After Limerick
than religious reasons. But the political reasons, if they ever indeed existed, soon disappeared, and the laws remained. At the same time England, from her own standpoint, acted foolishly by splitting the Protestant body, through refusing to tolerate any but one form of Protestantism.
The condition of Ireland after 1691 was, of course, miserable in the extreme. All the evils of oppression and tyranny, which had existed in the country after the Cromwellian wars again sprang into life. The Articles of Limerick had held out some hopes of treating the Catholics fairly, and William seems to have been possessed of a genuine spirit of toleration. But English prejudice and the fears of the more recent Protestant colonists in Ireland proved too strong for him, and from 1695 to 1710 the English Parliament and the ascendancy party in the English legislature were busy in creating and elaborating their Penal Laws against the Catholics. Most of the Roman Catholic gentry who had kept their estates after the Act of Settlement, or who had been reinstated by James II., were dispossessed, while the few who were allowed to retain their lands were stripped of all political and many civil rights, and left completely at the mercy of their Protestant enemies. The result was that
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