic relations]] were finally established.
 
Relations with the papacy soured badly in late 1850 after [[Pius IX|Pope Pius IX]] issued the [[papal bull|bull]] ''[[Universalis Ecclesiae]]''. By this bull Pius unilaterally reintroduced Catholic bishops to England and Wales for the first time since the [[English Reformation|Reformation]]. Anti-Catholic feelings ran high with many Protestants incensed at what they saw as impertinent foreign interference in the prerogative of the established [[Church of England]] to appoint bishops. Russell, not withstanding his long record of advocating civil liberties for Catholics, shared the traditional Whig suspicion of the Catholic hierarchy, and was angered at what he saw as a papal imposition. On 4 November 1850, in a letter to the [[Edward Maltby|Bishop of Durham]] published in ''The Times'' the same day, Russell wrote that the Pope's actions suggested a "pretension to supremacy" and declared that "No foreign prince or potentate will be permitted to fasten his fetters upon a nation which has so long and so nobly vindicated its right to freedom of opinion, civil, political, and religious". Russell's "Durham letter" won him popular support in England but in Ireland it was viewed as an unwarranted insult to the Pope. It lost Russell the confidence of Irish Repealer MPs and the cabinet were angered that he had made such an incendiary statement without having consulting them.{{sfn|Reid|1895|pp=188-189}}

The following year Russell passed the [[Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851]] with Tory support, which made it a criminal offence carrying a fine of £100 for anyone outside of the Church of England to assume an episcopal title "of any city, town or place, or of any territory or district...in the United Kingdom." The Act was widely ignored without consequences and only served to further alienate Irish MPs, thereby weakening the government's position in the Commons.{{sfn|Prest|2009}}