The Kingdom of Ireland () was the name given to the Irish state from 1541, by the Crown of Ireland Act 1542 of the Parliament of Ireland. It was based on the contested legitimacy of the right of conquest. 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 separate Kingdom of Ireland ceased to exist when Ireland joined with the Kingdom of Great Britain to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801.

Reason for creation

The papal bull Laudabiliter of Pope Adrian IV, a native of Hertfordshire, England, was decreed in 1155. It granted the Angevin King Henry II of England who ruled from Anjou in France, the title Dominus Hibernae. Laudabiliter enabled the king to invade Ireland, in order to bring the country into the European sphere. In return, Henry was required to remit a penny per hearth of the tax roll to the Pope. This was reconfirmed by Adrian's successor Pope Alexander III in 1172.

When Pope Clement VII excommunicated the King of England, Henry VIII, in 1533, the constitutional position of the lordship in Ireland became uncertain. Henry had broken away from the Holy See and declared himself the head of the Church in England. He had petitioned Rome in order to procure an annulment of his marriage to Queen Catherine. Clement VII refused Henry's request for political as much as religious reasons. Henry subsequently refused to recognize the Roman Catholic Church's nominal sovereignty over Ireland. Henry was proclaimed King of Ireland by the Crown of Ireland Act 1542. The Act was passed by the Irish Parliament.

The new kingdom was not recognized by the Catholic monarchies in Europe. After the death of King Edward VI, Henry's son, the papal bull of 1555 recognised the Roman Catholic Queen Mary I as Queen of Ireland. The Irish link to the Crown of England became enshrined canon law.

In this fashion, the Kingdom of Ireland was ruled by the reigning King of England. This placed the new Kingdom of Ireland in personal union with the Kingdom of England. In 1603 James VI King of Scots, became James I of England, which led to a Union in the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1707 the parliaments of Scotland and England were united at Westminster in London.

In 1801, the Irish and British parliaments were similarly combined in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Viceroy

The Kingdom of Ireland was governed by an executive under the control of a Lord Deputy or viceroy. The post was held by senior nobles such as Thomas Radcliffe. It was elevated to the title of Lord Lieutenant.
In the absence of a Lord Deputy, lords justices ruled.
While some Irishmen held the post, most deputies were English noblemen. While the viceroy controlled the Irish administration as the monarch's representative, in the eighteenth century the political post of Chief Secretary for Ireland became increasingly powerful.
The Kingdom of Ireland was legislated by the bicameral Parliament of Ireland, made up of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The powers of the Irish parliament were circumscribed by a series of restrictive laws, mainly Poynings' Law of 1492.

Church of Ireland

The Church of Ireland became the established church in Ireland. It was not universally accepted, as some eighty percent of the population chose to reject Anglicanism. Roman Catholics and dissenters, mostly Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists, were excluded from membership of the Irish parliament from 1693 and their rights were restricted by a series of laws called the Penal Laws. They were denied voting rights from 1728 until 1793. The Grattan Parliament succeeded in achieving the repeal of Poyning's Law in 1782. This allowed progressive legislation and gradual liberalisation was effected. Catholics and Dissenters were given the right to vote in 1793, but Catholics were still excluded from the Irish Parliament and senior public offices in the kingdom. As in Britain and the rest of Europe, voting and membership of parliament was restricted to property owners. In the 1720s the new Irish Houses of Parliament was built in College Green, Dublin.

Grattan's Parliament

Poynings' law was repealed in 1782, granting Ireland legislative independence in what came to be known as the Constitution of 1782. Parliament in this period came to be known as Grattan's Parliament, after the principal Irish leader of the period, Henry Grattan. Although Ireland had legislative independence, its executive administration continued under British control. In 1788-89 a Regency crisis arose caused when George III became ill. Grattan wanted to appoint the Prince of Wales later George IV as Regent of Ireland. The king recovered before this could be enacted.

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. The union was the subject of much controversy, involving bribery of many Irish MPs to ensure its passage.

The Act of 1542 that confirmed Henry VIII's Kingdom of Ireland and its link to the English crown was repealed in the Republic of Ireland in 2007, as part of a review of historic Irish law.

Bibliography

• de Beaumont, Gustave and William Cooke Taylor, Ireland Social, Political, and Religious :Translated by William Cooke Taylor : Contributor Tom Garvin, Andreas Hess: Harvard University Press : 2006 : ISBN 9780674021655 (reprint of 1839 original)
  

• Pawlisch, Hans S., : Sir John Davies and the Conquest of Ireland: A Study in Legal Imperialism :Cambridge University Press, 2002 : ISBN 9780521526579
  

• Keating, Geoffrey : The History of Ireland, from the Earliest Period to the English Invasion (Foras Feasa Ar Éirinn) Translated by John O'Mahony 1866