The Later Penal Laws

When fire and sword had failed to suppress the Irish race new means to that end must be found. So the fertile mind of the conqueror invented the Penal Laws. The object of the Penal Laws was threefold ;

1) To deprive the Catholics of all civil life
2) To reduce them to a condition of most extreme and brutal ignorance
3) To dissociate them from the soil
The Penal Laws enacted or re-enacted in the new era succeeding the siege of Limerick, when under the pledged faith and honour of the English crown, the Irish Catholics were to be "protected in the free and unfettered exercise of their religion", provided amongst other things that :

Things Forbidden :

1. The Irish Catholic was forbidden the exercise of his religion,
   
2. He was forbidden to receive education.
   
3. He was forbidden to enter a profession.
   
4. He was forbidden to hold public office.
   
5. He was forbidden to engage in trade or commerce.
   
6. He was forbidden to live in a corporate town or within five miles thereof.
   
7. He was forbidden to own a horse of greater value than five pounds.
   
8. He was forbidden to purchase land.
   
9. He was forbidden to lease land.
   
10. He was forbidden to vote.
    
11. He was forbidden to keep any arms for his protection.
    
12. He was forbidden to hold a life annuity.
    
13. He could not be guardian to a child.
    
14. He could not attend catholic worship.
    
15. He could not himself educate his child.
    

The law soon came to recognise an Irishman in Ireland only for the purpose of repressing him.
The Volunteer movement in the 1780’s first began to take the edge off Protestant prejudice. In the year 1793, an Act was passed relieving the Catholics of many of their disabilities - in theory at least. Another thirty-six years were to elapse before the next step was taken, under compulsion from the O’Connell agitation, and the Act known as Catholic Emancipation made law.