PENAL
615
PENAL
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 Parlia-
ment 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 liis
successor, and Mary's restoration of the Faith led the
Protestant Elizabeth to again resort to penal laws.
In 1559 the Irish Parhament 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 pubUc
use of the Book of Common Prayer. Whoever re-
fused the Oath of Supremacy was dismissed from
office, and whoever refused to attend the Protestant
service was fined 12 pence for each offence. A subse-
quent viceregal proclamation ordered all priests to
leave Dublin and prohibited the use of images, can-
dles, and beads. For some time these Acts and procla-
mations 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 Connauglit, until at last the
Catholics took up arms.
Cromwell disliked Parliaments as much as Eliza- beth 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 ecclesias- tics, 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 Cath- olic churches were soon in ruins, a thousand priests were driven into exile, and not a single bishop re- mained 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 Explana- tion (1665), and the Catholics, plundered by the Crom- wellians, 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
triumplied, toleration of Catholicity was expected.
P^or 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 Eng-
lish 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, ac-
cepted this legislation. Cathohcs 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 op-
pression, impoverishment and degradation of a feeble
people and the debasement in them of human nature
itself as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenu-
ity 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 Catho- lic schools, nor teach in such, nor go abroad to Catholic schools. They were excluded from Parlia- meiit, 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 ; they were excluded even from residence in the larger corporate towns. To bury their dead in an old ruined abbey or monastery involved a pen- alty 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 discover- ing new methods of repression. Viceroys were con- stantly 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 posses- sion 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 im-
