The Penal Laws

During the reigns of William the Third and Anne, a number of very cruel laws were passed, which were gross violations of the treaty of Limerick and which bore with terrible severity upon the Irish, and especially upon the Irish Catholics. These are famous, or rather infamous, in history as the "Penal Laws." Their purpose was to reduce the Catholics of Ireland to perpetual helplessness and ignorance. It was intended by these means to put and hold the Irish under complete subjection. The penal laws must be briefly described, for many of the miseries which Ireland has suffered since may be traced back to them. They were passed, partly by the English Parliament, and partly by the Irish Parliament, the latter body being composed entirely of Protestants, and being completely devoted to the interests of the English crown.

First, the oaths of allegiance to England, and of "abjuration," were required, not only of all the Irish bishops, but of every member of Parliament, every man who held a civil or military post, every officer or instructor of the university of Dublin, every schoolmaster, every professor, and every lawyer. The oath of abjuration practically rejected the creed of the Catholic church, and hence could not be taken by any true Catholic. All Catholics, therefore, were excluded from the avocations which have been named.

Heavy penalties followed the breaking of these laws. A Catholic who dared to keep a school, even in a private house, was condemned to a heavy fine, or to be imprisoned for three months. No Catholic could send his child abroad to be educated. If he did, he was condemned to forfeit all his worldly goods. Any man, by informing the authorities of the breaking of this law, was entitled to receive half the property taken from the man who broke it. The accused man was not supposed to be innocent until he was found guilty, but was obliged to prove his innocence. All Catholic bishops, monks, friars, and priests, except three thousand priests who were "registered," and thus allowed to perform their sacred functions, were banished from Ireland. If any who were thus banished returned, they were condemned to be "hanged, drawn, and quartered." Whoever delivered up a bishop who had thus dared to come back to Ireland after being exiled, received a reward of fifty pounds. The reward for capturing and delivering up an unregistered priest was twenty pounds, and for a Catholic who was found teaching school, ten pounds.

An important part of the infamous penal laws, indeed, was its system of rewards to those who betrayed the persons at whom the law was aimed, and the inducements held out to those who abjured Catholicism and became Protestants. A Catholic priest who turned Protestant was entitled to receive a pension of twenty pounds a year. Every Catholic who owned land was compelled to leave it, in equal shares, to all his sons. But if the eldest son became a Protestant, the whole estate was given over to him. It was further provided that no Catholic could buy any land; nor could any Catholic lease a farm for a longer period than thirty-one years. If a farm leased by a Catholic yielded a third more than the rent, any Protestant who discovered the fact could turn him out and take possession of his farm. No Catholic was allowed to own a horse of a higher value than five pounds; if he did, any Protestant, by offering him five pounds, might take the horse. No Catholic was permitted to keep more than two apprentices, except in the linen-trade. 'Whoever persuaded a Protestant to become a Catholic was condemned to imprisonment for life. No Catholic could become the guardian of a child, or the executor of an estate. If a Catholic child turned Protestant, he could compel his father to give up to him one-third of his income.

The penal laws bore heavily, not only upon the religion, but upon the social condition of the great mass of the Irish people. All Catholics were forbidden to keep arms and ammunition in their houses. The magistrates had the power to enter the homes of Catholics, at any hour of the clay or night, to search for arms; and, if any were discovered, the master of the house was condemned to pay a fine of thirty pounds for the first offence, and to imprisonment for life for the second. This law, however, was not enforced against certain lords and officers who were included in the Limerick treaty. These were allowed to keep one gun, one pistol, and one sword each. Catholic gentlemen were forbidden to go more than five miles away from their houses without the written permission of the magistrates. Marriage between Catholics and Protestants was sternly forbidden under heavy penalties. A Protestant woman who married a Catholic was condemned to forfeit her property to her next Protestant heir. A priest or clergyman who married a Protestant to a Catholic was condemned to a fine of twenty pounds, and imprisonment for a year. A Protestant man who married a Catholic woman was deprived of the right to sit in Parliament, or to hold any office, unless his wife turned Protestant within twelve months.

The Irish Catholics were excluded by the penal code from the practice of law. All lawyers in Ireland were obliged to take the oath of abjuration, which repudiated the Catholic creed. Every lawyer was forced to educate his children as Protestants. A lawyer who disobeyed this requirement was condemned to pay a fine of two hundred pounds. Any person might call upon a lawyer to take the oath; and, if the lawyer refused, the person so calling upon him received half the fine the lawyer had to pay. No Catholic could serve on a grand jury, and no lawyer could hire a Catholic as a clerk. As time advanced, the penal laws were made more and more severe. Those of King William's reign were harsh and cruel, but those passed in the reign of Anne were yet more rigorous. It was now declared that no Catholic could receive an estate either by gift or inheritance. An estate which fell by descent to a Catholic was given over to the next Protestant heir. Catholics, moreover, were now for the first time excluded from the right to vote at elections. Five-sixths of the Irish people were thus deprived of a voice in choosing members of Parliament, who were now elected solely by the Protestant minority of one-sixth.

So completely, indeed, did the tyrannical penal laws shut out the Irish Catholics from the privileges of citizenship, from religious freedom, from social well-being, and from the hope of prosperity, that an English judge declared that "the law did not suppose the existence of any such person as an Irish Roman Catholic; nor could they even breathe without the connivance of the government." But the penal laws were not the only ones which were imposed with relentless cruelty upon the Irish. Not only were the English resolved to deprive the Irish of their land, and to extinguish the religion to which a vast majority of the Irish ardently clung; but they were equally resolved to crush out of Ireland all the industries by which they might live. England had become a great manufacturing and commercial country. She was determined that the Irish manufacturers and ship-owners should not enter into competition with those of England. A series of laws was therefore passed, which at first restricted Irish industry and commerce to narrow limits, and later suppressed them altogether.

Ireland had already been forbidden to introduce her cattle, pigs, butter, and cheese into England; and, as a result, a large number of Irish farms had ceased to produce these, and had turned their lands into pastures for the raising of sheep. It was not long before Ireland provided the best wool grown in the world. Many woolen-mills were established in Ulster, and the making of woolen goods soon promised to bring prosperity to the northern province. But the woolen industry was also a large one in England. It would not do to let it thrive in Ireland, lest the Irish manufacture should injure the English. So the Irish were forbidden to send any raw wool or woolen cloth to any foreign land, or to any English colony. They could only send these articles to England. Thus a fatal blow was struck at the Irish industry; and the mill-owners, sheep-raisers, and weavers were reduced to misery and want: This hardship fell with especial severity, not upon the native Irish Catholic, but the Protestant English of Ulster, who had always been loyal to the crown.

Another terrible blow to Irish industry was the suppression of her ship-building trade. Irish oak had long been famous for its excellence as a material for building ships. Ireland had, too, many good harbors. But her ship-building rivaled that of the English. It was therefore declared that Ireland must use only English-built ships, and that she must not trade, in any way, with any country but England. All articles sent from or to Ireland must pass through England. Even the linen industry, for which Ireland was peculiarly adapted, since flax of the first quality could be grown there, was hampered and crippled by English selfishness and jealousy; so that, in the course of time, the efforts of the Irish, deprived of the greater part of their soil, to cherish such industries as she was capable of making successful, were paralyzed by the outrageous laws imposed upon them by their English masters. The result was that Ire-land became, more than ever, the abode of terrible want, of starvation, nakedness, vagabondage, and desperate lawlessness. Poverty, idleness, and despair reigned everywhere throughout the unhappy land.