The Penal Laws To The Act Of Union
In 1641, 59 percent of the land in Ireland was owned by Catholics. In 1688, the figure was 22 percent, and by 1703 it was fourteen percent. The Protestant population, about one-tenth of the total, lived in fear of an uprising by the vast majority of dispossessed and embittered Catholics. In order to keep the native Catholics in a position of powerlessness, a number of Acts were passed, collectively known as the penal laws . Not only were Catholics forbidden to vote or join the army or navy, but it became illegal to educate a child in the Catholic faith; they could not teach, open their own schools or send their children to be educated abroad. Catholics could neither buy land nor inherit it, other than by the equal division of estates between all sons. There were vast rewards for turning Protestant; a male convert was entitled to all his brothers' inheritance, a female to her husband's property. Irish language, music and literature were banned, as was the saying of the Mass. The intention was to crush the identity of the Irish people through the suppression of their culture. However, clandestine "hedge schools" developed where outlawed Catholic teachers taught Irish language and music; Mass was said in secret, often at night in the open countryside, and although the erosion of the culture had begun, for the time being it remained strong (it wasn't until the devastating effects of the Famine that the culture went into serious decline).
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