ABSTRACT
Between 1695 and 1760, the Irish Parliament passed a series of anti-Catholic laws, referred to as ‘penal’ or ‘popery’ laws, to ensure that Protestant supremacy in Ireland would never again be threatened as it had been by the Catholic rebellion of 1641 and the Jacobite War. This legislation sought to safeguard and strengthen the Protestant interest in Ireland by eliminating Catholic access to political and social power. While efforts to convert Ireland’s Catholics to the Protestant Church of Ireland, the so-called ‘Established Church,’ were limited largely to the country’s remaining Catholic landowners, laws were passed banishing bishops and regular clergy. Faced with financial difficulties stemming from a loss of employment or to revenge themselves on their bishops, some ‘degraded’ priests conformed to the Established Church. While the Irish press in the eighteenth century was generally more concerned with foreign, rather than domestic, news, the public was interested in the scandalous and the sensational, particularly, it seems, when Catholics were involved.
