Page 265 - Demo

Chapter eight 265
The aforementioned Willian Hartpole Lecky was of the opinion that the objects of the Penal Laws were three-fold:
1. To deprive the Catholics of all civil life.
2. To reduce them to a condition of extreme and brutal ignorance.
3. To dissociate them from the soil. (That is, to take away from them any little of the land of Ireland that was still in their possession.)
What follows are just some of the many disabilities placed upon the Irish Catholics as a result of these terrible laws.
They were forbidden to excerise their religion; forbidden to vote; forbidden to engage in trade, or commerce; forbidden to live within ive miles of a corporate town; forbidden to own a horse of greater value than £5; forbidden to hold public oice; forbidden to enter a profession; forbidden to purchase land; forbidden to receive a gift of land from a Protestant; forbidden to inherit land from a Protestant; forbidden to inherit anything from a Protestant; forbidden to rent any land that was worth more than thirty shillings a year; forbidden to reap, from whatever little land they had, any proit in excess of one-third of the land; forbid- den to have their children educated by a Catholic; forbidden to send their children abroad to be educated; forbidden, if dying, to leave their child under Catholic guardianship; forbid- den to attend any form of Catholic rite; ordered to attend Protestant worship; ordered to pay dues, or Tithes, to the Protestant clergy.
If the son of a Catholic chose to turn Protestant, he would inherit all of his father’s prop- erty; if his wife turned Protestant she would inherit all her husband’s property. Those caught educating their children at home were hit by sometimes ruineous ines, while those found to have sent their children abroad to be educated had all their property coniscated. Catholic priests were again outlawed and hunted and a price placed on their heads, and once again, a reward of £5 was paid to anyone who brought in the head of a priest, a teacher, or a wolf- the three beasts which were to be extirpated in Ireland. Yet, if a Catholic priest conformed to the Protestant faith, he was provided with an annual salary of £30.
“During the prevalence of the Penal Code, the music of Ireland was made to share in the fate of its people. Both were alike shut out from the pale of civilised life; and seldom anywhere but in the huts of the proscribed could the sweet voice of the songs of other days be heard. Even of that class, the itinerant harpers, among whom for