The act was one of several proposed to deal with what the Protestant Ascendancy viewed as the barbarous practices of the Gaelic Irish.

The committee for preparing acts (under Poynings' Law) on 26 July 1634 ordered the Attorney General and Solicitor-General to "make a draught of one or more Acts to be passed for restraining the barbaric custom of plowing by the tail, of pulling the wool off living sheep, of burning corn in the straw, of barking of standing trees, of cutting young trees by stealth, of forcing cows to give milk, and of building houses without chimneys".

[1] In 1614 the Dublin Castle administration suggested the fines should be used to pay for better ploughs, or replaced with corporal punishment.

A bill to suspend the 1635 act for ten years was transmitted and approved by Charles I in 1641,[2] but never enacted as the 1641 Rebellion began a period of disruption.

[3] British Whig writers of the 1830s alleged that ploughing by the tail was still practised in the West of Ireland at that time.