Reprint of first edition. Sir Henry Parnell, later Lord Congleton, was an Anglo-Irish parliamentarian and treasury official sympathetic to the plight of Irish Catholics. Enhanced by its extensive quotation of source records, this book traces the history of laws against "religious non-conformists" between 1689 and 1801. Though certainly partisan, it is valuable for Parnell's perspective and first-hand knowledge of several crucial events of the 1780s and '90s.