Catholics under the Penal Laws

In 2016 Professor McBride was awarded a Leverhulme Major Research Award to produce a study of Catholic Ireland under the penal laws. Much of the research has been carried out in Rome, where a number of exceptionally rich archives have never been properly exploited. Like the Great Famine and the Easter Rising, the persecution suffered by Irish Catholics during the ‘Penal Times’ (c. 1690-1790) is a central component of the Irish national story. Not a single major book has been devoted to the subject, however, partly because the source materials are so widely scattered, and involve so many linguistic and technical challenges. In 2017-18 Professor McBride spent eight months immersed in letters and reports from Irish priests preserved in the Vatican Secret Archives, in Propaganda Fide, where the records for missionary territories are kept, in St. Isidore’s College, the Biblioteca Corsini, and the Holy Office of the Inquisition. He hopes to return to Rome when travel restrictions end and archival visits are easier. The book, now half-written, will be entitled The Secret History of Catholic Ireland: Persecution, Survival and the Penal Laws, 1695-1775.

Versions of chapters have been presented to the following audiences:

• ‘Why the History of the Penal Laws has yet to be Written’, Italy/Ireland Seminar, University of Notre Dame Global Gateway, Rome, 18 June 2017.
• ‘The Struggle for Ireland’s Soul: Catholics under the Penal Laws’, Annual Hibernian Lecture, University of Notre Dame, Indiana, 22 September 2017.
• ‘Catholic Ireland in the Penal Times’, Thomas Flatley Lecture, Boston College, 26 September 2017.
• ‘Penal Times: Irish Catholics in the Eighteenth Century’, Irish Association of Professional Historians Lecture, 2018
• ‘Irish Catholics and the Penal Laws’, Plenary Lecture, American Conference of Irish Studies, University College Cork, 18 June 2018.
• ‘The Making of the Penal Laws’, University of Notre Dame Accelerator Programme, London, 6 July 2018.
• ‘The Secret History of Catholic Ireland: Views from the Roman Archives’, Graduate Seminar in History, 1680-1850, University of Oxford, 30 Oct 2018.
• ‘The Brullaughan Affair: Scandal and Reform in the Irish Catholic Church, 1737-1749’, Princess Grace Library Symposium on Eighteenth-Century Ireland, Monaco, 19-21 October 2018.
• ‘The Brullaughan Affair: Scandal and Reform in the Irish Catholic Church, 1737-1749’, University College Dublin, History Seminar, 7 February 2019.