Apart from allowing Sarsfield and his army to leave Ireland most of the promises made in the Treaty of Limerick were cancelled by the English parliament. The exclusively Protestant parliament in Dublin drew up and implemented a harsh series of anti-Catholic laws, with the prior arrangement and agreement of the king and his ministers.

In 1704 'The Act to Prevent the Further Growth of Popery' brought harsh penalties for all those who would not conform to the Anglican Church and way of life.

With no education system, no ordinations and no new clergy permitted to enter the country from abroad it was expected that the Roman Catholic clergy would die out within a generation.

English policy sought to ensure that Ireland would be destroyed, politically, militarily, and economically. The country was treated as a colony whose natural resources were there to be exploited.

The Penal Laws were in force when Nano Nagle was born (1718) and had not yet been removed when she died in 1784. Edmund Rice (1762-1844) lived to see the Catholic Relief Bill become law in 1829.