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The Popery Act (Penal Law) of 1704 required land held (typically in tenancy) by Roman Catholics to be divided equally between all the sons, both legitimate and illegitimate, on his death. In Ireland, this practice^[1], known as sub-division, continued by tradition until the middle of the nineteenth century.

The result was that by the 1840s, many farms had become so small that the only food source that could be grown in sufficient quantity to feed a family was potatoes. This was to have disastrous effects when, in the period 1847-49 potato blight struck, making much of the potatoes grown inedible. This period came to be known as the Great Famine and cost the lives of a million people.

Subsequently, a change in the law required that the tenancy go to only one legitimate son. With the wholescale deaths and massive emigration of the period, farm sizes had begun to increase, as surviving holdings were merged with neighbouring vacated ones. The prohibition of sub-division ensured that in normal circumstances they would not decrease in size any further.

A secondary effect of the prohibition of sub-division was that other sons, who previously inherited part of the family farm tenancy, instead was forced to seek employment elsewhere. Many emigrated. Many chose a route of entering a religious life, as a Roman Catholic priest, nun or monk, such options becoming available due to a re-organisation of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland under Cardinal Cullen from the 1850s. This influx of young men into the religious life, thanks to the disappearance of sub-division, in part explains the massive growth in clerical numbers in Ireland in the period.

Irish land holdings underwent further massive change in the period 1880s-1930s when a series^[2] of Land Acts - by the creation of the Irish Land Commission and Congested Districts Board for Ireland - broke up the previous large estates from which tenant farmers rented property and who were empowered by British and (later) Irish government grants and loans to buy their farms instead of renting them.

• Irish Land League

1. ^ It has been argued that this custom had existed to pre-Norman times and covered not merely land inheritance, but even inheritance of Irish kingships, where Irish monarchs and chieftains were not succeeded by their oldest son but by [one] family member elected by and from five generations of family members. The Penal Laws merely complicated issues such as tenancy, inheritance and the enforcement of the millennium-old tradition of equality among children. Such laws and customs were enforced in different ways, rigidly or otherwise, against different classes and religions, prior to the period in question.
2. ^ Land Acts

• First Irish Land Act 1870 : this had little if any practical effect.
• 1881 Irish Land Act : Gave tenants real security ("The Three Fs": Fair Rent, Fixity of Tenure and Free Sale). It was too little, too late: by this time the Irish were demanding full proprietorship.
• Wyndham's Land Purchase Act 1903: offered generous inducement to the landlords to sell their estates to a Land Commission who would then collect land annuities instead of rents.