Penal Laws in Ireland
(Laws for the Suppression of Popery)
Although the penal laws of Ireland were passed by a
Protestant Parliament and aimed at depriving Catholics of their faith, such
laws were not the outcome of religious motives only. They often came from a
desire to possess the lands of the Irish, from impatience at their long
resistance, from the contempt of a ruling for a subject race. (See IRELAND,
the Anglo-Normans.) When
Henry VIII broke with Rome sectarian rancor came to embitter racial
differences. The English Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, making Henry
head of the Church; but the Irish Parliament was less compliant, and did not
pass the bill till the legislative powers of the representatives of the clergy
had been taken away. And though the Act of Supremacy (1536) was accepted by so
many Irish chiefs, they were not followed by the clergy or people in their
apostasy. The
suppression of monasteries followed entailing the loss of so much property
and even of many lives. Yet little progress was made with the new doctrines
either in Henry's reign or in that of his successor, and Mary's restoration of
the Faith led Elizabeth to again resort to penal laws. In 1559 the Irish
Parliament passed both the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity, the
former prescribing to all officers the Oath of Supremacy, the latter prohibiting
the Mass and commanding the public use of the Book of Common Prayer. Whoever
refused the Oath of Supremacy was dismissed from office, and whoever refused to
attend the Protestant religious service was fined 12 pence for each offence. A
subsequent vice regal proclamation ordered all priests to leave Dublin and
prohibited the use of images, candles, and beads. For some time these Acts and
proclamations were not rigorously enforced; but after 1570, when Elizabeth was
excommunicated by the pope, toleration ceased; and the hunting down of the
Earl of Desmond, the desolation of Munster, the torturing of O'Hurley and
others, showed how merciless the queen and her ministers could be. Elizabeth
disliked Parliaments and had but two in her reign in Ireland. She governed by
proclamation, as did her successor, James, and it was under a proclamation
(1611) that the blood of O'Devany, Bishop of Down, was shed. In the next reign
there were periods of toleration followed by the false promises of Strafford and
the attempted spoliation of Connaught, until at last the Catholics took up arms.
Cromwell disliked Parliaments as much as Elizabeth or James, and when he had
extinguished the Rebellion of 1641, he abolished the Irish Parliament, giving
Ireland a small representation at Westminster. It was by Acts of this
Westminster Parliament that the Cromwellian settlement was carried out, and that
so many Catholics were outlawed. As for ecclesiastics, no mercy was shown them
under Cromwellian rule. They were ordered to leave Ireland, and put to death if
they refused, or deported to the Arran Isles or to Barbadoes, and those who
sheltered them at home were liable to the penalty of death. To such an extent
was the persecution carried that the Catholic churches were soon in ruins, a
thousand priests were driven into exile, and not a single bishop remained in
Ireland but the old and helpless Bishop of Kilmore. With the accession of
Charles II the Irish Catholics looked for a restoration of lands and liberties;
but the hopes raised by the Act of Settlement (1663) were finally dissipated by
the Act of Explanation (1665), and the Catholics, plundered by the Cromwellians,
were denied even the justice of a trial. The English Parliament at the same time
prohibited the importation into England of Irish cattle, sheep, or pigs. The
king favored toleration of Catholicity, but was overruled by the bigotry of the
Parliament in England and of the viceroy, Ormond, in Ireland; and if the reign
of Charles saw some toleration, it also saw the judicial murder of Venerable
Oliver Plunkett and a proclamation by Ormond in 1678, ordering that all priests
should leave the country, and that all Catholic churches and convents should be
closed.
The
triumph of the Catholics under James II was short-lived. But even when William
of Orange had triumphed, toleration of Catholicity was expected. For the Treaty
of Limerick (1691) gave the Catholics "such privileges as they enjoyed in the
reign of Charles II"; and William was to obtain from the Irish Parliament a
further relaxation of the penal laws in existence. The treaty was soon broken.
The English Parliament, presuming to legislate for Ireland, enacted that no one
should sit in the Irish Parliament without taking the Oath of Supremacy and
subscribing to a declaration against Transubstantiation; and the Irish
Parliament, filled with slaves and bigots, accepted this legislation: Catholics
were thus excluded; and in spite of the declared wishes of King William, the
Irish Parliament not only refused to relax the Penal Laws in existence but
embarked on fresh penal legislation. Session after session for nearly fifty
years, new and more galling fetters were forged, until at last the Penal Code
was complete, and well merited the description of Edmund Burke: " a machine of
wise and elaborate contrivance, as well fitted for the oppression,
impoverishment and degradation of a feeble people and the debasement in them of
human nature itself as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man".
All bishops, deans,
vicars-general, and friars were to leave the country and if they returned, to be
put to death. Secular priests at home could remain if they were registered; in
1709, however, they were required to take an oath of abjuration which no priest
could conscientiously take, so that registration ceased to be a protection. They
could not set up schools at home nor resort to Catholic schools abroad, nor
could they receive legacies for Catholic charities, nor have on their churches
steeple, cross, or bell.
The
laity were no better off than the clergy in the matter of civil rights. They
could not set up Catholic schools, nor teach in such, nor go abroad to Catholic
schools. They were excluded from Parliament, from the corporations, from the
army and navy, from the legal profession, and from all civil offices. They could
not act as sheriffs, or under sheriffs, or as jurors, or even as constables.
They could not have more than two Catholic apprentices in their trade; they
could not carry arms, nor own a horse worth more than 5 pounds; they were
excluded even from residence in the larger corporate towns. To bury their dead
in an old ruined abbey or monastery involved a penalty of ten pounds. A Catholic
workman refusing to work on Catholic holy days was to be whipped; and there was
the same punishment for those who made pilgrimages to holy wells. No Catholic
could act as guardian to an infant, nor as director of the Bank of Ireland; nor
could he marry a Protestant, and the priest who performed such a marriage
ceremony was to be put to death. A Catholic could not acquire land, nor buy it,
nor hold a mortgage on it; and the Catholic landlord was bound at death to leave
his estate to his children in equal shares. During life, if the wife or son of
such became a Protestant, she or he at once obtained separate maintenance. The
law presumed every Catholic to be faithless, disloyal, and untruthful, assumed
him to exist only to be punished, and the ingenuity of the Legislature was
exhausted in discovering new methods of repression. Viceroys were constantly
appealed to give no countenance to Popery; magistrates, to execute the penal
laws; degraded Irishmen called priest-hunters were rewarded for spying upon
their priests, and degraded priests who apostatized were rewarded with a
government pension. The wife was thus encouraged to disobey her husband, the
child to flout his parents, the friend to turn traitor to his friend. These
Protestant legislators in possession of Catholic lands wished to make all
Catholics helpless and poor. Without bishops they must soon be without priests,
and without schools they must necessarily go to the Protestant schools. These
hopes however proved vain. Students went to foreign colleges, and bishops came
from abroad, facing imprisonment and death. The schoolmaster taught under a
sheltering hedge, and the priest said Mass by stealth watched over by the people
and in spite of priest-hunter and penal laws. Nor were the Catholics won over by
such Protestant ministers as they saw, men without zeal and often without faith,
not unlike those described by Spenser in Elizabeth's day -- "of fleshy
incontinency, greedy avarice and disordered lives". In other respects the Penal
Laws succeeded. They made the Catholics helpless, ignorant, and poor, without
the strength to rebel, the hope of redress, or even the courage to complain.
At
last the tide turned. Too poor to excite the cupidity of their oppressors, too
feeble to rebel, the Catholics had nevertheless shown that they would not become
Protestant; and the repression of a feeble people, merely for the sake of
repression, had tarnished the name of England, and alienated her friends among
the Catholic nations. In these circumstances the Irish Parliament began to
retrace its steps, and concessions were made, slowly and grudgingly. At first
the Penal Laws ceased to be rigorously enforced, and then in 1771, Catholics
were allowed to take leases of unreclaimed bog for sixty-one years. Three years
later they were allowed to substitute an Oath of Allegiance for the Oath of
Supremacy; and in 1778 Gardiner's Act allowed them to take leases of land for
999 years, and also allowed Catholic landlords to leave their estates to one
son, instead of having, as hitherto, to divide between all. In 1782 a further
Act enabled Catholics to set up schools, with the leave of the Protestant bishop
of the place, enabling them also to own horses in the same way as
Protestants,
and further permitting bishops and priests to reside in Ireland. Catholics were
also allowed to act as guardians to children. Grattan favored complete equality
between Catholics and Protestants,
but the bigots in Parliament were too strong, and among them were the so-called
patriot leaders, Charlemont and Flood. Not till 1792 was there a further Act
allowing Catholics to marry Protestants,
to practice at the bar, and to set up Catholic schools without obtaining a
license from the Protestant
bishop. These concessions were scorned by the Catholic Committee, long charged
with the care of Catholic interests, and which had lately passed from the feeble
leadership of Lord Kenmare to the more capable leadership of John Keogh. The new
French Republic had also become a menace to England, and English ministers
dreaded having Ireland discontented. For these reasons the Catholic Relief Bill
of 1793 became law. This gave Catholics the parliamentary and municipal
franchise, enabled them to become jurors, magistrates, sheriffs, and officers in
the army and navy. They might carry arms under certain conditions, and they were
admitted to the degrees of Trinity College, though not to its emoluments or
higher honors. Two years later the advent of Lord Fitzwilliam as viceroy was
regarded as the herald of complete religious equality. But Pitt suddenly changed
his mind, and, having resolved on a legislative union, it suited his purpose
better to stop further concession. Then came the recall of Fitzwilliam, the
rapid rise of the United Irish Society with revolutionary objects, the rebellion
of 1798, and the Union of 1800.
From
the Imperial Parliament the Catholics expected immediate emancipation,
remembering the promises of British and Irish ministers, but Pitt shamefully
broke his word, and emancipation was delayed till 1829. Nor would it have come
even then but for the matchless leadership of O'Connell, and because the only
alternative to concession was civil war. The manner of concession was grudging.
Catholics were admitted to Parliament, but the forty-shilling free-holders were
disfranchised,
Jesuits banished, other religious orders made incapable of receiving
charitable bequests, bishops penalized for assuming ecclesiastical titles and
priests for appearing outside their churches in their vestments. Catholics were
debarred from being either viceroy or lord chancellor of Ireland. The law
regarding
Jesuits has not been enforced, but the viceroy must still be a
Protestant.
Nor was it till the last half-century that a Catholic could be lord chancellor,
Lord O'Hagan, who died in 1880, being the first Catholic to fill that office
since the
Revolution of 1688.
Professor Lecky a British Protestant and ardent British sympathizer, said in
his "History of Ireland in the 18th Century" that the object of the Penal Laws
was threefold:
"To deprive Catholics of all civil life; to reduce them to a condition of
extreme, brutal ignorance; and, to disassociate them from the soil.:
Lecky said, "He might with absolute justice, substitute Irish for Catholic,
"and added a fourth objective: "To expatriate the race." Most scholars agree
that the Penal Laws helped set the stage for the injustices that occurred during
The Great Famine and fueled the fires of racism that were directed against the
Irish by the British. Lecky outlined the Penal Laws as follows:
- The Catholic Church forbidden to keep church
registers.
- The Irish Catholic was forbidden the exercise of his
religion.
- He was forbidden to receive education.
- He was forbidden to enter a profession.
- He was forbidden to hold public office.
- He was forbidden to engage in trade or commerce.
- He was forbidden to live in a corporate town or within
five miles thereof.
- He was forbidden to own a horse of greater value than
five pounds.
- He was forbidden to own land.
- He was forbidden to lease land.
- He was forbidden to accept a mortgage on land in
security for a loan.
- He was forbidden to vote.
- He was forbidden to keep any arms for his protection.
- He was forbidden to hold a life annuity.
- He was forbidden to buy land from a Protestant.
- He was forbidden to receive a gift of land from a
Protestant.
- He was forbidden to inherit land from a Protestant.
- He was forbidden to inherit anything from a
Protestant.
- He was forbidden to rent any land that was worth more
than 30 shillings a year.
- He was forbidden to reap from his land any profit
exceeding a third of the rent.
- He could not be guardian to a child.
- He could not, when dying, leave his infant children
under Catholic guardianship.
- He could not attend Catholic worship.
- He was compelled by law to attend Protestant worship.
- He could not himself educate his child.
- He could not send his child to a Catholic teacher.
- He could not employ a Catholic teacher to come to his
child.
- He could not send his child abroad to receive
education.
* From: MacManus “the story of the Irish Race" 1921.Devin-Adair Publishing
Co., New York.
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