395 Years Ago: 
Britain Imposes the Penal Laws 
Edward T. O'Donnell * The Irish Echo * September 6, 2000

 Three hundred ninety five years ago this week, on September 7, 1695, the people of Ireland learned the price they would have to pay for their support of King James II in his war against William of Orange.  The Catholic James had fled to Ireland and raised an army after he was deposed during England’s Glorious Revolution.  His successor, William of Orange, waged war in Ireland from 1689 to 1691, eventually defeating James’ armies and causing the ex-monarch to flee to France.  It was Ireland’s last great episode of resistance to British rule until the United Irishmen emerged in the 1790s. 

 Originally it looked as though the terms would be rather lenient.  The draft of the Treaty of Limerick which ended the war between William and James contained generous terms for the latter’s defeated supporters in Ireland.  Soldiers who fought in James’ army were offered free passage to France to join James in exile.  James’ supporters in Ireland would be allowed to keep their lands and to practice their trades and professions.   Finally, Catholics were promised freedom of religion. 

 William supported these lenient terms because he wanted to end the struggle in Ireland.  It was costing a great deal of money and diverting military resources he wanted to use in his ongoing war against France.  Irish Protestants, however, bitterly opposed the treaty’s concessions to Catholics, and successfully watered down or removed key provisions from the final draft of the Treaty.  They also successfully pushed for a series of anti-Catholic measures known as the Penal Laws. 

 The first of the Penal Laws were passed on September 7, 1695.  Many more would follow for the next thirty years.  These “popery laws,” as they were popularly known, sharply curtailed the civil, religious, and economic rights of Catholics in Ireland.  The most important ones made it illegal for Catholics to: 
     • marry Protestants
     • inherit  land from Protestants
     • buy land
     • carry weapons
     • teach school
     • practice law
     • vote in parliamentary elections
     • hold public office
     • practice their religion 
     • own a horse worth more than £5
     • hold a commission in the army or nav

 One particularly devastating law forced Catholic land owners to divide their estates among all their sons (in contrast to the preferred practice of handing most or all of the land to the eldest) unless they converted to the Church of Ireland.  This left them with a choice between two evils: abandon their Catholic faith in order to save their holdings, or allow them to be successively subdivided into oblivion. 

 It was this law, along with continued land forfeitures, that over the next century and a half pushed Ireland’s people onto smaller and smaller plots of land.  Smaller holdings forced Irish peasants to turn to a high yield crop for the bulk of their daily diet:  the potato.  By the eve of the Great Famine, more than 60 percent of the Irish people depended on the potato for the main source of food.  Thus did the Penal Laws create the conditions that turned an accident of nature – the fungus that ravaged Ireland’s potato crop between 1845 and 1850 -- into a monumental human tragedy.

 Some Penal Laws were either repealed or simply ignored in the course of the eighteenth century.  By the late-1700s, for example, Catholics were allowed to buy land and practice their religion.  But the most debilitating laws, those that denied Irish Catholics basic political, economic, and civil rights, were kept in full force until Daniel O’Connell launched his successful campaign for Catholic Emancipation in the 1820s. 

HIBERNIAN HISTORY THIS WEEK

Sept 7, 1892: “Gentleman” Jim Corbett knocks out John L. Sullivan to take the heavyweight crown 

Sept 9, 1845: the first instances of potato blight are reported

Sept 11, 1649: Oliver Cromwell and his troops massacre thousands at Drogheda

Sept 12, 1919: the British government declares the Dail Eireann illegal
 

HIBERNIANS BORN THIS WEEK:

Sept 6, 1888: Businessman and diplomat, Joseph P. Kennedy, in Boston

Sept 7, 1950: Author and presidential speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, in Brooklyn

Sept 8, 1812: Young Irelander, John Martin, in Loughorne, Co. Down.

Sept 11, 1838: Archbishop of St. Paul, John Richard Ireland, in Burnchurch, Co. Kilkenny

Sept 12, 1904: theologian, John Courtney Murray, in New York City

(c) Edward T. O'Donnell, 2000