Penal Laws: In Ireland

In Ireland, where the population was predominantly Roman Catholic and the Glorious Revolution had been vigorously resisted, the Penal Laws were extended and made extremely oppressive during the 18th cent. After the Treaty of Limerick (1691), the Irish Parliament, filled with Protestant landowners and controlled from England, enacted a penal code that secured and enlarged the landlords' holdings and degraded and impoverished the Irish Catholics.

As a result of these harsh laws, Catholics could neither teach their children nor send them abroad; persons of property could not enter into mixed marriages; Catholic property was inherited equally among the sons unless one was a Protestant, in which case he received all; a Catholic could not inherit property if there was any Protestant heir; a Catholic could not possess arms or a horse worth more than £5; Catholics could not hold leases for more than 31 years, and they could not make a profit greater than a third of their rent. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church was banished or suppressed, and Catholics could not hold seats in the Irish Parliament (1692), hold public office, vote (1727), or practice law. Cases against Catholics were tried without juries, and bounties were given to informers against them.

Under these restrictions many able Irishmen left the country, and regard for the law declined; even Protestants assisted their Catholic friends in evasion. In the latter half of the 18th cent., with the decline of religious fervor in England and the need for Irish aid in foreign wars, there was a general mitigation of the treatment of Catholics in Ireland, and the long process of Catholic Emancipation began.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• In Ireland
• In England
• Bibliography

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