50 Protestants Take Hold

During this period, the Anglican social elite dominated Ireland. They comprised about 25 percent of the population, but they owned most of the property and controlled law, politics, and society. For the island’s native Catholic majority, however, it was a time of poverty and oppression.

The Treaty of Limerick of 1691 ended the violent wars that had ravaged Ireland in the seventeenth century. In the treaty, King William promised that Catholics would retain the right to practice their religion, and he gave the general impression that they would be treated fairly once they gave up their arms. Unfortunately, this proved not to be true. The king’s true intention was to install a ruling class of Protestant landowners who would be loyal to the British Crown.

The victorious English government seized Catholic land to give to its Protestant supporters. The same thing had happened under the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I, and Cromwell. This time, however, the English were playing for keeps.

Members of the Protestant upper class had very mixed feelings about their new home and their place in it. Aristocrats who had moved from England felt as if they were living on a frontier, almost like colonists in the New World or in Africa. Some of them definitely didn’t like Ireland and spent as little time there as possible; these were known as absentee landlords, who lived off the proceeds of Irish land and labor but contributed nothing themselves.

But Ireland simply wasn’t the place to be if you wanted to further a career in England, and this frustrated many gentlemen. Jonathan Swift in particular hated living in Ireland. At the same time, he was quite conscious of the problems facing Ireland, most of which were brought on by its colonial status. The older he got, the more he identified with his adoptive homeland, and this was the inspiration for many of his more biting critiques, such as his “A Modest Proposal.”

The now-Protestant Parliament enacted a series of infamous penal laws designed to limit Catholic power by curtailing Catholics’ economic and social rights. Catholics were not allowed to bear arms, send their children to other countries for school, acquire land from Protestants, or make wills. Instead of deciding for themselves how their children would inherit, Catholics had to divide their property equally among all their sons, which resulted in increasingly small farms. There was an insidious catch, however—if the oldest son converted to the Protestant Church of Ireland, he inherited everything.

Irish clergy were expelled from the country. The Irish were not allowed to maintain schools, and in 1728 they lost the right to vote. All Irish culture and music was banned.

The penal laws didn’t outlaw Catholicism, but they did make life very difficult for Catholics. The purpose of the laws was to keep Catholics from achieving enough wealth or legal power to challenge their Protestant rulers, and in that they were successful. It took more than 100 years before Catholics were able to mount any serious opposition to their subjugated state.

The penal laws didn’t just hit Catholics; Ulster was home to a number of Scottish Presbyterians (the Scotch-Irish) who also refused to accept the strictures of the Church of Ireland, and they too lost a good deal of political power. When push came to shove, though, the Ulster Presbyterians generally joined forces with their fellow Protestants against the Catholics.