Everything about The Kingdom Of Ireland totally explained
The
Kingdom of Ireland (
Irish:
Ríocht na hÉireann) was the name given to the Irish state from
1541, by the
Crown of Ireland Act 1542 of the
Parliament of Ireland. The new Monarch replaced the
Lordship of Ireland, which had been created in
1171. King
Henry VIII thus became the first
King of Ireland since 1169. The Kingdom of Ireland ceased to exist when Ireland joined with
Great Britain to form the
United Kingdom in 1801.
Reason for creation
The
Pope Adrian IV, an Englishman, had granted the Norman-English
monarchy the Island of
Ireland as a
feudal possession in 1155, by the bull (
Laudabiliter), which enabled the English
monarchy to act as the ruler of Ireland. This was confirmed by his successor
Pope Alexander III in 1172, but nominally
Ireland remained a
papal overlordship. With the excommunication from the church of the king of
England,
Henry VIII, in
1533, the constitutional position of the English rule in Ireland became uncertain. Henry had broken away from the
Holy See and declared himself the head of the newly formed
Church of England in order to procure a divorce, which the pope,
Clement VII, refused. As a result, Henry could no longer afford to recognize the
Roman Catholic Church's nominal sovereignty over Ireland. As a solution to this, Henry was proclaimed King of
Ireland by the
Crown of Ireland Act 1542 passed by the
Irish Parliament.
However the new kingdom wasn't recognized by the Catholic monarchies in Europe. A
papal bull of 1555 named
Mary I as Queen of Ireland, thereby recognizing the personal link to the crown of England in
canon law.
In this fashion, the
throne of Ireland became occupied by the reigning
King of England, thus placing the newly-formed Kingdom of Ireland in
personal union with the
Kingdom of England. In
1603 the throne of England became occupied by the
King of Scotland, which eventually led to a
Kingdom of Great Britain in
1707, when the parliaments of both kingdoms were combined into one sitting at the seat of the English parliament at
Westminster in London. In
1801, the Irish and British parliaments were similarly combined producing the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Lord Deputy
The Kingdom of Ireland was governed by an executive under the control of a
Lord Deputy, which when held by senior nobles such as
Thomas Radcliffe was elevated to
Lord Lieutenant. In the absence of a Lord Deputy, lords justices ruled the part of Ireland under English occupation. While some Irishmen held the post, all lord deputies from 23 July 1534, when
William Skeffington took office for the second time, were English noblemen.
The kingdom was legislated for by the bicameral Parliament of Ireland, made up of the
House of Lords and the
House of Commons, and which almost always met in
Dublin. The powers of the Irish parliament were restricted by a series of laws, notably
Poynings' Law of
1492. Roman Catholics and later
Presbyterians were for much of its later history excluded from membership of the Irish parliament. In the eighteenth century parliament met in a new, purpose-designed parliament house (the first purpose-designed two-chamber parliament house in the world) in
College Green in the heart of Dublin.
Grattan's Parliament
Some restrictions were repealed in
1782 in what came to be known as the
Constitution of 1782. Parliament in this period came to be known as
Grattan's Parliament, after one of the principal Irish political opposition leaders of the period,
Henry Grattan. In 1788-89 a Regency crisis was caused when
George III went insane, and Grattan wanted to appoint his son (later
George IV) as Regent of Ireland; however the king recovered before this could be effected.
Union of kingdoms
By the
Act of Union of the Irish Parliament, the Kingdom of Ireland merged in
1801 with the
Kingdom of Great Britain to form the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Irish Parliament ceased to exist, though the executive, presided over by the Lord Lieutenant, remained in place until
1922. The Act was preceded by the failed
rebellion and
French invasion of
1798, and was the subject of much controversy, involving much bribery of the Irish MPs to ensure its passage.
Irish Free State 1922
In
1922, 26 counties left the
United Kingdom and formed the
Irish Free State. Under the
Irish Free State Constitution, the King became King
in Ireland. This was changed by the Royal Titles Act,
1927, by which the King explicitly became king of all his dominions in their own right, becoming fully King
of Ireland instead. Though
Kevin O'Higgins,
Vice-President of the Executive Council (for example, deputy prime minister), did suggest resurrecting the 'Kingdom of Ireland' as a
dual monarchy to link
Northern Ireland and the
Irish Free State, with the King of Ireland being crowned in a public ceremony in
Phoenix Park in
Dublin, the idea was abandoned after O'Higgins' assassination by anti-
Treaty IRA men in 1927.
An Act of 1542 that confirmed Henry's kingdom and its link to the English crown, and which had mistakenly been left on the statute books, was repealed in the
Republic of Ireland in 2007 as part of a wholesale review of historic Irish law.
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