The Kingdom of Ireland was a dependency of England from 1542 to 1707, and then of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800. It was ruled by the monarchs of England and then of Great Britain in personal union, and was administered from Dublin Castle by a viceroy appointed by the English king: the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. By the late 17th century, the state was dominated by the Protestant Anglo-Irish minority, known as the Protestant Ascendancy. The Protestant Church of Ireland was the state church. The Parliament of Ireland was almost exclusively Anglo-Irish. From 1661, the administration controlled an Irish army. Although formally a kingdom in personal union on equal footing with England and later Great Britain, for most of its history it was de facto a dependency. This status was enshrined in the Declaratory Act 1719.
The territory of the kingdom comprised that of the former Lordship of Ireland, founded in 1177 by King Henry II of England after the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. By the 16th century, the Pale, the area of effective English rule, had shrunk greatly; most of Ireland was held by Gaelic nobles as minor principalities notionally subject to the English king but independent in practice. By the terms of the Crown of Ireland Act 1542, Henry VIII of England became "King of Ireland", theoretically elevating Ireland to coequal status with England, as a kingdom in personal union. There followed an expansion of English control during the Tudor conquest. This sparked the Desmond Rebellions and the Nine Years' War. The conquest of the island was completed early in the 17th century. It involved the confiscation of land from the native Irish Catholics and its colonisation by Protestant settlers from Britain. Most Catholic countries at the time did not recognise Protestant monarchs as legitimate kings of Ireland (or indeed of England), instead supporting the Jacobite government-in-exile from 1688 onwards.
For most of the kingdom's history, the Irish Catholic majority suffered legal discrimination: under the penal laws, Catholicism was suppressed and Catholics were barred from government, parliament, the military, and most public offices. This was one of the main drivers behind the Irish Confederate Wars (1641–1653), during which the Irish Catholic Confederates controlled most of Ireland. After the Cromwellian conquest, Ireland suffered harsh conditions under the Protectorate (1653–1659). The brief reign of Catholic king James II (1685–1689) led to the Williamite War (1689–1691). The Williamite victory strengthened the Protestant Ascendancy, and the kingdom had only Protestant monarchs thereafter.
In the 1780s, the parliament gained some independence, and some anti-Catholic laws were lifted. This sparked sectarian conflict in County Armagh. Following the failed republican Irish Rebellion of 1798, the parliament of Ireland and parliament of Great Britain passed the Acts of Union 1800. This created, on 1 January 1801, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
History
Background
In 1170 and 1171, Anglo-Norman lords conquered swathes of territory from the Gaelic Irish. King Henry II of England arrived in Ireland with a large army in 1171. The Anglo-Norman lords, several Irish kings, and the Irish church leadership submitted to him. Pope Adrian IV had allegedly issued a papal bull, Laudabiliter, granting Henry the right to invade Ireland to enforce the Gregorian Reform. The 1175 Treaty of Windsor acknowledged Henry as overlord of the conquered lands, and the High King of Ireland, Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair, as overlord of the rest of Ireland. However, in 1177 Henry made his son John "Lord of Ireland" and encouraged his subordinates to conquer more land. Thereafter, the kings of England claimed lordship over the whole island, but in reality the king's rule only ever extended to parts of the island. The rest of Ireland – later referred to as Gaelic Ireland – remained under the control of various Gaelic Irish kingdoms or chiefdoms, who were often at war with the Anglo-Normans.
From the mid-15th century, direct English rule in Ireland was limited to a region on the east coast called "the English Pale". Many Anglo-Norman lords "beyond the Pale" had become Gaelicized.
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 to procure an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Clement VII refused Henry's request and Henry subsequently refused to recognise the Roman Catholic Church's vestigial sovereignty over Ireland, and was excommunicated again in late 1538 by Pope Paul III. The Treason Act (Ireland) 1537 was passed to counteract this.
Tudor Ireland
Following the failed revolt of Silken Thomas in 1534–1535, Grey, the lord deputy, had some military successes against several clans in the late 1530s, and took their submissions. By 1540 most of Ireland seemed at peace and under the control of the king's Dublin administration; a situation that was not to last for long.
In 1542, the Kingdom of Ireland was established by the Parliament of Ireland through the Crown of Ireland Act. This act declared King Henry VIII of England as the King of Ireland, thus creating a separate political entity known as the Kingdom of Ireland. The act marked a significant shift in Ireland's political landscape, as it sought to consolidate English control over the island and bring it under closer royal governance. The Kingdom of Ireland existed alongside the Lordship of Ireland, which was held by the English monarchs prior to the establishment of the kingdom. The new kingdom was not recognised by the Catholic monarchies in Europe. After the death of Edward VI, Henry's son, the papal bull of 1555 recognised the Roman Catholic Mary I as Queen of Ireland. The link of "personal union" of the Crown of Ireland to the Crown of England became enshrined in Catholic canon law. In this fashion, the Kingdom of Ireland was ruled by the reigning monarch of England. This placed the new Kingdom of Ireland in personal union with the Kingdom of England.
In line with its expanded role and self-image, the administration established the King's Inns for barristers in 1541, and the Ulster King of Arms to regulate heraldry in 1552. Proposals to establish a university in Dublin were delayed until 1592.
In 1593 war broke out, as Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, led a confederation of Irish lords and Spain against the crown, in what later became known as the Nine Years' War. A series of stunning Irish victories brought English power in Ireland to the point of collapse by the beginning of 1600, but a renewed campaign under Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy forced Tyrone to submit in 1603, completing the Tudor conquest of Ireland.
Stuart Ireland
In 1603 James VI King of Scots became James I of England and Ireland, uniting the Kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland in a personal union. James established the Plantation of Ulster in 1606, the largest of all English and Scottish plantations in Ireland. It had a lasting legacy; into the 20th century, most of Ulster had a Protestant and Pro-Union majority in its population.
The political order of the kingdom was interrupted by the Wars of the Three Kingdoms starting in 1639. During the subsequent interregnum period, England, Scotland and Ireland were ruled as a republic until 1660. This period saw the rise of the loyalist Irish Catholic Confederation within the kingdom and, from 1653, the creation of the republican Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. The kingdom's order was restored 1660 with the restoration of Charles II. Without any public dissent, Charles's reign was backdated to his father's execution in 1649.
Grattan's Patriots
Poynings' Law was repealed in 1782 in what came to be known as the Constitution of 1782, granting Ireland legislative independence. 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, executive administration remained under the control of the executive of the Kingdom of Great Britain. In 1788–1789 a Regency crisis arose when King 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.
United Irishmen
The Irish Rebellion of 1798, and the rebels' alliance with Great Britain's longtime enemy the French, led to a push to bring Ireland formally into the British Union. By the Acts of Union 1800, voted for by both Irish and British Parliaments, the Kingdom of Ireland merged on 1 January 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.
Viceroy
The Kingdom of Ireland was governed by a Lord Deputy or viceroy. The post was held by senior nobles such as Thomas Radcliffe. From 1688 the title was usually Lord Lieutenant.
In the absence of a Lord Deputy, lords justices ruled.
While some Irishmen held the post, most of the lords deputy 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.
Parliament
The kingdom's legislature was bicameral with a House of Lords and a House of Commons. By the terms of Poynings' Law (1494) and other acts, the parliament's powers were greatly circumscribed. The legislature was content to "rubber stamp" acts or "suggestions" from the English parliament.
Roman Catholics and dissenters, mostly Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists, were excluded from membership of the Irish parliament from 1693. Furthermore, 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 Poynings' 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 Great Britain and the rest of Europe, voting and membership of parliament was restricted to property owners. In the 1720s, the parliament was housed in a new building at College Green, Dublin.
Army
The Kingdom maintained a standing force, the Irish Army; it was for much of its existence the largest force available to the British Crown, being substantially larger than the English Army and Scots Army.
The modern Irish Army does not trace its lineage to the army of the Kingdom of Ireland.
Church of Ireland
When Henry VIII was excommunicated by the Catholic Church in 1538, all but two of the bishops in the island of Ireland followed the doctrine of the Church of England, although almost no clergy or laity did so. Having paid their Annates to the Papacy, the bishops had no reason to step down, and in the 1530s nobody knew how long the reformation would last. Unlike Henry VIII, this hierarchy was not excommunicated by the Papacy. They retained control of what became the State Church of the new Kingdom in 1542. As the established church, it retained possession of most Church property (including a great repository of religious architecture and other items, though some were later destroyed). In 1553, Irish Catholics were heartened by the coronation of Queen Mary I. In 1555, she persuaded the Pope to recognise the Kingdom in the papal bull "Ilius".
In 1558, a Protestant – Elizabeth I – ascended the throne. With the exception of James II of England, all the following monarchs adhered to Anglicanism. Contrary to the official plan, the substantial majority of the population remained strongly Roman Catholic, despite the political and economic advantages of membership of the state church. Despite its numerical minority, however, the Church of Ireland remained the official state church until it was disestablished on 1 January 1871 by the Liberal government under William Ewart Gladstone.
Ethnic conflict
The legacy of the Kingdom of Ireland remains a bone of contention in Irish-British relations to this day because of the constant ethnic conflict between the native Irish inhabitants and primarily the new Anglo-Irish settlers across the island. Their background espoused English culture (law, language, dress, religion, economic relations and definitions of land ownership) in Ireland as it later did across much of what was to become the British Empire. However Gaelic culture and Irish language, was maintained to a significant extent by the majority of the original native population. Sometimes this was presented as "barbaric", "savage" which later was perceived by the native population as a mark of undesirability in respect of maintaining and learning the language. While the Lordship of Ireland had existed since the 12th century and nominally owed allegiance to the English monarchy, many kingdoms of Gaelic Ireland continued to exist; this came to an end with the Kingdom of Ireland, where the whole island was brought under the centralised control of an Anglo-centric system based in Dublin. This phase of Irish history marked the beginning of an officially organised policy of settler colonialism, orchestrated from London and the incorporation of Ireland into the British Empire (indeed Ireland is sometimes called "England's first colony"). The theme is prominently addressed in Irish postcolonial literature.