Our Legal Heritage

The first two Irish penal laws of 1695, for disarming papists and prohibiting ‘foreign education’, were acts which propagated the repression of Catholicism in Ireland.

Anybody who has arrived at a “24-hour” supermarket in Northern Ireland after 6pm on a Sunday will suspect that the closed doors have something to do with observing the Sabbath in Christian tradition. What you might not know is that this rule has its origins in the Sunday Observance Act 1695, pa

Pictured: Painting of Alice Kyteler by Paddy Shaw, which was gifted to the Kyteler’s Inn, Kilkenny. Dame Alice Kyteler was the first woman to be condemned for witchcraft in Ireland, having been tried for seven charges by the Bishop of Ossory, Richard de Ledrede in 1324.