The Penal Code
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In 1695, shortly after the Siege of Limerick, Lord Capel summoned a Parliament to enact and re enact certain Penal laws. The object of these laws was threefold:
(1) To deprive the Catholics of all civil life
(2) To reduce them to a condition of ignorance
(3) To dissociate them from the soil
The following is a list of this new Penal code given to Mac Manus 'The Story of the Irish Race.'
The Irish Catholic was forbidden the exercise of his religion
He/She was forbidden to receive education
He/She was forbidden to enter a profession
He/She was forbidden to hold public office
He/She was forbidden to engage in trade and commerce
He/She was forbidden to live in a corporate town or within five miles thereof
He/She was forbidden to own a horse of greater value than five pounds
He/She was forbidden to purchase or lease land
He/She was forbidden to accept a mortgage on land, or security for a loan
He/She was forbidden to vote
He/She was forbidden to keep any arms for his protection
He/She was forbidden to hold a life annuity
He/She was forbidden to buy land from a Protestant
He/She was forbidden to inherit land from a Protestant
He/She was forbidden to receive a gift of land from a Protestant
He/She was forbidden to rent any land that was worth mre than thirty shillings a year
He/She was forbidden to reap from his land any profit exceeding a third of the rent
He/She could not be a guardian to a child
He/She could not, when dying, leave his infant children under Catholic guardianship
He/She could not attend Catholic worship
He/She was compelled by the law to attend Protestant worship
He/She could not, himself, educate his child
He/She could not employ a teacher to come to his child
He/She could not send his child abroad to receive education
Any Catholic gentleman's child who became a Protestant, could at once take possession of his father's property
Any Catholic priest who came to the country would be hanged
The priest was banned
The school master was banned
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