Kingdom of Ireland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the kingdom existing from 1541 to 1800. For others, see King of Ireland. For other uses of Ireland, see Ireland (disambiguation).
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| Capital | Dublin | |||
| Language(s) | Irish, English | |||
| Government | Monarchy | |||
| King2 | ||||
| - 1542-1547 | Henry VIII | |||
| - 1760-1801 | George III | |||
| Chief Secretary | ||||
| - 1660 | Matthew Lock | |||
| - 1798-1801 | Viscount Castlereagh | |||
| Legislature | Parliament of Ireland | |||
| - Upper house | Irish House of Lords | |||
| - Lower house | Irish House of Commons | |||
| History | ||||
| - Act of Parliament | 1541 | |||
| - Act of Union | January 1, 1801 | |||
| 1 No official flag is known to exist for the Kingdom of Ireland. Numerous unofficial flags were used throughout its history, including: 1. Azure, a harp Or, stringed Argent, based on the coat of arms adopted in 1541 and much later to become the presidential standard; 2. Vert, a harp Or, stringed Argent, the Leinster flag, used from the mid-17th century; and 3. Argent a saltire Gules, Saint Patrick's Flag, from 1783. The latter was integrated into the Union Flag, the first flag officialy used to represent Ireland. However, the second appears to have been the most popular and its use as a naval jack is debated as to whether it had official status or not. 2 Represented by a Lord Lieutenant of Ireland |
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The Kingdom of Ireland was the name given to the Irish state from 1541, by an act 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, and the first ever King of a United Ireland.
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[edit] Reason for creation
Henry VIII was proclaimed King of Ireland by a decree passed by the Irish Parliament that year.
Henry needed to make this constitutional change because the Lordship of Ireland had been granted to the English monarch as a feudal possession by the Roman Catholic Pope Adrian IV(an Englishman) (reigned 1154-1159) in a papal bull.
Henry VIII had broken away from the Roman pontiff and declared himself the Head of the newly formed Church of England (initially still Catholic in its approach to worship; over the years Protestant reformers influenced the church, but this changed with differing monarchs). As a result, Henry could no longer afford to recognize the Roman Catholic Church's nominal sovereignty over Ireland.
In this fashion, the Throne of Ireland became occupied by the reigning King of England, thus placing the kingdom of Ireland in personal union with the Kingdom of England. (70 years later in 1605, the Throne of England became occupied by the King of Scotland, leading eventually to the United Kingdom by the Act of Union 1707).
[edit] Lords Deputy
The Kingdom of Ireland was governed by an executive under the control of the Lord Deputy, later called Lord Lieutenant. While some Irishmen held the post, most Lords Deputy were English noblemen.
Royal Coat of Arms after the Act of Union 1800
Displayed over the 19th century King's Inns in Dublin. These arms of dominion are similar to the royal arms before the union inasmuch as the arms of Ireland (the harp) form one quarter of the shield with the remaining quarters referring to the king's other realms: England, Scotland and Hanover.
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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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 (i.e., 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, is being repealed in the Republic of Ireland in 2007 as part of a wholesale review of historic Irish law.[1]
[edit] References
| Irish states in order of creation (1171–present) |
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Lordship of Ireland |
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