It may be that at first, the English Government believed that deporting priests would be an adequate solution to the Catholic problem (this was certainly to be King James I's view later): if so they quickly decided that harsher measures were necessary.

The justification for rigorous enforcement of the statute was that during the war with Spain, the loyalty of all English Catholics, and especially priests, must be regarded as suspect.

Charged in 1586 with harbouring priests, (among them Francis Ingleby) she refused to plead to her indictment (probably to shield her children from being interrogated or tortured), and was executed by the gruesome[according to whom?]

The Stuart dynasty which succeeded her was in general disposed to religious toleration,[8] and the Treaty of London of 1604 which ended the Anglo-Spanish War removed one obvious justification for persecution, as it could no longer be argued that English Catholics were potential agents for a hostile foreign power.

Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury, the dominant figure in the English government from 1603 to 1612, detested the Jesuits, but admitted that he had qualms about enforcing the statute of 1584 against other priests, most of whom he thought were loyal enough at heart.

[9] This tolerant attitude made it impossible to enforce the Penal Laws against the upper classes: in 1613 the justices of the peace of Northamptonshire remarked casually that due to their high regard for Sir Thomas Brudenell (later the 1st Earl of Cardigan), they had repeatedly dismissed charges of recusancy against him and numerous other members of his family.

The statute of 1584 was regarded as effectively a dead letter, until the outbreak of the Popish Plot in the autumn of 1678 led to its unexpected revival.

Despite the King's known Catholic sympathies, the public atmosphere of hysteria was such that he had no choice but to revert to strict enforcement of the Penal Laws.

Even during the Popish Plot, a number of priests were acquitted on that ground, although the Irish Franciscan Father Charles Mahoney was executed in 1679, despite his plea that at the time of his arrest, he was passing through England on his way to France.

[12] During the Plot pleas for clemency were generally rejected out of hand, but in a few cases, such as David Kemiss and William Atkins, the accused was spared the death penalty on the grounds of extreme old age.

Even the vehemently anti-Catholic Lord Chief Justice Sir William Scroggs approved of the Crown showing mercy in such cases, in order "that the world may not say that we are grown barbarous and inhumane".

This however was too late to save those already condemned, and over the summer of 1679, despite mounting public unease, at least fourteen priests were executed or died in prison.

A revival of anti-Catholic feeling after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 caused the Government to pass one final Penal Law, the Popery Act 1698.

[20]In 2008 the Oxford Consistory Court (presided over by the same judge) declined to follow that case as a precedent,[21] on the grounds that "that decision had failed to take account of the commemoration of English saints and martyrs of the Reformation era in the Church of England's calendar of festivals.