money bill dispute

money bill dispute (1753–6). In 1753 the Commons rejected a bill applying surplus revenue to the payment of the national debt, because the English privy council had inserted words suggesting that such appropriations required the king's consent. The ostensible issue was thus the parliamentary control of financial legislation asserted in the sole right controversy of 1692 and consistently defended since. However, the rejection of the bill was organized as a show of strength by Henry Boyle, to deflect the growing challenge to his dominance of the Ponsonby family and Archbishop Stone. Boyle was supported by the prime serjeant, Anthony Malone (1700–76), and the master of the rolls, Thomas Carter, both of whom combined office with a reputation for moderate patriotism, and by the earl of Kildare, the more erratic leader of a small parliamentary faction. When the lord lieutenant, the duke of Dorset, dismissed Boyle and others, they appealed to public opinion as defenders of Irish interests against English encroachments. In 1755 Dorset's successor, the 4th duke of Devonshire, negotiated a settlement: Boyle and others were compensated or restored to office, the Ponsonbys gained the speakership of the Commons and a share of power, while Stone was excluded. This successful defiance of a lord lieutenant by the undertakers who nominally served him, along with the mobilization of popular patriotism for political purposes, has been seen as the beginning of a breakdown in relations between British government and the Irish Protestant elite that was to lead to the constitutional crisis of 1779–82 (see legislative independence) and ultimately to the Act of Union.