Legislation in Britain to remove the financial and other privileges of the Anglican Church. The Anglican Church had been ‘established’ in the reign of Elizabeth I as the only church allowed within the state, with large endowments and privileges. These came to be strongly resented by Non-Conformists in Victorian England; but proposals that all financial and other state support should be withdrawn failed. In Ireland, however, it came to be accepted as unjust that the Anglican Church should be the established church in a predominantly Roman Catholic population. It lost its privileges by Gladstone’s Irish Church Disestablishment Act (1869). The Welsh also pressed for the disestablishment of the Anglican Church in Wales. Heated arguments over the financial implications of Welsh disestablishment arose in the years just before World War I, the Welsh Church Disestablishment Bill eventually becoming law in 1920.