Irish farm subdivision

The Popery Act (Penal Law) of 1704 required land owned by Roman Catholics to be divided equally between all a landholder's sons, both legitimate and illegitimate, on his death.

On the eve of the Great Famine the population of Ireland had risen to 8 million, most people living on ever-smaller farms and depending on the potato as a staple diet.

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.

From the 1870s the practice arose of passing a holding to one child only, which with the benefits of the Irish Land Acts, meant that the survivors prospered.

This influx of young people into religious life, thanks to the disappearance of sub-division, in part, explains the massive growth in clerical numbers in Ireland in the period.