MURPHY'S EMERALD IDYLL
IRELAND
Irish Penal Laws--Detailed View
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This web page
will present just the Penal Laws as they applied to Ireland in Section III of
the full outline. Those interested in reading the details of the
other territories may click on the link at the end for the full article.
Catholic Encyclopedia -- Penal Laws
This article treats
of the penal legislation affecting Catholics in English-speaking countries since
the Reformation. Separate heads are devoted to the penal laws:
I. In
England;
II. In
Scotland;
III. In Ireland;
IV. In the
American colonies.
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III. IN IRELAND
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 rancour 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 the
Protestant 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 service was fined 12 pence for each offence. A subsequent
viceregal 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 Aran 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 favoured 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
Burke: 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 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
Protestants; 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 favoured 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
practise at the bar, and to set up Catholic schools without obtaining a licence
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 (1789) 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 honours. 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.
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