Roman Catholic Relief Bills - Ireland

Ireland

When Elizabeth became Queen of England, her Irish deputy was ordered "to set up the worship of God in Ireland as it is in England". The Irish Parliament soon enacted that all candidates for office should take the Oath of Supremacy; and by the Act of Uniformity the Protestant liturgy was prescribed in all churches. For a time these Acts were mildly enforced. But when the pope excommunicated the queen, and the Spanish king made war on her, and both in attempting to dethrone her found that the Irish Catholics were ready to be instruments and allies, the latter, regarded as rebels and traitors by the English sovereign and her ministers, were persecuted and hunted down.

James II of England insisted on Catholic predominance and soon picked a quarrel with his Protestant subjects which resulted in the loss of his crown. The war which followed in Ireland was terminated by the Treaty of Limerick, and had its terms been kept, the position of the Catholics would have been at least tolerable. Granted such privileges as they had enjoyed in the reign of Charles II, with an Oath of Allegiance substituted for the Oath of Supremacy, and with a promise of a further relaxation of the penal enactments in force, they could practice their religion without hindrance, sit in Parliament and vote for its members, engage in trade and in the learned professions, and fill all civil and military offices; and they were protected in the possession of the lands they held. William III was in favour of these, and even more generous terms.

The Treaty was not ratified. For more than a quarter of a century the work of outlawry and proscription was continued by an exclusively Protestant Parliament at Dublin. An Irish Judge declared in 1760 that the law did not recognize the existence of an Irish Catholic, and, assuredly the penal code had placed him effectually beyond its pale. It branded Catholics with proscription and inferiority, struck at every form of Catholic activity, and checked every symptom of Catholic enterprise. It excluded them from Parliament, from the corporations, from the learned professions, from civil and military offices, from being executors, or administrators, or guardians of property, from holding land under lease, or from owning a horse worth £5. They were deprived of arms and of the franchise, denied education at home and punished if they sought it abroad, forbidden to observe Catholic Holy Days, to make pilgrimages, or to continue to use the old monasteries as the burial places of their dead. For the clergy there was no mercy, nothing but prison, exile, or death.