Penal law
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- This article is about penal law as understood in the English law system. For a more general article, see criminal law.
In some jurisdictions, such as Canada, penal law is distinct from criminal law even if it encompasses this last field. This is a result of federalism; only the federal Parliament has the legislative power to enact criminal law statutes, yet provinces can also attach penal dispositions to their non-criminal statutes so they will be respected.
More specifically, the Penal laws were a set of laws which punished nonconformism in the United Kingdom.
English statutes on religious nonconformity
In English history, penal law refers to a specific series of laws that sought to uphold the establishment of the Church of England against Protestant nonconformists and Roman Catholics, by imposing various forfeitures, civil penalties, and civil disabilities upon these dissenters. Some examples of these laws are:
- the law of praemunire, 14th century
- the series of Test Acts
- Conventicle Act 1664
- Five Mile Act 1665
- Act of Uniformity
- Education Act 1695
- Disarming Act 1695
- Marriage Act 1697
- Banishment Act 1697
- Registration Act 1704
- Popery Act 1704 and 1709
- Occasional Conformity Act 1711
- Disenfranchising Act 1728
In
See article Penal Laws (Ireland)
The Penal Laws were introduced into Ireland in the year 1695 (though had been in use in other countries before this). They had a pronounced effect, disenfranchising the majority of the Irish population, who were Roman Catholic or Presbyterian and in favour of the much smaller official Church of Ireland. Though the laws affected adherents of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (who were concentrated in Ulster), its principal victims were members of the Roman Catholic Church, meaning over three quarters of the people on the island. The British had punished the faith of the overwhelming majority of the "mere Irish" (in contemporary English, 'mere' meant 'pure' or 'fully').
The laws were eventually repealled largely due to Irish political agitation organised under Daniel O'Connell in the 1820s, but the effects of the laws, in terms of sectarianism between Catholics and Protestants can still be seen, particularly in Northern Ireland, today.
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