Jacobite line extinct before 1715: how soon could we get Catholic Emancipation?

Well, there were some early moves in the late 1770s which reduced restrictions subject to renouncing the Pretender- though many of the restrictions had been unenforced for years. That did spark off the Gordon Riots, but sans the 1715 and 1745 uprisings it might be feasible to see those restrictions eased earlier and full emancipation coming as part of an Act of Union with Ireland (which seems likely to occur at roughly the same sort of timeframe as OTL I would think).
 
Well, there were some early moves in the late 1770s which reduced restrictions subject to renouncing the Pretender- though many of the restrictions had been unenforced for years. That did spark off the Gordon Riots, but sans the 1715 and 1745 uprisings it might be feasible to see those restrictions eased earlier and full emancipation coming as part of an Act of Union with Ireland (which seems likely to occur at roughly the same sort of timeframe as OTL I would think).
Interesting. Would you care elaborate a bit? Do you mean that the Union would have happened without something akin to the United Irishmen rebellion (which is itself almost certainly butterflied away) to prompt it, or that such a rebellion was inevitable in that time frame?
 
The big issue is Ireland, the Scottish Highlands and Land Claims. The Civil War and 1688 didn't just change who was running the country they were also marked by massive changes in landownership with Catholics losing out severely in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. But if you take away the Penal Laws and Catholics are equal again then dispossessed Catholics landlords will launch law suits and appeals to get their estates back. That meant that naturally post the land transfer the biggest opponents of any easing up on the Catholics were those with the most to lose, i.e. Anglo-Irish Landlords and the pro-Hannoverian Protestant Clans in the Highlands. It's worth noting that the Gordon Riots were led by a certain Lord George Gordon a fairly nutty son of the Duke of Gordon, a massive Highland landowner who had benefited from confiscated, ex-Catholic lands.

Bluntly while you might get Emancipation in England alone where anyone anti-Catholicism was relatively weak you are going to see die hard resistance in the House of Lords until Catholic land claims are far enough in the past that they can be safely ignored. And if you combine Anglican knee jerk anti-Catholicism (a powerful force; see the Glorious Revolution), the Irish Peerage and the Duke of Argyll you can't get Emancipation through the House of Lords with or without the Jacobite threat. And considering the number of Rotten Boroughs controlled by the Aristocracy in the 18th Century you probably couldn't get it through the Commons either. So with or without the Jacobites you're going to have to wait until the very end of the century to see reform.
 
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