Education Act 1695

The Education Act 1695 (7 Will. 3. c. 4 (I)), "An Act to restrain Foreign Education", was one of a series of Penal Laws enacted by the Parliament of Ireland to secure the Protestant Ascendancy in the wake of the Williamite War.<ref name="PIL">Template:Cite book</ref> It prohibited the Catholics from sending their children abroad to receive a Catholic education.

Section 1 ruled:<ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

At the same time, in order to promote Protestantism and the use of the English language among the Catholic, still largely Irish-speaking, majority, it sought to ensure that in Ireland all formal education would rest in the hands of members of the established Anglican communion.

Section 9 read:<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Template:BoxquoteIt further required that "every schoolmaster … conform to the Church of Ireland as it is now by law established", and that this conformity be certified by license from an Anglican bishop.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Subsequent developments

A result of the act's prohibitions was the proliferation in Ireland of so-called "hedge schools,"<ref>Tony Lyons, "The Hedge Schools of Ireland." History 24#6 (2016). pp 28-31 online Template:Webarchive</ref> small secretly convened classes meeting behind hedgerows or more frequently, as enforcement of the law relaxed, in barns and private homes. Children of "non-conforming" faiths (principally Catholic, but also Presbyterian) were given the rudiments of a primary education (sometimes in Irish, sometimes in English, or in both). Some teachers would also teach secondary studies including classical languages and literature. Some of those teachers were beneficiaries of a prohibited continental education; or, in the case of Presbyterians, a Scottish education.<ref>Daniel Corkery (1926), The Hidden Ireland: A Study of Gaelic Munster in the Eighteenth Century, pages 68-94.</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="McManus2002">Template:Cite book</ref>

Enforcement targeted Catholic schools run by religious orders, whose property was confiscated. But from 1723 no hedge teachers are known to have been prosecuted. The 1782, a reforming Irish Parliament ("Grattan's Parliament") passed the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1782 (21 & 22 Geo. 3. c. 24 (I)) which repealed the 1695 act, although it was still provided that Catholic schoolmasters had to take an oath of allegiance to the British Crown and could not teach any Protestant children.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Along with other laws of the former Irish parliament no longer enforced, the whole act was repealed by the Westminster Parliament by section 1 of, and the schedule to, the Statute Law Revision (Ireland) Act 1878 (41 & 42 Vict. c. 57).

External links

• Full Text of the act {"An act to restrain foreign education." In the digital collection Early English Books Online 2. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/B09278.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed December 7, 2024.}