The Penal Code
In Ireland, the "Penal Laws" is the name given to the code of laws passed by the Protestant Parliament of Ireland which regulated the status of Roman Catholics through most of the eighteenth century. These laws are key to understanding the history of the period as well as the sectarian conflicts that still plague Northern Ireland.
Penal transportation to Australia (and later to Bermuda or Gibraltar) covered the years 1791 until 1853 when the sentence of penal transportation was commuted to a prison sentence in Ireland.
Although emigration from Ireland to America had gone on, spasmodically, from 1670 to 1715, yet in the latter year we find large numbers flying from all parts of Ireland, owing to the intolerance of the Penal Laws.
For most of the 17th century the continuing political influence of Irish Catholics, and the desire of successive monarchs to retain a free hand, had been sufficient to block attempts to pass anti-Catholic legislation similar to that in operation in England.
They were a series of enactments partially dismantling the penal laws. Historians disagree over how far Irish Protestant attitudes to Catholicism changed during the second half of the 18th century.
First introduced during 1796, the act imposed the death penalty (replaced in 1807 by transportation for life) on persons administering illegal oaths.
In 1695, shortly after the Siege of Limerick, Lord Capel summoned a Parliament to enact and re enact certain Penal laws.
he Irish Catholics were now crushed and dispirited; they were quite helpless, for their best men had gone to France; and all hope of resistance was at an end.
All sheriffs, justices of the peace, and other magistrates are hereby required to be diligent in putting the laws in force against all offenders in the above particulars in due execution.