Recusant
Defined in 3 dictionaries — Cyclopedic (1922), Ballentine's (1916), Abbott (1879)
The Cyclopedic Law Dictionary
Walter A. Shumaker and George Foster Longsdorf; ed. James C. Cahill · 1922
In English law. A person who refuses to make the declarations against Catholicism, and promotes, encourages or professes the Catholic religion.
Ballentine's Law Dictionary
James A. Ballentine · 1916
Dictionary of Terms and Phrases Used in American or English Jurisprudence
Benjamin Vaughan Abbott · 1879
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.