kingdom of Ireland

kingdom of Ireland, officially established by the Irish parliament in June 1541 under ‘the act for kingly title’. ‘Kingdom’ had appeared in some official documentation of the early 13th century but the usual designation was the ‘land’ of Ireland. This was a hereditary dependency, like the duchy of Gascony, over which the English king exercised ‘lordship’ as an inalienable parcel of the crown of England. The terms ‘kingdom’ and ‘realm’ obviously denoted a higher status—for instance in 1487 the independently minded Irish parliament crowned the pretender Lambert Simnel king of Ireland as well as king of England.

English sovereignty over Ireland rested not only on conquest and submission but also on papal donation in 1156 under the bull Laudabiliter. By 1541 Henry VIII had broken with Rome (see reformation) and the Geraldine League had threatened to transfer sovereignty to the Catholic king of Scotland. Henry VIII's new title, celebrated by bonfires in Dublin, coincided with the policy of surrender and regrant under which the Irish were to be transformed from enemies into subjects. However, the reformers had themselves to persuade Henry VIII, who worried about the expense of ruling the whole island and keeping an estate there worthy of the new designation.

Some of the ideological shine was taken off the 1541 development when Queen Mary obtained a papal bull approving the new title. Furthermore the change in status made little difference in practice because the English privy council, chancery, and parliament still claimed superiority over their Irish counterparts. In the 17th century Patrick Darcy and his Catholic Confederate colleagues wanted the kingdom made a reality. In fact the concept of Ireland as a kingdom provided a new focus of loyalty for Irish Catholics, particularly those of Gaelic background, after the Stuart succession. They claimed that one of their own race—a descendant of the mythical Míl Espáine (see milesians)—was on the English throne and that Ireland was a more ancient kingdom than his British realms. This was celebrated in poetry; in the Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters, and in other histories by Rothe, Keating, and O'Flaherty.

Ireland arguably operated as a kingdom between 1782 and 1801 with the modification of Poynings's Law and the revocation of the Declaratory Act, although the actual method by which it was governed scarcely changed (see legislative independence).

Hiram Morgan