Harsh penal laws* were drawn up by the Protestant Irish Parliament which, under Poyning's Law were approved by the king and his council.  In 1720, English control of the Irish Parliament was strengthened by the passing of a further law which allowed for the English Parliament to pass legislation, binding on Ireland, without the Irish parliament's approval.  The Penal Laws required members of Parliament to subscribe to a declaration against Roman Catholic doctrines and banished Catholic bishops.  In time, the purely religious elements of the penal laws fell into disuse but other areas of legislation remained in place.

Catholics were excluded from Parliament and from voting, from the armed forces, from government service, from the legal profession, from teaching or maintaining schools and from sending their children abroad for education.  They could not carry arms, own a horse worth more than £5 or buy land.  Leases were restricted to thirty-one years.  The Irish language was suppressed in commerce and education.  Catholic landowners who had inherited their lands had to divide it equally among their male heirs unless they became members of the Church of Ireland in which case ail the land would be given to the eldest son.  Presbyterians were also affected: they could not vote or bear arms and their marriages were not recognised by the state.  They were effectively excluded from the civic service and were required to pay tithes to the established Church of Ireland.

These laws had wide-ranging effects.  Many Presbyterians and Catholics who could afford to do so emigrated to America or to Europe.  Later  in  the  eighteenth  century  the  ideals  of  the French revolution inspired many Presbyterians and Catholics as well as a few members of the ascendancy to aspire to an Irish Republic in which Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter would be united under a fair and equal system of government.  Throughout the century, however, the rural Catholic population became increasingly poor as repeated land division rendered many holdings untenable.  This was to have catastrophic results a century later.  Deprived of political representation and social status the Catholic population looked to their priests for political as well as religious guidance, making the parish priest the centre of Catholic social life.

Ireland was now an island of marked contrasts.  Dublin and other cities enjoyed considerable prosperity.  Under Grattan’s leadership the Irish Parliament gained independence from the English Parliament, though not from the crown in 1782, with Poyning’s Law finally being set to one side.  The idea of the Irish Nation captured the imagination of the Anglo-Irish.

It was, however, a limited idea of nationhood.  While some looked towards eventual repeal of the Penal laws and full emancipation* for Presbyterians and Catholics, many saw Ireland purely in terms of Anglo Irish society.  Two movements towards the end of the century shattered this dream.

In Ulster the old rivalry over land re-emerged in a series of violent encounters between Protestant and Catholic mobs.  Acts of terrorism were conducted on both sides while armed militia were secretly and sometimes openly formed.  Catholic “Defenders” and Protestant “Orangemen” fought skirmishes which later folk memory exalted to the status of battles.  The conflict between the native Irish and the descendants of planters with its old feelings of resentment and defensiveness was, once more, given new life.  At the same time, some idealistic Presbyterians and Catholics actively promoted an Irish Republic.  The leaders of this movement never quite secured the unity they needed to make their aspirations become a reality.  An ill-fated rebellion in 1798 failed to gain enough popular support except in the counties of Antrim and Down in Ulster where Presbyterians were to the fore and in Wexford in the South where the rebellion rapidly descended into sectarian atrocities on both the rebel and government sides.  The rebellion was ruthlessly crushed and most of its leaders executed.  Out of this a new tradition of republicanism was born with “armed struggle” an inherent part of its political philosophy.  The net result of all of this was that the Parliament in Ireland was dissolved and a new United Kingdom was formed with a single Parliament in London and a single established Church of England and Ireland.

* penal laws - laws imposing penalties, especially in matters of religion.

** emancipation - the act of setting free from bondage or disability of any kind; the state of being set free.