After the Williamite War, the Irish parliament passed a series of laws from 1695 limiting what Catholics, and in part Presbyterians, could do: how their children were taught, what they could own and inherit, whether their clergy could stay, and whether they could vote. The laws were taken apart in stages between 1771 and 1829. Here are the main acts, their repeal, and some things often said about them, checked.
| Year | Act | What it did | Relaxed or repealed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1695 | Education Act (‘An Act to restrain Foreign Education’) | Banned Catholics from sending children abroad for a Catholic education, and required every schoolmaster to conform to the Church of Ireland, with a licence from an Anglican bishop. | Repealed by the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1782, though Catholic schoolmasters still had to take an oath of allegiance and could not teach Protestant children. [source] [source] |
| 1690s | Arms and horses | Catholics were barred from holding firearms or serving in the armed forces, and from owning a horse worth more than £5, to keep horses fit for military use out of their hands. | The 1782 measures relaxed the horse rule; the right to carry arms came with the Militia Act 1793. (The articles read list the horse rule without naming or dating the act that contained it; we have not confirmed it in the statute itself.) [source] |
| 1697 | Banishment Act (Bishops' Banishment Act) | Ordered all Catholic bishops and regular clergy (Jesuits, monks, friars) to leave by 1 May 1698. Remaining meant a year's prison and expulsion; returning was high treason. Of eight Catholic bishops then in Ireland, two left, one was arrested and five hid. Port authorities paid passage for 424 clerics. | Enforced less over the century. From 1782 it could not apply to a registered priest who had taken the oath. Formally repealed in 1878. [source] |
| 1704 | Registration Act | Every Catholic parish priest had to register with the local magistrates, give two £50 bonds for good behaviour and stay in his county. Unregistered clergy were to leave. A priest who converted got a £20 stipend. Many regular clergy registered as parish priests to avoid the Banishment Act. | Bishops and seminary priests could not register until 1778. From 1782 the act could not apply to registered priests who took the oath. Formally repealed in 1878. [source] [source] [source] |
| 1704 | Popery Act (‘to prevent the further Growth of Popery’, also called the Gavelkind Act) | Barred Catholics from buying land or leasing it for more than 31 years. A Catholic's land had to pass by gavelkind, divided equally among all sons, unless the eldest son conformed, in which case he took the whole and his father became a tenant for life. Also barred Catholics from being guardians of Protestant children, from moving into Galway or Limerick, and imposed a sacramental test for office that excluded Presbyterians too. Pilgrimages to holy wells and St Patrick's Purgatory were made unlawful assembly. | Gardiner's Act of 1778 (the Irish counterpart of the British Papists Act 1778) let Catholics take 999-year leases and ended the inheritance rules. The sacramental test was lifted for Dissenters in 1780. Most of the act was repealed in 1871. [source] [source] |
| 1709 | Popery Act 1709 | Closed loopholes in the 1704 act. It let any Protestant ‘discoverer’ sue to take over land a Catholic held in breach of it, and made the Registration Act permanent. | Relaxed with the 1704 act from 1778. [source] [source] |
| 1728 | Disfranchising Act (dated 1727 by regnal year, enacted 6 May 1728) | Took the parliamentary vote from all Catholics. | Catholics regained the vote, on the same terms as Protestants, under the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793. [source] [source] |
How strictly these laws were enforced is disputed; see below.
When James Stuart, the ‘Old Pretender’, died in 1766, the Holy See recognised the Hanoverian kings, removing the main political reason given for the laws. Relief came in stages.
True as written: it was one of the listed prohibitions.
The Wikipedia list of Penal Law prohibitions includes a ban on Catholics owning a horse valued at over £5, to keep horses suitable for military use out of the majority's hands. The same article records that the 1782 measures relaxed it.
The often-added detail that any Protestant could force a Catholic to sell such a horse for £5 does not appear in the articles read for this page, so we do not repeat it here.
Sources: Wikipedia: Penal laws (Ireland) ↗
The law forbade them, but teachers were rarely if ever prosecuted, and many hedge schools ran after they became legal.
Under the Education Act 1695 every schoolmaster had to conform to the Church of Ireland and be licensed by a bishop, and the Penal laws article quotes a provision making it an offence for any Catholic to teach school, with a £20 fine and three months in prison. So, until the Relief Act of 1782, a Catholic schoolmaster was breaking the law.
But enforcement fell mainly on schools run by religious orders, whose property was confiscated. The Hedge school and Education Act articles both say that no hedge teachers are known to have been prosecuted from 1723 on. After 1782 Catholic schools were legal if the teacher took the oath and had the Church of Ireland bishop's consent, yet hedge schools went on: up to 400,000 pupils by the mid-1820s, and some into the 1890s. One study cited there argues they existed as much from rural poverty as from religious oppression.
And the name misleads: once the laws eased, classes were normally held in a house or barn.
Sources: Wikipedia: Hedge school ↗ · Wikipedia: Education Act 1695 ↗ · Wikipedia: Penal laws (Ireland) ↗
On this site: Hedge schools to national schools
They were real and feared, but most priests were legally registered, and the worst period was short.
Priest hunters existed. In 1713 the Irish House of Commons declared informing against ‘Papists’ an ‘honourable service’, and rewards ran from £50–100 for a bishop to £10–20 for an unregistered priest. The bitterest years, according to the 18th-century writer de Burgo quoted in the Priest hunter article, were the end of Queen Anne's reign and the start of George I's (roughly 1710s).
But under the Registration Act of 1704 most parish priests registered and were legal; the hunters' targets were bishops, regular clergy and unregistered priests. Historian William P. Burke wrote that country gentlemen were reluctant to harass Catholic neighbours, so the work was done mostly by men who travelled the country, hired by grand juries or Dublin Castle, and loathed by the people. Some priest hunters were themselves killed.
Some 19th-century accounts quoted in the same article, such as D. P. Conyngham's, describe some thirty years of hunting ‘in full force’. Those are strongly partisan sources, and the article's other evidence does not show hunters active in every parish.
Sources: Wikipedia: Priest hunter (section ‘Ireland’) ↗ · Wikipedia: Registration Act 1704 ↗ · Wikipedia: Banishment Act 1697 (citing J. G. Simms, Irish Historical Studies, 1970) ↗
On this site: Mass rocks
Mass rocks were used, but in the 18th century registered priests could say Mass legally.
In the Cromwellian period Catholic clergy were expelled and liable to execution, and many Catholics worshipped in secret at places such as Mass rocks. After 1697 bishops and regular clergy were banished.
But the Registration Act of 1704 let parish priests register and work, and the Penal laws article says Catholic services were generally tolerated in private. Where new Catholic churches were allowed, they had to be of wood, not stone, and away from main roads. Many of the Mass rocks in the national monuments records are identified by local tradition, as the record notes quoted on our Mass rocks page show.
Sources: Wikipedia: Penal laws (Ireland) ↗ · Wikipedia: Registration Act 1704 ↗ · Wikipedia: Banishment Act 1697 (citing J. G. Simms, Irish Historical Studies, 1970) ↗ · Wikipedia: Mass rock ↗
On this site: Mass rocks, mapped
Historians disagree; enforcement depended on local magistrates.
The Penal laws article states the consensus as being that enforcement depended on the magistrates bringing or hearing a case, some rigorous, others liberal. Chief Baron Foster told Arthur Young in the 1770s that the Popery laws were ‘severe in the letter, but never executed’.
On the other side, the land laws had measurable effects: the Catholic share of land fell to around 5% on Young's figure (probably an underestimate, according to McGrath) and in 1778 only 1.5% of rent was paid to Catholics. Edmund Burke called the code ‘a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance’ for the ‘oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people’. McGrath, cited in the Popery Act article, says specific research on its effects is still lacking.
Sources: Wikipedia: Penal laws (Ireland) ↗ · Wikipedia: Popery Act 1704 (citing Simms 1960 and McGrath 2021) ↗
Presbyterians and other Dissenters were also excluded from office, and their marriages were not recognised.
The sacramental test in the 1704 Popery Act required office-holders to take communion in the Church of Ireland. It excluded Presbyterians as well: ten aldermen and ten burgesses had to leave Londonderry Corporation. Presbyterian marriages were not recognised by the state, and Presbyterian as well as Catholic children went to hedge schools. The test was lifted for Dissenters in 1780.
Sources: Wikipedia: Popery Act 1704 (citing Simms 1960 and McGrath 2021) ↗ · Wikipedia: Penal laws (Ireland) ↗ · Wikipedia: Hedge school ↗
It opened Parliament, but also cut the Irish electorate by more than four-fifths, and some bars lasted decades.
The 1829 act let Catholics sit in Parliament and hold most offices, but not those of Lord Lieutenant or Lord Chancellor of Ireland. A companion act raised the county vote threshold from forty shillings to £10, reducing the Irish electorate from 216,000 to 37,000; many of the tenant farmers who had elected Daniel O'Connell in Clare in 1828 lost the vote.
Religious tests at Trinity College Dublin lasted until 1873, and tithes to the established Church of Ireland until its disestablishment in 1869. The first Catholic Lord Lieutenant since 1685 was appointed in 1921.
Sources: Wikipedia: Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 ↗ · Wikipedia: Penal laws (Ireland) ↗
A series of laws passed by the Irish parliament mainly from 1695, after the Williamite War, restricting the religious, political and economic life of Catholics, and in part of Protestant Dissenters. The main ones were the Education Act 1695, the Banishment Act 1697, the Registration Act 1704, the Popery Acts of 1704 and 1709, and the Disfranchising Act of 1728.
Step by step: relief acts in 1771, 1778 (land), 1782 (bishops, schools), 1793 (the vote, Trinity, the bar, arms) and Catholic Emancipation in 1829, which opened Parliament. Some remaining provisions were removed later; the Government of Ireland Act 1920 ended any remaining religious penalties in Ireland.
Yes. It was one of the listed restrictions, to keep horses fit for war out of Catholic hands. It was relaxed in 1782.
Catholic teaching was against the law until 1782, but no hedge teacher is known to have been prosecuted after 1723, and hedge schools carried on long after they became legal.
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