Recusant
Dictionary of Terms and Phrases Used in American or English Jurisprudence · Benjamin Vaughan Abbott · 1879
Dictionary of Terms and Phrases Used in American or English Jurisprudence
A word of English use, connected with the law relating to the church, and which, as employed in the statutes, is understood to mean one of those persons who separate from the church as established by the laws of the realm.
Termes de la Ley
Numerous laws against recusants were passed in the persecuting times of Charles II., in which reign these recusants were chiefly non-conformists. The terra does not, in fact, appear to have been applied to Roman Catholics or Jews, but only to Protestant dissenters.