The revival of the convocation

The victories of King William III in 1690-1 came as a great relief to the protestants of Ireland, who then made up about a quarter of the total population. The Jacobite interlude had convinced them once and for all that Roman Catholics were not to be trusted, and that if power were ever to fall into their hands, protestants would be eliminated in much the same way as they had recently been in France. William III was not personally intolerant, and wanted to ensure that the defeated Catholic population was treated honourably, but his protestant supporters in Ireland were less generous. Against the king's wishes, they insisted that Catholics should be excluded from parliament (by means of an oath which no Catholic could swear) and have their lands confiscated unless they conformed to the established church. Over the next several years, these initial measures would be tightened up and extended further, in a hotch-potch of legislation collectively known today as the ‘penal laws'. The precise impact of this legislation has been hotly debated by modern historians, who are generally inclined to see it as much less effective than nineteenth-century nationalist propagandists claimed. Certainly there can be no doubt that it did little, if anything, to reduce the Catholic presence in the country, which has remained somewhere between seventy-five and eighty per cent of the total population throughout the modern period. On the other hand, it has also been claimed that the penal legislation had an adverse psychological effect on the Catholic population regardless of the actual implementation of the laws. This may well be true, although by its very nature the case is difficult to document. For different reasons, it is equally hard to say what effect the penal laws had on the Church of Ireland, though quite possibly they were no less damaging to the establishment than they were to those against whom they were formally addressed.

Religious conversions obtained by coercion are almost invariably suspect, and protestant societies were less willing than Catholic (or Islamic) ones to follow up penal laws with physical force. Protestantism took many different forms, and the established church could not claim absolute authority for its beliefs and practices in the way that Rome could and did.