Parliament of Ireland

Middle Ages After the 12th-century Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland, administration of the Anglo-Norman Lordship of Ireland was modelled on that of the Kingdom of England. Magna Carta was extended in 1217 in the Charter of Ireland. As in England, parliament evolved out of the Magnum Concilium "great council" summoned by the king's viceroy, attended by the council (curia regis), magnates (feudal lords), and prelates (bishops and abbots). Membership was based on fealty to the king, and the preservation of the king's peace, and so the fluctuating number of autonomous Irish Gaelic kings were outside of the system; they had their own local brehon law taxation arrangements. The earliest known parliament met at Kilkea Castle near Castledermot, County Kildare on 18 June 1264, with only prelates and magnates attending. Elected representatives are first attested in 1297 and continually from the later 14th century. In 1297, counties were first represented by elected knights of the shire (sheriffs had previously represented them). In 1299, towns were represented. From the 14th century a distinction from the English parliament was that deliberations on church funding were held in Parliament rather than in Convocation. The separation of the individually summoned lords from the elected commons had developed by the 15th century. The clerical proctors elected by the lower clergy of each diocese formed a separate house or estate in until 1537, when they were expelled for their opposition to the Irish Reformation. In the parliaments of 1569 and 1585, the Old English Catholic representatives in the Irish Commons had several disputes with the crown's authorities over the introduction of penal legislation against Catholics and over-paying of "Cess" tax for the putting down of various Gaelic and Catholic rebellions. For this reason, and the political fallout after the 1605 Gunpowder Plot and the Plantation of Ulster in 1613–1615, the constituencies for the Irish House of Commons were changed to give Protestants a majority. The Plantation of Ulster allowed English and Scottish Protestant candidates in as representatives of the newly formed boroughs in planted areas. Initially this gave Protestants a majority of 132–100 in the House of Commons. However, after vehement Catholic protests, including a brawl in the chamber on Parliament's first sitting, some of the new Parliamentary constituencies were eliminated, giving Protestants a slight majority (108-102) of members of the House of Commons thereafter. In the House of Lords the Catholic majority continued until the 1689 "Patriot Parliament", with the exception of the Commonwealth period (1649–1660). Following the general uprising of the Catholic Irish in the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and the self-established Catholic assembly in 1642–1649, Roman Catholics were barred from voting or attending the Parliament altogether in the Cromwellian Act of Settlement 1652. Under the Cromwellian regime, the Parliament of Ireland was suspended and Ireland instead sent a small number of representatives to the parliaments of The Protectorate in Westminster. In early 1660, a Protestant representative assembly, the Irish Convention, gathered to request the re-establishment of an Irish Parliament. 1660 to 1800 Following the death of Cromwell and the end of the Protectorate, the Stuarts returned to the throne thereby ending the sectarian divisions relating to parliament. Charles II summoned a new Irish parliament in May 1661. Then, during the reign of James II of England, who had converted to Roman Catholicism, Irish Catholics briefly recovered their pre-eminent position as the crown now favoured their community. When James was overthrown in England, he turned to his Catholic supporters in the Irish Parliament for support. In return for its support during the Williamite war in Ireland (1688–91), a Catholic majority Patriot Parliament of 1689 persuaded James to pass legislation granting it autonomy to and to restore lands confiscated from Catholics in the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. The Jacobite defeat in this war meant that under William III of England Protestants were returned to a favoured position in Irish society while substantial numbers of Catholic nobles and leaders could no longer sit in parliament unless they took a loyalty oath as agreed under the Treaty of Limerick. Having proven their support for Catholic absolutism by their loyal support for James during the war, and because the Papacy supported the Jacobites after 1693, Irish Catholics increasingly faced discriminatory legislation in the Penal Laws that were passed by the predominantly loyalist and Protestant Parliament from 1695. building Nonetheless, the franchise was still available to wealthier Catholics. Until 1728, Catholics voted in House of Commons elections and held seats in the Lords. For no particular reason, beyond a general pressure for Catholics to conform, they were barred from voting in the election for the first parliament in the reign of George II. Privileges were also mostly limited to supporters of the Church of Ireland. Protestants who did not recognise the state-supported Church were also discriminated against in law, so non-conformists such as Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Quakers also had a subservient status in Parliament; after 1707 they could hold seats, but not public offices. Thus, the new system favoured a new Anglican establishment in Church and State. By 1728, the remaining nobility was either firmly Protestant or loyally Catholic. The upper classes had dropped most of its Gaelic traditions and adopted the Anglo-French aristocratic values then dominant throughout most of Europe. Much of the old feudal domains of the earlier Hiberno-Norman and Gaelic-Irish magnates had been broken up and given to Irish loyalists soldiers, and English and Scottish Protestant colonial settlers. Long under the control of de jure power of magnates, the far larger peasant population had nonetheless under the relatively anarchic and sectarian conditions established a relative independence. Now, the nobility and newly established loyalist gentry could exercise their rights and privileges with more vigour. Much as in England, Wales, and Scotland, the franchise was always limited to the property owning classes, which favoured the landed gentry. The Irish Parliament was thus at a time of English commercial expansion left incapable of protecting Irish economic and trade interests from being subordinated to English ones. This in turn severely weakened the economic potential of the whole of Ireland and placed the new and largely Protestant middle-class at a disadvantage. The result was a slow but continual exodus of Anglo-Irish, Scots-Irish, and Protestant Irish families and communities to the colonies, principally in North America. Ironically, it was the very efforts to establish Anglicans as the primacy in Ireland which slowly subverted the general cause of the Protestant Irish which had been the objective of successive Irish and British Parliaments. The Irish Parliament did assert its independence from London several times however. In the early 18th century it successfully lobbied for itself to be summoned every two years, as opposed to at the start of each new reign only, and shortly thereafter it declared itself to be in session permanently, mirroring developments in the English Parliament. As the effects on the prosperity of the Kingdom of submitting the Irish Parliament to review by the British became apparent, the Irish Parliament slowly asserted itself, and from the 1770s the Irish Patriot Party began agitating for greater powers relative to the British Parliament. Additionally, later ministries moved to change the Navigation Acts that had limited Irish merchants' terms of trade with Britain and its empire. ==Powers==

in the chamber of the House of Lords After 1707, Ireland was, to varying degrees, subordinate to the Kingdom of Great Britain. The Parliament of Ireland had control over only legislation, while the executive branch of government, under the Lord Lieutenant, answered to the British government in London. Furthermore, the Penal Laws meant that Catholics, who constituted the majority of Irish people, were not permitted to sit in, or participate in elections to, the parliament. Meanwhile, building upon the precedent of Poynings' Law which required approval from the British Privy Council for bills to be put to the Irish Parliament, the Dependency of Ireland on Great Britain Act 1719 declared the British Parliament's right to legislate for Ireland and the British House of Lords appellate jurisdiction over its courts. The effects of this subordination of Irish Parliamentary power soon became evident, as Ireland slowly stagnated economically and the Protestant population shrank in relative size. Additionally, the growing relative wealth of the American colonies, whose local authorities were relatively independent of the British Parliament, provided additional ammunition for those who wished to increase Irish Parliamentary power. When the British governments started centralising trade, taxation and judicial review throughout the Empire, the Irish Parliament saw an ally in the American colonies, who were growing increasingly resistant to the British government's objectives. When open rebellion broke out in the American colonies in 1775, the Irish Parliament passed several initiatives which showed support for the American grievances., 1780)|left Fearing another split by Ireland, as rebellion spread through the American colonies and various European powers joined in a global assault on British interests, the British Parliament became more acquiescent to Irish demands. In 1782, following agitation by major parliamentary figures, most notably Henry Grattan, supported by the Patriot movement, the Irish parliament's authority was greatly increased. Under what became known as the Constitution of 1782 the restrictions imposed by Poyning's Law were removed by the Repeal of Act for Securing Dependence of Ireland Act 1782. Grattan also wanted Catholic involvement in Irish politics; the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793 passed by the Irish parliament copied the British Roman Catholic Relief Act 1791, and Catholics were given back the right to cast votes in elections to the parliament, although they were still debarred from membership and state offices. ==Organisation==

, last speaker of the Irish House of Commons (1807–1811) The House of Lords was presided over by the Lord Chancellor, who sat on the woolsack, a large seat stuffed with wool from each of the three lands of England, Ireland and Scotland. In the Commons, business was presided over by the Speaker who, in the absence of a government chosen from and answerable to the Commons, was the dominant political figure in the parliament. Speaker Conolly remains today one of the most widely known figures produced by the Irish parliament. Much of the public ceremonial in the Irish parliament mirrored that of the British Parliament. Sessions were formally opened by the Speech from the Throne by the Lord Lieutenant, who, it was written "used to sit surrounded by more splendour than His Majesty on the throne of England". The Lord Lieutenant, when he sat on the throne, sat beneath a canopy of crimson velvet. At the state opening, MPs were summoned to the House of Lords from the House of Commons chamber by Black Rod, a royal official who would "command the members on behalf of His Excellency to attend him in the chamber of peers". based on the drawing by Rowland Omer 1767 chamber by Peter Mazell based on the drawing by Rowland Omer 1767 Sessions of Parliament drew many of the wealthiest of Ireland's Anglo-Irish elite to Dublin, particularly as sessions often coincided with the social season, (January to 17 March) when the Lord Lieutenant presided in state over state balls and drawing rooms in the Viceregal Apartments in Dublin Castle. Leading peers in particular flocked to Dublin, where they lived in enormous and richly decorated mansions initially on the northside of Dublin, later in new Georgian residences around Merrion Square and Fitzwilliam Square. Their presence in Dublin, along with large numbers of servants, provided a regular boost to the city economy. The Parliament's records were published from the 1750s and provide a huge wealth of commentary and statistics on the reality of running Ireland at the time. In particular, minute details on Ireland's increasing overseas trade and reports from various specialist committees are recorded. By the 1780s they were published by two rival businesses, King & Bradley and Grierson. ==The Act of Union and abolition==

From 31 December 1800, the Parliament of Ireland was abolished entirely, when the Acts of Union 1800 created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and merged the British and Irish legislatures into a single Parliament of the United Kingdom after 1 January 1801. The idea of a political union between Ireland and Great Britain had been proposed several times throughout the 18th century, but was vehemently opposed in Ireland. The granting of legislative independence to Ireland in 1782 was thought to have ended hopes of a union. The Irish Rebellion of 1798 saw a French expedition landing in Killala, causing alarm that Ireland could be used as a base for attacks on Britain, resurrecting the idea of political union between Ireland and Great Britain. and Irish parliaments, with the British Act of Union becoming law on 2 July 1800, and royal assent given to the Irish Act of Union on 1 August 1800. The Irish Parliament met for the last time the following day. On 1 January 1801, the provisions of the Acts of Union came into force. ==See also==