Poynings's Law

Poynings's Law (1494), introduced by Sir Edward Poynings, lord deputy 1494–5. It required the lord deputy and council to seek the king's permission to summon an Irish parliament and his approval of proposed draft bills. The king and English privy council sent back a licence to hold parliament at a specified time with the approved bills. The object was to restrict the autonomy of lords deputy—the earl of Kildare having used the 1487 parliament to ratify his coronation of the pretender Lambert Simnel—rather than to curb the law‐making potential of parliament itself. An Irish government councillor normally travelled with the proposed legislation to secure its transmission from England. There bills were often altered and occasionally new ones inserted. The Irish parliament in turn amended and even rejected transmitted bills.

English lords deputy after 1534 regarded Poynings's Law as an impediment to their management of parliament because local opponents used it as a delaying tactic. It was suspended in 1536 to put through the complicated Reformation legislation. In the 1541–3 parliament, amended bills had to be re‐transmitted to England and passed in a later session. The next parliament (1557) modified the statute to take account of this development. Lords deputy Sidney (1569) and Perrot (1585) encountered problems when parliament refused to suspend Poynings's Law, fearing anti‐Catholic legislation. James I's apprehensions prevented Chichester demanding a suspension in the 1613–15 parliament, which saw the amending process in full swing and the first use of the heads of bills procedure.

Wentworth turned Poynings's law into a weapon against the legislature. Rather than risk losing control by asking for suspension, he used it as an executive instrument to guide legislative activity and parliamentary debate. In 1634–5 he refused the nobility prior sight of proposed enactments and later turned down their proposals on the Graces on the grounds that only the executive could initiate legislation. Wentworth prevented parliament acting unilaterally as a court of law and converted the single bill it rejected into an act of state. He used the same interpretation to railroad his programme through the 1640–1 parliament, but after his departure opposition developed. Parliament began demanding the statute's clarification so that it could draw up its own bills without government interference. Poynings's Law proved a stumbling block in the Ormond peace negotiations during the ensuing Confederate War.

When parliament next met, in 1661–6, renewed attempts by members of both Commons and Lords to play a more active role in the legislative process once again created controversy. In 1662, for example, the Irish privy council, in response to some ill‐chosen observations by the Commons, vigorously asserted its sole right to transmit bills. Despite this, the role of parliament in preparing and considering legislation through the heads of bill procedure now became more clearly defined. MPs (for it was the Commons rather than the Lords that were to the fore on this issue) were careful not to trespass unduly on the sensitivities of either the council or the lord lieutenant. Ministers in London and their deputies in Ireland were content that Poynings's Law should operate in this manner, since it facilitated the operations of parliament while upholding both the crown's authority to determine when and if an Irish parliament should be convened and the privy council's right to veto any measures forwarded to it.

The mood of MPs was less accommodating in the early 1690s. Their claim to possess the ‘sole right’ to initiate financial legislation was not conceded, but their assertiveness ensured that thereafter the bulk of Irish legislation originated in the form of heads of bills in the House of Commons. In practice, only a small proportion of such bills were respited or postponed, generally on the grounds of incompatibility with existing British legislation, egregious drafting error, or the lobbying of vested interests. By contrast, the proportion of Irish bills that were amended was high. In most cases, the amendments were minor clarifications of syntax or meaning, but a significant proportion had important provisions added, deleted, or recast to bring them into line with English law or to meet the objections of interested parties. Poynings's Law thus continued to ensure that the Irish legislature did not threaten the inherently subordinate position of the kingdom of Ireland. Its operation was nevertheless accepted by most Irish MPs, despite the objections of the patriot minority, throughout the early and mid‐18th century. It was not until 1782 that Yelverton's Act terminated the need for a heads of bills procedure by empowering the Irish legislature to propose legislation. The Irish privy council was deprived of its power to amend or to respite bills, and while the English privy council retained the right to refuse the royal assent, it exercised this judiciously until the Act of Union abolished the need for Poynings's Law.

Bibliography

Clarke, Aidan , The History of Poynings's Law 1615–41, Irish Historical Studies, 18 (1972)
Edwards, R. D., and and Moody, T. W. , The History of Poynings's Law, Part I: 1494–1615, Irish Historical Studies, 2 (1941)

JK/ and James Kelly