An Gorta Mór: A Long Prelude Part II

No study of An Gorta Mór should ignore the Penal Laws and their impact on life, agriculture and the financial standing of the Catholics who represented the overwhelming majority of Ireland's population.

 

The Penal Laws were a series of discriminatory laws enacted in Ireland from the late 1500s through the 1800s to suppress Catholicism and promote The Church of Ireland as the state religion. We cannot list all such laws, nor can we explain how they morphed over time, but here are some examples:

- Catholics were forbidden to attend Mass, hold public office, practice law, or hold certain professions. - Catholic priests were banned from Ireland, and those who remained faced imprisonment or death. 

 - Catholics were unable to purchase or inherit land, and their landholdings were often confiscated and given to British aristocracy in what was called The Plantation of Ireland and which led to widespread poverty among the Catholic population. 

-Catholic land holdings were to be "gaveled" upon the death of their holder - meaning divided equally among all of their heirs. This combined with a quadrupling of Ireland's population from the 1700s to 1800s, and repeated division and subletting of landlords' holdings into smaller and smaller leased/rented plots, meant that Catholics were forced into subsistence farming for survival. It was common to reserve, a small portion of their plot, usually of the less fertile variety, for growing their own food. Often the majority of their plot, would be reserved for wheat or corn to be sold for rent money as would any livestock they were lucky enough to have. This of course excluded the cottiers whose meagre holdings fed the family and nothing more.