The Penal Laws
Background To The Penal Laws. THE story of Ireland’s loyalty to the Catholic Faith and to the Church of Christ through the long, dark generations and centuries is one of the chief reasons for the persistent, venomous, unscrupulous defamation of our country that has been carried on by the English all over the world for close on eight hundred years, and is still resumed whenever opportunity offers. They robbed us of our possessions and then called us paupers and beggars; they stole or killed our industries and then held us up to the scorn of the world as lazy and thriftless; they destroyed our culture, levelled our schools, killed or exiled our teachers, burned our books and manuscripts, carried off the treasures that spoke eloquently of our skill as craftsmen, outlawed our language, our music, our customs, our pastimes, our every single mark of nationhood, and then cried out all over the earth that we were an uncouth, uncultured, ignorant, backward, savage people, steeped in superstition, sullen, morose, dense-minded, unresponsive to altruistic English kindness, and lacking in all the qualities of a civilised, progressive race. Their propaganda against us—and especially against our history—has been so successful that it has convinced tens of thousands of Irishmen and driven into their Anglicised minds the idea that they will never be educated, refined, cultured and progressive until they have shed every single Irish characteristic and become English even in speech, in thought, in outlook, and, above all. in contempt for the land within whose boundaries they have had the misfortune to be born. There is no exaggeration in all this. Such Irishmen are to be met with every day in every part of the country and their numbers are on the increase. They are a greater menace to Ireland than was Cromwell’s army three hundred years ago. Their conception of culture is the acquirement of the English way of life in all its aspects.
Most of them are Catholics but they have not learned the story of the past, They walk in British blinkers, seeing only what their masters have considered good for them to see, and so filled with the prejudices• of ignorance that they will not even try to find out the truth that would set them free. If the more intelligent amongst them would but yield to humility for a little while and walk slowly back, with senses alert and eyes wide open, over the blood-stained paths of Irish history, back to the day when Henry Plantagenet coveted our green fields and assumed the garments of an armed missionary whose mind was made up to chastise our bodies for our souls’ betterment, and deprive us of worldly goods the possession of which might impede our progress towards life everlasting, it would benefit them and Ireland. Like him, all his successors in the same Christian endeavour, felt called upon to give reasons to the world for their conquest and spoliation and crucifixion of Ireland and their systematic extermination of the Irish people. These reasons they have given over and over and over again in the scores of alleged histories they have invested in during the past eight centuries as the most important part of their unselfish crusade to save the savage Irish from themselves and their demoralising superstitions disguised as the practice of the Catholic religion.
As has been said in these pages already and can be asserted by Irishmen anywhere, at any time, without fear of proved or stable contradiction, we have never yet in all our history engaged in a religious war of aggression or persecuted any man because of the faith he professed, Even after long periods of bitter persecution, whenever a breathing space came and power passed into Irish hands, there has never been retaliation or even a threat of it. We have accepted Protestants as our national leaders again and again, trusted them, looked up to them, stood by them in defeat as well as in victory, and never once held their religious beliefs as an argument against giving them our love and fealty and confidence. So that anything we write or say as regards Protestants and Protestantism at any time here in Ireland can never be truthfully or honestly described as bigotry or enmity; our authentic and unsuppressed history shows on its every page that such a description is untrue. We have suffered so much for the God-given gift of Faith through the long centuries of temporal bondage but spiritual independence that it would ill become us either individually or as a nation to hate those who differ from us in religion, or to gloat over anticipated power and opportunity to wreak vengeance on those we regard as members of our family who are separated from us and from true spiritual consolation and happiness by mischance and misfortune.
The English ruling class and their selfish adherents have hated us through the changes of eight hundred years because they have held the possessions of which they robbed us and have gone in fear of retribution and restitution. They have hated us, too, because we clung to the Catholic Faith after they had exchanged it for wealth and power (don’t forget that it was the looters of Church property who consolidated Protestantism in England) and they naturally, as selfish human beings. wanted to kill or banish out of sight those whose presence and whose claim to simple justice constituted a constant reproach to them. So that from a national and a spiritual or religious standpoint it can be said with truth that the greed and covetousness of our enemies caused all the suffering that the people of Ireland have endured for Fatherland and for Faith. If the imitation Englishmen who despise their own country and are never tired of repeating like parrots the falsehoods written and spoken by apprehensive enemies about our crimes, our faults, our shortcomings, our general low standard of culture and character, would only spend a few hours every week for a year or so examining the recorded truth regarding the determined attempt made by a victorious invader three hundred years ago to stamp out the Catholic Faith in this country; if they would then reflect that similar attempts had been made already, accompanied by all kinds of infernal brutality and persecution during the long reign of Elizabeth and after it; and if they would let their minds grasp the truth that for a further one hundred and fifty years the broken, impoverished and trampled remnants of those persecuted by Cromwell, and their descendants, had to endure and did endure the most abominable tortures that minds perverted by hate could devise, before even the first faint rays of the light of relief were seen, some of them at least would learn to love their land instead of despising it and in time would come to realise that instead of being something to be ashamed of our history is an inspiration, a glory, a delight, a blessing for which our hearts should forever be lifted up in gratitude to Almighty God.
IN Do Burgo’s Hibernia Dominicana the following information is given on page 286:—” In the year 1649, there were in Ireland 23 bishops and four archbishops. In the cathedrals there were, as usual, canons and dignitaries; the parishes had pastors, a great number of priests, and numerous convents of regulars. But after Cromwell had attained to supreme power, all were scattered. Over 300 were put to death, 1,000 more driven into exile. Four bishops were slain, the others were obliged to fly to foreign countries, except the Bishop of Kilmore, who was too feeble to be removed. In 1641, there were in Ireland 43 houses of the Dominican Order and 600 religious. Ten years after, there was not a single house in their possession, and three-fourths of the religious were dead or in exile.”
When Oliver Plunkett took his life in his hands and came home ins 1670 to reorganise the Church and combat the destructive designs of its enemies, he found only two bishops in all Ireland, and both were invalids. At the cost of his own life he saved the Church in Ireland from the fate that overtook it in Scotland and England.
“I meddle not with any man’s conscience. But if by liberty of conscience you mean liberty to exercise the Mass, I judge it best to use plain dealing, and to let you know, where the Parliament of England have power, that will not be allowed of”
In these words Oliver Cromwell made known to the Confederation of Kilkenny his idea of religious tolerance. And when he was victorious in Ireland he soon let all men see that there were many things as well as the Mass that he was determined to end for all time in this superstition- ridden country. Before a Catholic could have even the faintest hope of being allowed to live where he was born it was necessary for him to publicly take an oath known as the Oath of Abjuration, drawn up by Cromwell himself, a declaration so insulting that no Catholic of spirit could take it under any circumstances. It reveals the bigotry, hatred and intolerance that ruled the mind of a man who was supposed to be honest, upright, fair minded and tolerant. Here is Cromwell’s Oath of Abjuration : — “I, A. B., abhor, detest and abjure the authority of the Pope, as
well in regard of the Church in general, as in regard of myself in particular. I condemn and anathematise the tenet that any reward is due to good works. I firmly believe and avow that no reverence is due to the Virgin Mary, or to any other saint in heaven ; and that no petition or adoration can be addressed to them without idolatry. I assert that no worship or reverence is due to the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, or to the elements of bread and wine after consecration, by whom soever that consecration may be made. I believe there is no purgatory, but that it is a Popish invention ; so is also the tenet that the Pope can grant indulgences. I also firmly believe that neither the Pope, nor any other priest, can remit sins as the Papists rave. And all this I swear without any gloss, equivocation, or mental reservation, So help me God.”
This degrading and insulting oath was not meant merely for presentation to weak-kneed Catholics who went to the Cromwellians looking for some favour. It was ordered that the Oath be administered publicly to every Catholic in Ireland over sixteen years of age, The penalty for refusal to take it was confiscation of two-thirds of everything he possessed, this fine to be imposed each time the Oath was presented to him and he refused to take it. And in case there might be any leniency this clause was prominent in the Act of Parliament which introduced and legalised the Oath of Abjuration
“Each justice of the peace who shall neglect his duty in fully carrying out this order will be fined £20 ; each parish clerk will be fined for a like neglect £10 ; each registrar of assizes for each person that he omits in the registry, £20 ; and of all these fines, one-half will be distributed to the poor of the parish, the other half to the accuser.”
‘The accuser’ mentioned here was any spy or informer who would successfully lodge information leading to the conviction of any Catholic who refused or evaded the Oath.
There were several other clauses and more severe penalties in the Act, all aimed at the degradation or impoverishment of Catholics; but in spite of the Lord High Protector, his central and local tyrants, his touts, informers and spies, the Superior of the Jesuits in Ireland, Fr.
•Richard Shelton, was able to report to Rome in April, 1658, that ‘every effort is now made to compel the Catholics, by exile, imprisonment, confiscation of goods, and other penalties, to take the sacrilegious oath of abjuration, but all in vain, for as yet there has not been even one to take it, with the exception of a stranger residing in our island, who had acquired large possessions, and being afraid of losing them, and at the same time being ashamed of the other Catholics, undertook a journey of more than two hundred miles to present himself to one of Cromwell’s commissaries.’
It was after this report from Fr. Shelton that the Holy Father sent a special Brief to the faithful Catholics of Ireland, congratulating them on their constancy, consoling them in their great sufferings and encouraging them to continue to show good example to the whole Christian world by their steadfast loyalty to the Faith and the Church of Christ.
THREE hundred years ago the English ruling class robbed, murdered, j tortured, imprisoned and banished the people of this country under the plea that there must be uniformity of worship in Ireland and in Britain and in all the colonies of Britain, wherever they might be. For fifteen hundred years or more previous to that time the Catholic Church, the Church of Christ, had maintained the unity of the world in spite of schisms, defections, bogus popes and powerful heretics. Some thirty years ago an English Protestant who had begun to feel uncomfortable in his mind and to doubt the authority and oneness and antiquity of the creed into which he had been born, made a careful, patient investigation and discovered that in England and America alone the so-called uniformity of three hundred years ago had broken up into more than two hundred sects and sections and sub-sections of sects; he could find no single trace of unity or authority in Protestantism anywhere. On another page the reader will find how much at variance were English historians and propagandists regarding the numbers supposed to have been killed by Irish Papists in the mythical ‘Popish Massacre’ of 1641. In many things our ‘enemies have glaringly shown lack of uniformity and unanimity, but in one task they have stood shoulder to shoulder as one man throughout the centuries and that task is the suppression and the distortion of Irish history.
The appalling and shameful truth is that since before the invasion of Henry II down to our own day the English have written the history of Ireland for the rest of the world, and it is only what England wanted them to know of us that the people of other countries learned about us and our struggle against the invader. If anyone who reads this statement feels like doubting or challenging the truth of it, let him make an exhaustive, comprehensive, patient, careful study of the history of Ireland since before the Danish invasion and establish to his satisfaction the truth or the falsehood of what we say. It will be no easy task, but if he is one who loves Ireland and reverences truth he will be so invigorated and gladdened by his discoveries as he goes from page to page and period to period that the task will become a pleasure and instead of being fatigued at the end of it he will feel like striding here, there and everywhere through the land calling out to all who will listen the truths he has discovered about the long-maligned people of Ireland.
But if he wants to get the full truth and the whole truth he must not confine his research to English Record Offices and State Papers and to the history books written in English during the past few hundred years. When, for instance, our people were killed or exiled or imprisoned three hundred years ago, there was no one in Ireland who could or would write down the truth of what had just happened. Ireland was gagged but England was free to tell the world and to tell future generations of Irishmen the story of the war and of the ‘settlement’ that came after it. For at least fifty years the English historians and propagandists had the field to themselves and they did not throw away their opportunity. The tragedy is that Irishmen and Irishwomen with few exceptions in every generation have gone on reproducing as gospel truth the distortions, prevarications. inventions and deliberate falsehoods placed at their disposal by obliging British scribes who wrote what they were told to write and whose mission was to impress upon the world as an established, indisputable truth the libel that Irishmen were savages, that they were bloodthirsty, that they were forever at each other’s throats, that they were treacherous, false, unstable, that they were drunkards, liars, murderers and thieves, that they had no past and were unworthy of any future save to be serfs and servants of those who had brought them whatever small semblance of civilisation they possessed: and that the English had acted only as Christians and philanthropists and crusaders when they crossed the sea and by conquest saved the turbulent, unruly, savage Irish from themselves. All our Anglicised historians, many of them through no fault of their own, have missed the one light that would lead them nearest to the truth —the songs and ballads of the Irish poets, songs and ballads composed during tli,e sufferings and gallant fights of three hundred years ago and in which we get a glimpse of the true mind of the people. As we said before when writing of the Penal Days of a century later than the Cromwellian period, it was prayer and poetry that saved the Irish nation. Prayer kept the people near to God and poetry kept them near to Ireland, and both preserved them from the despair that overtook other peoples under persecution. The assertion, based on enemy sources, that there was no national urge or spirit or outlook back of the Rising of 1641, is shattered by the poets and song writers of the period and they were the true voice of the. people of Ireland. There is hardly any mention at all in the songs and ballads of three hundred years ago of the Stuart kings, although it is true that our people foolishly looked upon them as belonging to the Gaelic line, but there is plenty in denunciation of and of opposition to the English invaders, and in all of them is the call to Irishmen to stand for Ireland and independence against falsehood, robbery and injustice. One of the poems is beautiful in its appeal to the faith of the people. It is entitled In Anim an Athara le buaidh and is addressed to the hunted, persecuted, impoverished people under orders to leave their beloved homes and turn their faces towards the hills of Connacht, never to return. The poet reminds them that the same God reigns over them as reigned over the Israelites when they were banished from their homes in ages long past, and that as He had ordered the very waves of the sea to part and make a passage for the poor exiles, so would He now smooth the rough roads to Connacht and give comfort and strength to the faithful children who had faith in His eternal power and majesty and mercy, and that Mary His Mother and all the angels and all the saints of Ireland would be with them in their sorrow. Then there are others in which the people are reminded that five hundred years of invasion and attack by the greedy, murderous, deceitful English have failed to break the national spirit and that the attempt will fail again, that if the youth of Ireland are true to themselves and mindful of the heroic past, the time will come when God will give them the strength and opportunity to win back their own and sweep the plundering foreigners from Ireland’s four green fields. Always it is Ireland. not any king or chieftain, or province or elann, but all Ireland free from shore to shore, and the poets cry out, as in Rdismn Dubh, that the Day of Judgment itself must be at hand before our country bends the knee in final defeat to the English invader.
Sometimes it is said that the Irish poets had no real national spirit, that they wasted their gifts on impassioned addresses to dream maidens or real maidens or on singing the praises of brown cows and blackbirds and thrushes when they should have been praising Ireland and her glories and inciting their people to resistance of the enemy in their midst. But. it was just because of the enemy in their midst, because of his tools and spies and agents who swarmed over the land that the poets disguised and camouflaged Ireland in their songs. She was The Little Black Rose who would be red at last in the day of deliverance and freedom; she was The Dear Little Brown Cow, silk of the kine, seized by the brutal invader, or wandering hungry and thirsty in cold, barren places because the home where she had shelter and comfort was in the’ hands of the stranger; she was the beautiful maiden for love of whom the poet’s heart was fit to break. In all the songs or in most of them Ireland is the central figure, but because she is not mentioned by name some of our unthinking people argue that no national spirit was expressed in the songs of the Gaelic poets. The true history of Ireland is told in them and if we were a nation to-day, if we had real freedom and the national consciousness that goes with freedom, our young people would not sneer at the songs that hold all the spirit of’ Ireland s resistance to the invader while they honoured the inane grunt ing and groaning and crooning that is supposed to come to us from American prairies but that is in reality one of the marks by which the English exhibit us to the world of to-day as their spiritual serfs.
In the raids arid razings and burnings and dispersals of three hundred years countless Irish manuscripts were lost or destroyed and the songs that have come down from generation to generation are not as whole or as perfect as they were originally; but the wonder is that they have survived in any condition, considering the efforts of the enemy to wreak havoc on them and on every single bit of evidence and proof of Irish culture and Irish national spirit and of fierce, intense wholehearted Irish resistance to the rule of the invader. Nor were the Gaelic poets of three hundred years ago poor semi-illiterate wanderers, as some of our Anglicised intellectuals, doing the enemy’s work, would have us believe. Many of them were cultured, scholarly priests, and we have seen that the priesthood of Ireland stood with the people and with Eoghan Ruadh, even when the majority of their bishops, in conjunction with the rest of the Irish SeoinIni, were calling upon all Englishmen in Ireland to join hands for the destruction of the great Irish soldier, or, through the years of the Confederation, were intriguing with Ormond and begging concessions from Charles Stuart when ‘England’s difficulty’, should have told them that Ireland’s opportunity’ to win independence had come.
One of the most cultured and also the most intensely national of the Gaelic poets of the Rising of 1641 was Piaras Feiritéir (Ferriter) of Kerry, one of the Sean-Ghall or Old English who had in very truth become “more Irish than the Irish themselves.’ He was a landed proprietor and middle-aged and few would have blamed him had he remained aloof from the strife in that isolated, quiet little spot, the Dingle peninsula. But he
*ent into the front of the fray, was severely wounded in a battle with the English, but was soon back in the fight again and remained there until the end came. Even then he was not captured, thanks to the loyalty of the people, and his knowledge of the hills and glens of Kerry. At last when the war was over and the men of Ireland broken, scattered or killed he was taken and tortured and with two Irish-hearted priests,’ Fr. Moriarty, a Dominican, and Fr. O’Sullivan, a Franciscan, was hanged at Killarney in 1653.
That Piaras’ Feiritéir was a true Irish nationalist is shown by the fact that he took the side of Eoghan Ruadh 0 Nélil from the very beginning; that he was no provincialist is proved by his plea that 0 Neil be made Commander-in-Chief of the Irish forces, a plea for which he was criticised by other Gaelic poets who had not his national spirit or breadth of vision.
stands with 0 Néill himself and with Runairi 0 Mordha among the greatest of Ireland’s faithful sons who sacrificed everything for a deathless ideal. He and his fellow poets call to us across the generations, hidding us be worthy of the cause for which they lived and died.
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. 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 Boo 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 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 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 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 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.
The Penal Laws
Background To The Penal Laws.THE story of Ireland’s loyalty to the Catholic Faith and to the Church of Christ through the long, dark generations and centuries is one of the chief reasons for the persistent, venomous, unscrupulous defamation of our country that has been carried on by the English all over the world for close on eight hundred years, and is still resumed whenever opportunity offers. They robbed us of our possessions and then called us paupers and beggars; they stole or killed our industries and then held us up to the scorn of the world as lazy and thriftless; they destroyed our culture, levelled our schools, killed or exiled our teachers, burned our books and manuscripts, carried off the treasures that spoke eloquently of our skill as craftsmen, outlawed our language, our music, our customs, our pastimes, our every single mark of nationhood, and then cried out all over the earth that we were an uncouth, uncultured, ignorant, backward, savage people, steeped in superstition, sullen, morose, dense-minded, unresponsive to altruistic English kindness, and lacking in all the qualities of a civilised, progressive race. Their propaganda against us—and especially against our history—has been so successful that it has convinced tens of thousands of Irishmen and driven into their Anglicised minds the idea that they will never be educated, refined, cultured and progressive until they have shed every single Irish characteristic and become English even in speech, in thought, in outlook, and, above all. in contempt for the land within whose boundaries they have had the misfortune to be born. There is no exaggeration in all this. Such Irishmen are to be met with every day in every part of the country and their numbers are on the increase. They are a greater menace to Ireland than was Cromwell’s army three hundred years ago. Their conception of culture is the acquirement of the English way of life in all its aspects.
Most of them are Catholics but they have not learned the story of the past, They walk in British blinkers, seeing only what their masters have considered good for them to see, and so filled with the prejudices• of ignorance that they will not even try to find out the truth that would set them free. If the more intelligent amongst them would but yield to humility for a little while and walk slowly back, with senses alert and eyes wide open, over the blood-stained paths of Irish history, back to the day when Henry Plantagenet coveted our green fields and assumed the garments of an armed missionary whose mind was made up to chastise our bodies for our souls’ betterment, and deprive us of worldly goods the possession of which might impede our progress towards life everlasting, it would benefit them and Ireland. Like him, all his successors in the same Christian endeavour, felt called upon to give reasons to the world for their conquest and spoliation and crucifixion of Ireland and their systematic extermination of the Irish people. These reasons they have given over and over and over again in the scores of alleged histories they have invested in during the past eight centuries as the most important part of their unselfish crusade to save the savage Irish from themselves and their demoralising superstitions disguised as the practice of the Catholic religion.
As has been said in these pages already and can be asserted by Irishmen anywhere, at any time, without fear of proved or stable contradiction, we have never yet in all our history engaged in a religious war of aggression or persecuted any man because of the faith he professed, Even after long periods of bitter persecution, whenever a breathing space came and power passed into Irish hands, there has never been retaliation or even a threat of it. We have accepted Protestants as our national leaders again and again, trusted them, looked up to them, stood by them in defeat as well as in victory, and never once held their religious beliefs as an argument against giving them our love and fealty and confidence. So that anything we write or say as regards Protestants and Protestantism at any time here in Ireland can never be truthfully or honestly described as bigotry or enmity; our authentic and unsuppressed history shows on its every page that such a description is untrue. We have suffered so much for the God-given gift of Faith through the long centuries of temporal bondage but spiritual independence that it would ill become us either individually or as a nation to hate those who differ from us in religion, or to gloat over anticipated power and opportunity to wreak vengeance on those we regard as members of our family who are separated from us and from true spiritual consolation and happiness by mischance and misfortune.
The English ruling class and their selfish adherents have hated us through the changes of eight hundred years because they have held the possessions of which they robbed us and have gone in fear of retribution and restitution. They have hated us, too, because we clung to the Catholic Faith after they had exchanged it for wealth and power (don’t forget that it was the looters of Church property who consolidated Protestantism in England) and they naturally, as selfish human beings. wanted to kill or banish out of sight those whose presence and whose claim to simple justice constituted a constant reproach to them. So that from a national and a spiritual or religious standpoint it can be said with truth that the greed and covetousness of our enemies caused all the suffering that the people of Ireland have endured for Fatherland and for Faith. If the imitation Englishmen who despise their own country and are never tired of repeating like parrots the falsehoods written and spoken by apprehensive enemies about our crimes, our faults, our shortcomings, our general low standard of culture and character, would only spend a few hours every week for a year or so examining the recorded truth regarding the determined attempt made by a victorious invader three hundred years ago to stamp out the Catholic Faith in this country; if they would then reflect that similar attempts had been made already, accompanied by all kinds of infernal brutality and persecution during the long reign of Elizabeth and after it; and if they would let their minds grasp the truth that for a further one hundred and fifty years the broken, impoverished and trampled remnants of those persecuted by Cromwell, and their descendants, had to endure and did endure the most abominable tortures that minds perverted by hate could devise, before even the first faint rays of the light of relief were seen, some of them at least would learn to love their land instead of despising it and in time would come to realise that instead of being something to be ashamed of our history is an inspiration, a glory, a delight, a blessing for which our hearts should forever be lifted up in gratitude to Almighty God.
IN Do Burgo’s Hibernia Dominicana the following information is given on page 286:—” In the year 1649, there were in Ireland 23 bishops and four archbishops. In the cathedrals there were, as usual, canons and dignitaries; the parishes had pastors, a great number of priests, and numerous convents of regulars. But after Cromwell had attained to supreme power, all were scattered. Over 300 were put to death, 1,000 more driven into exile. Four bishops were slain, the others were obliged to fly to foreign countries, except the Bishop of Kilmore, who was too feeble to be removed. In 1641, there were in Ireland 43 houses of the Dominican Order and 600 religious. Ten years after, there was not a single house in their possession, and three-fourths of the religious were dead or in exile.”
When Oliver Plunkett took his life in his hands and came home ins 1670 to reorganise the Church and combat the destructive designs of its enemies, he found only two bishops in all Ireland, and both were invalids. At the cost of his own life he saved the Church in Ireland from the fate that overtook it in Scotland and England.
“I meddle not with any man’s conscience. But if by liberty of conscience you mean liberty to exercise the Mass, I judge it best to use plain dealing, and to let you know, where the Parliament of England have power, that will not be allowed of”
In these words Oliver Cromwell made known to the Confederation of Kilkenny his idea of religious tolerance. And when he was victorious in Ireland he soon let all men see that there were many things as well as the Mass that he was determined to end for all time in this superstition- ridden country. Before a Catholic could have even the faintest hope of being allowed to live where he was born it was necessary for him to publicly take an oath known as the Oath of Abjuration, drawn up by Cromwell himself, a declaration so insulting that no Catholic of spirit could take it under any circumstances. It reveals the bigotry, hatred and intolerance that ruled the mind of a man who was supposed to be honest, upright, fair minded and tolerant. Here is Cromwell’s Oath of Abjuration : — “I, A. B., abhor, detest and abjure the authority of the Pope, as
well in regard of the Church in general, as in regard of myself in particular. I condemn and anathematise the tenet that any reward is due to good works. I firmly believe and avow that no reverence is due to the Virgin Mary, or to any other saint in heaven ; and that no petition or adoration can be addressed to them without idolatry. I assert that no worship or reverence is due to the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, or to the elements of bread and wine after consecration, by whom soever that consecration may be made. I believe there is no purgatory, but that it is a Popish invention ; so is also the tenet that the Pope can grant indulgences. I also firmly believe that neither the Pope, nor any other priest, can remit sins as the Papists rave. And all this I swear without any gloss, equivocation, or mental reservation, So help me God.”
This degrading and insulting oath was not meant merely for presentation to weak-kneed Catholics who went to the Cromwellians looking for some favour. It was ordered that the Oath be administered publicly to every Catholic in Ireland over sixteen years of age, The penalty for refusal to take it was confiscation of two-thirds of everything he possessed, this fine to be imposed each time the Oath was presented to him and he refused to take it. And in case there might be any leniency this clause was prominent in the Act of Parliament which introduced and legalised the Oath of Abjuration
“Each justice of the peace who shall neglect his duty in fully carrying out this order will be fined £20 ; each parish clerk will be fined for a like neglect £10 ; each registrar of assizes for each person that he omits in the registry, £20 ; and of all these fines, one-half will be distributed to the poor of the parish, the other half to the accuser.”
‘The accuser’ mentioned here was any spy or informer who would successfully lodge information leading to the conviction of any Catholic who refused or evaded the Oath.
There were several other clauses and more severe penalties in the Act, all aimed at the degradation or impoverishment of Catholics; but in spite of the Lord High Protector, his central and local tyrants, his touts, informers and spies, the Superior of the Jesuits in Ireland, Fr.
•Richard Shelton, was able to report to Rome in April, 1658, that ‘every effort is now made to compel the Catholics, by exile, imprisonment, confiscation of goods, and other penalties, to take the sacrilegious oath of abjuration, but all in vain, for as yet there has not been even one to take it, with the exception of a stranger residing in our island, who had acquired large possessions, and being afraid of losing them, and at the same time being ashamed of the other Catholics, undertook a journey of more than two hundred miles to present himself to one of Cromwell’s commissaries.’
It was after this report from Fr. Shelton that the Holy Father sent a special Brief to the faithful Catholics of Ireland, congratulating them on their constancy, consoling them in their great sufferings and encouraging them to continue to show good example to the whole Christian world by their steadfast loyalty to the Faith and the Church of Christ.
THREE hundred years ago the English ruling class robbed, murdered, j tortured, imprisoned and banished the people of this country under the plea that there must be uniformity of worship in Ireland and in Britain and in all the colonies of Britain, wherever they might be. For fifteen hundred years or more previous to that time the Catholic Church, the Church of Christ, had maintained the unity of the world in spite of schisms, defections, bogus popes and powerful heretics. Some thirty years ago an English Protestant who had begun to feel uncomfortable in his mind and to doubt the authority and oneness and antiquity of the creed into which he had been born, made a careful, patient investigation and discovered that in England and America alone the so-called uniformity of three hundred years ago had broken up into more than two hundred sects and sections and sub-sections of sects; he could find no single trace of unity or authority in Protestantism anywhere. On another page the reader will find how much at variance were English historians and propagandists regarding the numbers supposed to have been killed by Irish Papists in the mythical ‘Popish Massacre’ of 1641. In many things our ‘enemies have glaringly shown lack of uniformity and unanimity, but in one task they have stood shoulder to shoulder as one man throughout the centuries and that task is the suppression and the distortion of Irish history.
The appalling and shameful truth is that since before the invasion of Henry II down to our own day the English have written the history of Ireland for the rest of the world, and it is only what England wanted them to know of us that the people of other countries learned about us and our struggle against the invader. If anyone who reads this statement feels like doubting or challenging the truth of it, let him make an exhaustive, comprehensive, patient, careful study of the history of Ireland since before the Danish invasion and establish to his satisfaction the truth or the falsehood of what we say. It will be no easy task, but if he is one who loves Ireland and reverences truth he will be so invigorated and gladdened by his discoveries as he goes from page to page and period to period that the task will become a pleasure and instead of being fatigued at the end of it he will feel like striding here, there and everywhere through the land calling out to all who will listen the truths he has discovered about the long-maligned people of Ireland.
But if he wants to get the full truth and the whole truth he must not confine his research to English Record Offices and State Papers and to the history books written in English during the past few hundred years. When, for instance, our people were killed or exiled or imprisoned three hundred years ago, there was no one in Ireland who could or would write down the truth of what had just happened. Ireland was gagged but England was free to tell the world and to tell future generations of Irishmen the story of the war and of the ‘settlement’ that came after it. For at least fifty years the English historians and propagandists had the field to themselves and they did not throw away their opportunity. The tragedy is that Irishmen and Irishwomen with few exceptions in every generation have gone on reproducing as gospel truth the distortions, prevarications. inventions and deliberate falsehoods placed at their disposal by obliging British scribes who wrote what they were told to write and whose mission was to impress upon the world as an established, indisputable truth the libel that Irishmen were savages, that they were bloodthirsty, that they were forever at each other’s throats, that they were treacherous, false, unstable, that they were drunkards, liars, murderers and thieves, that they had no past and were unworthy of any future save to be serfs and servants of those who had brought them whatever small semblance of civilisation they possessed: and that the English had acted only as Christians and philanthropists and crusaders when they crossed the sea and by conquest saved the turbulent, unruly, savage Irish from themselves. All our Anglicised historians, many of them through no fault of their own, have missed the one light that would lead them nearest to the truth —the songs and ballads of the Irish poets, songs and ballads composed during tli,e sufferings and gallant fights of three hundred years ago and in which we get a glimpse of the true mind of the people. As we said before when writing of the Penal Days of a century later than the Cromwellian period, it was prayer and poetry that saved the Irish nation. Prayer kept the people near to God and poetry kept them near to Ireland, and both preserved them from the despair that overtook other peoples under persecution. The assertion, based on enemy sources, that there was no national urge or spirit or outlook back of the Rising of 1641, is shattered by the poets and song writers of the period and they were the true voice of the. people of Ireland. There is hardly any mention at all in the songs and ballads of three hundred years ago of the Stuart kings, although it is true that our people foolishly looked upon them as belonging to the Gaelic line, but there is plenty in denunciation of and of opposition to the English invaders, and in all of them is the call to Irishmen to stand for Ireland and independence against falsehood, robbery and injustice. One of the poems is beautiful in its appeal to the faith of the people. It is entitled In Anim an Athara le buaidh and is addressed to the hunted, persecuted, impoverished people under orders to leave their beloved homes and turn their faces towards the hills of Connacht, never to return. The poet reminds them that the same God reigns over them as reigned over the Israelites when they were banished from their homes in ages long past, and that as He had ordered the very waves of the sea to part and make a passage for the poor exiles, so would He now smooth the rough roads to Connacht and give comfort and strength to the faithful children who had faith in His eternal power and majesty and mercy, and that Mary His Mother and all the angels and all the saints of Ireland would be with them in their sorrow. Then there are others in which the people are reminded that five hundred years of invasion and attack by the greedy, murderous, deceitful English have failed to break the national spirit and that the attempt will fail again, that if the youth of Ireland are true to themselves and mindful of the heroic past, the time will come when God will give them the strength and opportunity to win back their own and sweep the plundering foreigners from Ireland’s four green fields. Always it is Ireland. not any king or chieftain, or province or elann, but all Ireland free from shore to shore, and the poets cry out, as in Rdismn Dubh, that the Day of Judgment itself must be at hand before our country bends the knee in final defeat to the English invader.
Sometimes it is said that the Irish poets had no real national spirit, that they wasted their gifts on impassioned addresses to dream maidens or real maidens or on singing the praises of brown cows and blackbirds and thrushes when they should have been praising Ireland and her glories and inciting their people to resistance of the enemy in their midst. But. it was just because of the enemy in their midst, because of his tools and spies and agents who swarmed over the land that the poets disguised and camouflaged Ireland in their songs. She was The Little Black Rose who would be red at last in the day of deliverance and freedom; she was The Dear Little Brown Cow, silk of the kine, seized by the brutal invader, or wandering hungry and thirsty in cold, barren places because the home where she had shelter and comfort was in the’ hands of the stranger; she was the beautiful maiden for love of whom the poet’s heart was fit to break. In all the songs or in most of them Ireland is the central figure, but because she is not mentioned by name some of our unthinking people argue that no national spirit was expressed in the songs of the Gaelic poets. The true history of Ireland is told in them and if we were a nation to-day, if we had real freedom and the national consciousness that goes with freedom, our young people would not sneer at the songs that hold all the spirit of’ Ireland s resistance to the invader while they honoured the inane grunt ing and groaning and crooning that is supposed to come to us from American prairies but that is in reality one of the marks by which the English exhibit us to the world of to-day as their spiritual serfs.
In the raids arid razings and burnings and dispersals of three hundred years countless Irish manuscripts were lost or destroyed and the songs that have come down from generation to generation are not as whole or as perfect as they were originally; but the wonder is that they have survived in any condition, considering the efforts of the enemy to wreak havoc on them and on every single bit of evidence and proof of Irish culture and Irish national spirit and of fierce, intense wholehearted Irish resistance to the rule of the invader. Nor were the Gaelic poets of three hundred years ago poor semi-illiterate wanderers, as some of our Anglicised intellectuals, doing the enemy’s work, would have us believe. Many of them were cultured, scholarly priests, and we have seen that the priesthood of Ireland stood with the people and with Eoghan Ruadh, even when the majority of their bishops, in conjunction with the rest of the Irish SeoinIni, were calling upon all Englishmen in Ireland to join hands for the destruction of the great Irish soldier, or, through the years of the Confederation, were intriguing with Ormond and begging concessions from Charles Stuart when ‘England’s difficulty’, should have told them that Ireland’s opportunity’ to win independence had come.
One of the most cultured and also the most intensely national of the Gaelic poets of the Rising of 1641 was Piaras Feiritéir (Ferriter) of Kerry, one of the Sean-Ghall or Old English who had in very truth become “more Irish than the Irish themselves.’ He was a landed proprietor and middle-aged and few would have blamed him had he remained aloof from the strife in that isolated, quiet little spot, the Dingle peninsula. But he
*ent into the front of the fray, was severely wounded in a battle with the English, but was soon back in the fight again and remained there until the end came. Even then he was not captured, thanks to the loyalty of the people, and his knowledge of the hills and glens of Kerry. At last when the war was over and the men of Ireland broken, scattered or killed he was taken and tortured and with two Irish-hearted priests,’ Fr. Moriarty, a Dominican, and Fr. O’Sullivan, a Franciscan, was hanged at Killarney in 1653.
That Piaras’ Feiritéir was a true Irish nationalist is shown by the fact that he took the side of Eoghan Ruadh 0 Nélil from the very beginning; that he was no provincialist is proved by his plea that 0 Neil be made Commander-in-Chief of the Irish forces, a plea for which he was criticised by other Gaelic poets who had not his national spirit or breadth of vision.
stands with 0 Néill himself and with Runairi 0 Mordha among the greatest of Ireland’s faithful sons who sacrificed everything for a deathless ideal. He and his fellow poets call to us across the generations, hidding us be worthy of the cause for which they lived and died.
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. 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 Boo 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 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 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 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 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.