Parliaments of Edward II. and Edward III.
Under Edward II. Parliaments were frequent; and writs are extant which show that he, as well as Edward III., intended them to be held annually. Cases occur of bishops, priors, and temporal peers being fined for non-attendance in this reign, and there is good reason to believe that those who were summoned to Parliament generally came. In 1311 writs for a Parliament to be held at Kilkenny were issued by the justiciary Wogan to Richard, Earl of Ulster, and eighty-seven other men of name, to the prelates and ecclesiastical magnates, and to the sheriffs. The sheriffs were ordered to summon two knights from every county, and two citizens or burgesses from every city or borough, who were to have full power to act for their several communities in conjunction with the magnates, lay and clerical. Owing probably to the shape which Bruce’s invasion gave to the English colony, the Parliaments of Edward III. are more strictly confined to the districts where the King had real as well as nominal authority. The murder of the last Earl of Ulster in 1333, and the conversion of the De Burghs into Irishmen, almost completed the work of destruction which Bruce had only just failed to effect. To the Parliament of 1360, the Archbishops of Dublin and Cashel, the Bishops of Meath, Kildare, Lismore, Killaloe, Limerick, Emly, Cloyne, and Ferns, and the Abbots of St. Mary’s and St. Thomas’s at Dublin were the only prelates summoned. The Earls of Kildare and Desmond and eight knights were called up by name. Writs for the election of two knights were issued to the sheriffs of the counties of Dublin, Carlow, Louth, Kildare, Waterford, Limerick, and Cork, and of the crosses of Meath, Kilkenny, Wexford, and Tipperary; and to the seneschals of the liberties of Kilkenny, Meath, Tipperary, and Wexford. Writs for the election of citizens and burgesses were no longer directed to the sheriffs, but the mayor and bailiffs of Dublin, Drogheda, Cork, Waterford, and Limerick, the sovereign and bailiffs of Kilkenny and Ross, and the provost and bailiffs of Clonmel and Wexford were ordered to return two members each. The sheriff of Kildare and the seneschal of the liberty of Kilkenny were told what individuals they were expected to see elected. The House of Commons was then supposed to consist of twenty-eight knights and twenty-four citizens and burgesses; but the counties of Dublin and Carlow were ‘justly excused’ on account of the war, and the members for Drogheda, who omitted to come, were summoned before the Council under a penalty of 40l.42
Parliament of Kilkenny.
The famous Parliament which Lionel, Duke of Clarence, held at Kilkenny in 1367 was probably attended by representatives from a very limited district; for there were but forty members of the House of Commons in March 1374, and of these four came from the county of Dublin. But in November 1374 the number was fifty-four; in 1377 it rose to sixty-two; and in 1380 and 1382 it was fifty-eight. We may, therefore, take the number of county and borough members at the close of the fourteenth century as about sixty. The counties generally represented were Dublin, Kildare, Carlow, Meath, Louth, Waterford, Cork, Limerick, and Wexford, the liberties of Ulster, Meath, Tipperary, Kerry, and Kilkenny, and the crosses of Ulster, Tipperary, Kilkenny, and Kerry. The cities were Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Kilkenny, and Limerick, and the towns were Drogheda, Youghal, Ross, Wexford, Galway, and Athenry. Longford was a county in 1377, but was not maintained as shire ground. Many Parliaments met during the fifteenth century, but their action was more and more confined to the district round Dublin, which about the middle of the century came to be called the Pale.43
Hereditary peers.
1295 will probably be accepted as the date when English barons who had once sat in Parliament claimed an hereditary right to their writs of summons. It would seem that the origin of the Irish peerage, using the word in its modern sense, must be referred to a somewhat later date; for eighty-seven persons, who were perhaps all tenants of the Crown, were summoned by name to the Kilkenny Parliament in 1311. The subject is not of great historical importance, because the period of transition coincides with that in which the encroachments of the natives reduced feudal Ireland to its lowest estate. In the sixteenth century the title of baron was still popularly given to the heads of some families who had formerly been barons by tenure, but who had lost all Parliamentary rights. As in England, the knights of the shire had become the proper representatives of the gentry, and peerage grew to be the special creation of the Crown. In the Parliament of 1560 there were twenty-three temporal peers, and of these eight had been created within the century. It will be safe to assume that the number of temporal peers sitting in the Irish Parliament at any time during the one hundred years preceding Elizabeth’s accession was well under thirty.44
Spiritual peers.
The number of spiritual greatly exceeded the number of temporal peers. There were four archbishops from the first sending of the palls in 1151. If we take the year 1500, after some unions had been effected and before the great quarrel between King and Pope, we find that there were twenty-six bishops in Ireland. Some of the more distant ones were perhaps never summoned to Parliament, and long before the close of the fifteenth century we cannot doubt that many had ceased to attend the shrunken legislature of the Pale. In 1293 John, Bishop of Clonfert, an Italian and the Pope’s nuncio, was fined for non-attendance; and similar penalties were imposed on Bishops of Ferns, Ossory, Cork, Ardfert, Limerick, Down, and Emly, during the reigns of Edward II., Edward III., and Richard II. There were thirteen mitred Abbots of the Cistercian order, ten mitred Priors of Augustinian canons; and the Grand Prior of Kilmainham, who represented the wealth and importance of the proscribed Templars as well as of the Hospitallers, had always a seat in Parliament. The Prior of Kilmainham was so important a person that upon the suppression of the order of St. John, Henry VIII. made its last chief a peer. The Abbot of St. Mary’s and the Prior of St. Thomas’s were always summoned, but it is clear that in earlier days all the mitred heads of houses were considered real as well as nominal spiritual peers. The Prior of Athassel was fined for non-attendance in 1323, the Abbot of Owney in 1325, and the Abbot of Jerpoint in 1377. Much obscurity hangs over the mediæval House of Lords in Ireland; but it must generally have rested with the Viceroy whether the temporal or spiritual peers should be most numerous in any particular Parliament.45
The clergy as a separate estate. Proctors.
The existence of the clergy as a separate estate in Ireland is less clear than in England; but they had the right of taxing themselves, for in 1538 the Lords Spiritual were thanked by Henry VIII. for granting him an annual twentieth of all their promotions, benefices, and possessions. Proctors of the clergy attended the Lower House, and when Henry VIII. undertook his ecclesiastical innovations, they claimed the right to veto bills. It was, however, easily shown that their consent had not formerly been held necessary; and in 1537 an Act was passed declaring the proctors to be no members of Parliament. The preamble states that two proctors from each diocese had been usually summoned to attend Parliament; but that they had neither voice nor vote, and were only ‘counsellors and assistants upon such things of learning as should happen in controversy to declare their opinions, much like as the Convocation within the realm of England.’ Their pretensions to a veto were formally pronounced baseless, and it was declared once for all that the assent or dissent of the proctors could have no effect on the action of Parliament.