> The Catholics wore green, the Protestants wore Orange.. Information I > have remembered since High School when I was a teacher's aide for a > History teacher who was born and raised in Ireland. > > Con
That's not the whole story - Read on ... http://www.law.umn.edu/irishlaw/ LAWS IN IRELAND FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF POPERY commonly known as the PENAL LAWS >From the consolidation of English power in 1691 until well into the nineteenth century, religion was the gulf which divided the colonial rulers of Ireland from the native majority. This sectarian division resulted from deliberate government policy. It reached into political, economic, and personal life, through a series of statutes known as the Penal Laws. This site contains the texts of these laws. BACKGROUND OF THE PENAL LAWS In Ireland, the "Penal Laws" is the name given to the code of laws passed by the Protestant Parliament of Ireland which regulated the status of Roman Catholics through most of the eighteenth century. These laws are key to understanding the history of the period as well as the sectarian conflicts that still plague Northern Ireland. The declared purpose of the Irish Penal Laws, like that of the apartheid laws of recent South African history, was to disenfranchise the native majority from all power, both political and economic. Unlike apartheid, the disabilities created by the Penal Laws were aimed not at a particular race or ethnic group, but at the adherents of a particular religion. The ideal was to entice the colonised Irish into wholesale conversion to Protestantism. A Catholic could avoid the oppressive effects of these laws by conversion, although the statutes went to great lengths to ferret out insincere conversions and backsliders. By deliberately defining the haves and the have-nots, the politically powerful and the oppressed, on the basis of religion, these statutes had a profound effect, not only on the eighteenth century, but on the subsequent history of Ireland to the present day. -- Jay P Hailey ~Meow!~ MSNIM - jayphailey ; AIM -jayphailey03; ICQ - 37959005 HTTP://jayphailey.8m.com "That parrot is definitely deceased" _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list Libnw@immosys.com List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
