Kinlore
1690, and the laws that followed

The Battle of the Boyne and the Penal Laws

William of Orange defeats the Catholic James II at the Boyne, and the victors pass laws that shut Catholics out of power for more than a century.

  • The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: The Catholic Question 1690–1830 — Thomas Bartlett, Gill and Macmillan (1992)
  • Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
  • The Oxford Companion to Irish History — S. J. Connolly (ed.), Oxford University Press (2002)

Well established religionconflictidentityland

Part of the story of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

After the Catholic James II lost the English throne in 1688, he tried to win it back through Ireland, where most of the population, and his viceroy’s army, were Catholic. On 1 July 1690 (in the old calendar, 11 July in today’s) William III defeated him at the River Boyne near Drogheda. The war ended with defeat at Aughrim in 1691 and the Treaty of Limerick.

  • Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
  • The Oxford Companion to Irish History — S. J. Connolly (ed.), Oxford University Press (2002)

The Protestant-only Irish parliament then passed the Penal Laws, mostly between 1695 and the 1720s. Catholics were barred from parliament, the vote, the professions and the army; they could not buy land or take long leases; Catholic schools and bishops were banned. By one often-quoted late eighteenth-century estimate, Catholics owned only about 5% of the land.

  • The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: The Catholic Question 1690–1830 — Thomas Bartlett, Gill and Macmillan (1992)
  • The Oxford Companion to Irish History — S. J. Connolly (ed.), Oxford University Press (2002)
Enforcement was patchy, and historians now stress that the laws aimed mainly at Catholic property and power rather than at stamping out the faith. Still, memories of Mass said in secret at “Mass rocks” and of illegal “hedge schools” became central to Irish identity, as did the idea of the “Protestant Ascendancy”. Presbyterians also faced discrimination. Most of the laws were repealed between 1778 and Catholic Emancipation in 1829.
  • The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: The Catholic Question 1690–1830 — Thomas Bartlett, Gill and Macmillan (1992)
  • Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)

How it's seen
Orange and unionist tradition

The Boyne secured Protestant liberty and constitutional monarchy against Catholic absolutism, a victory for "civil and religious liberty" worth celebrating every year.

  • Modern Ireland 1600–1972 — R. F. Foster, Allen Lane (1988)
  • The Oxford Companion to Irish History — S. J. Connolly (ed.), Oxford University Press (2002)

Irish Catholic and nationalist memory

The defeat that sealed Catholic dispossession, followed by laws meant to keep the majority poor and powerless; the parades are often felt as triumphalism.

  • The Fall and Rise of the Irish Nation: The Catholic Question 1690–1830 — Thomas Bartlett, Gill and Macmillan (1992)
  • Ireland: A History — Thomas Bartlett, Cambridge University Press (2010)

Why it matters today

Ireland

The Boyne is still celebrated by Orange Order parades every "Twelfth" of July in Northern Ireland, and those parades can still raise tensions. For Catholics, the Penal Laws are remembered through "Mass rocks" and "hedge schools", and they welded Catholicism to Irish identity.

Northern Ireland

"King Billy" on his white horse still adorns gable walls, and the Twelfth of July, with its bonfires, bands and Orange parades, is the biggest day in the unionist calendar and a public holiday. Disputes over parade routes through nationalist areas, such as Drumcree in the 1990s, have repeatedly brought Northern Ireland to the brink.