The earliest educational establishments in
Ireland of which we have any record were the
Bardic Schools that were founded in preChristian
times and which produced poets,
historians and legal experts. However, these
were never aimed at mass elementary
education but rather they focussed on the
training of small cultural and ecclesiastical
elites (McGrath 1979). Thereafter, one has to
wait for nearly two millennia for the State’s
(unseemly) venture into the field of education
in Ireland: one that was intended to subdue the
hostile, Catholic population. The situation that
faced Henry VIII in the immediate aftermath of
his succession to the English throne, and the
subsequent break from Rome, was a politically
unreliable, culturally and linguistically divided
Irish colony in which many of the English
settlers appear to have gone native (Crowley
2005). Henry VIII introduced, in 1537, an Act
for the English Order, Habit and Language
which, among other things, established
parochial or parish schools so that the “English
tongue, habit and order be henceforth used by
all men”. He therefore considered the
education of Irish children as an important
element in the process of cultural colonialism.
As was subsequently and officially noted, the
role of this statute was “simply to make the use
of the English language and habit supersede
that of the Irish” (Commissioners of Irish
Education Inquiry, 1825: 91). A subsequent
Act for the Erection of Free-Schools in 1570
required the establishment of a free school
within every diocese, with the schoolmaster
being an Englishman, or of English birth in
Ireland. The preamble to this legislation
3
complained about the heinous offences
committed by the Irish youth uneducated in
English ways! However the obligation for
funding these schools being placed on the
clergy ensured that the legislation would not be
widely implemented. Of course, schools did
exist around that time but, as O’Hegarty (1952)
notes, they were all Protestant schools, and
were all, to a greater or lesser degree, carried
on with the object of converting Catholic
children to Protestantism. As a result, Irish
Catholics did not avail of them to any large
extent and Dowling (1968) argues that these
schools were limited in scope and failed to
make an impact on the country. This assertion
is confirmed by the 1695 Act to Restrain
Foreign Education, which noted that previous
legislation had “not had the desired effect” but
that all statutes would “henceforth be strictly
observed and put into execution”.
Irish hedge schools flourished in the early
18th century as a consequence of the Williamite
War fought throughout Europe between 1689
and 1691, which resulted in the defeat of the
Catholic King, James II by William, Prince of
Orange. In Ireland, this defeat heralded the
introduction of “laws against popery”, which
were collectively known as the ‘Penal Laws’.
These represented a collection of laws with a
religious bias against Roman Catholics, but
also against all who were not members of the
Church of Ireland. The Penal Laws should be
viewed in the context of an era in which it was
felt that a man’s religion was a guide to his
political attitudes. Not surprisingly, religious
tolerance was not a widely known or accepted
concept in the seventeenth century. Thus,
Johnson (1974: 18) argues that the purpose of
the Penal Laws was to “establish a social,
political and, to a considerable extent, an
economic monopoly in the hands of a narrow
group [that] differed from the overwhelming
majority of the population.” Moreover, the
famous Irish orator, Edmund Burke described
them as a “machine of wise and elaborate
contrivance, and as well fitted for the
oppression, impoverishment and degradation
of a people, and the debasement in them of
human nature itself as ever proceeded from the
perverted ingenuity of man” (Burke 1792,
quoted in Marshall and Woods 1968-69: 277).
Among the first of the penal laws to be
enacted were those against Catholic education.
The 1695 Act to Restrain Foreign Education
contained provisions designed to prevent Irish
youths going abroad to be “trained up in any
priory, abby, nunnery, popish university,
college or school or house of Jesuits or
priests”. The intention of this legislation is
abundantly clear and its drafting reflected the
fact that around that time a number of colleges
for Irish catholic students had already been
established throughout Europe, in countries
that were perceived as being hostile to
England. Those found in violation of the law
would forfeit all their property and an
attractive reward of £200 was available to
informers. Furthermore, the legislation
provided that “no person whatsoever of the
popish religion shall publickly teach school, or
instruct youth in learning, or in private houses
teach or instruct youth in learning within this
realm”, with the offending persons being
subject to a penalty of £20 and also being
committed to prison for three months for every
such offence. In justifying this legislation the
Act stated that “papish" schools were a major
reason why the Irish did not “conform
themselves to the laws and statutes of this
realm, and of their not using the English habit
or language”. Additional legislation, aimed
primarily against Catholics in Ireland, was
introduced under Queen Anne in 1703 (An Act
to Prevent the Further Growth of Popery),
which decreed that, on death, Catholic estates
must be divided among a man’s children; and
this facilitated the automatic subdivision of
land, with average farm size getting smaller
and smaller and, presumably, less and less
efficient and profitable.
Since the Penal Laws forbade Catholics from
participating in an educational system
acceptable to them, the development of hedge
schools was an automatic and understandable
response in a quest to (illegally) educate young
Catholics (Ó hÓgartaigh and Ó hÓgartaigh
2006). Logan (1990) observes that the
inability of most adults to read or write around
that period was one of the striking features of
Irish society; and this meant that if children
were to acquire even basic literacy and other
skills it would not be from their parents. The
name ‘hedge school’ was assigned to these
places of learning because the holding of
classes was, initially, in remote hedgerows,
since substantial rewards were offered to those
who gave information about the schools and
teachers could be imprisoned and fined if they
were discovered (Dowling 1968). However, it
may well be that, generally speaking, the Penal
4
Laws were not strictly enforced, due to the
remote locations of many of these schools.
Furthermore, from the mid 18th century more
settled political conditions prevailed within
Ireland. Nevertheless, the fact that the Penal
Laws existed, which prohibited an educational
system acceptable to the (Catholic) majority,
led to the continued existence of hedge
schools.