Page 264 - Demo

264 Stephen Dunford: The Journey of The IrIsh
It was once said ‘Perhaps no other country in the world suffered as did Ireland during the centuries for religion’s sake.’ The persecution which began in earnest in the 16th century, during the reign of Henry V111, reached its worst during the three-quarters of a century succeeding the Treaty of Limerick; so much so, that the influential Protestant historian and politician,William Hartpole Lecky, calls the eighteenth century in Ireland “One of the blackest pages in the history of persecution.”
Despite the desires of King William, the Treaty of Limerick, the Treaty by which the English officially bound themselves “upon the faith and honour of the British crown” was quickly dishonoured and broken.
As we referenced previously, in December, 1691, the English Parliament refused to sanc- tion the Treaty except on condition that no person would be allowed to sit in either of the two houses constituting the Irish Parliament, unless he had taken the Oath of Supremacy and signed a declaration against transubstantiation.
Unsurprisingly, the ruthless example set by the English Parliament was speedily followed by the sister assembly in Ireland, and when the Irish Parliament met in 1692 it framed an oath to be taken by all its members, the terms of which were such as no Catholic could subscribe to. This proceeding was a gross violation of Article 1X of the Treaty of Limerick which provided that “The oath to be administered to such Roman Catholics as submit to their majesties’ government shall be the oath aforesaid and no other.”- “I, A. B., do solemnly promise and swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to their majesties, King William and Queen Mary; so help me God”.
But worse measures were to follow with the introduction of the the infamous and savage Penal Laws.
Known colloquially as ‘the Laws that did the work of the sword,’ the Penal Laws came into being in 1695, and were amended in 1704, 1709, and again in 1727. Blatantly anti- Catholic and with a nefarious severity heretofore unseen even in those brutal times, the laws allowed the authorities to balance one religious group against another, so that by the use of the age-old stratagem of ‘divide and rule’ they could maintain their hold over the country. That great Irish Protestant statesman, philosopher, and historian, Edmund Burke, said of these Penal Laws that they were “As well fitted for the oppression and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.”
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