Kingdom of Ireland

From 1542 until the last day of 1800, Ireland was formally a kingdom whose crown belonged to the monarchs of England and, after 1707, of Great Britain. Created when the Irish Parliament declared Henry VIII King of Ireland, it was in theory an equal partner in a personal union, but in practice it was governed from Dublin Castle by a viceroy answerable to London. Its history was one of conquest, land confiscation, plantation and religious division, and it ended when Ireland was merged into the United Kingdom.

English kings had claimed lordship over Ireland since Henry II's intervention in the 1170s, but by the fifteenth century direct English rule had shrunk to the Pale, an area on the east coast around Dublin. Most of the island was held by Gaelic lords and by Anglo-Norman families who had largely adopted Gaelic ways. After Henry VIII broke with Rome, the papal basis of the lordship became doubtful, and in 1542 the Crown of Ireland Act raised Ireland to a kingdom. Catholic Europe at first refused to recognise the title, until a papal bull of 1555 accepted the Catholic Mary I as queen of Ireland.

The Tudor state steadily extended its control, provoking the Desmond Rebellions and then the Nine Years' War, which began in 1593 under Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, with Spanish help. After early Irish successes, English forces under Lord Mountjoy wore down the rebellion, and Tyrone submitted in 1603. For the first time the whole island was under the crown's effective rule.

In 1603 James VI of Scotland inherited the English and Irish crowns, joining the three kingdoms in one person. His reign saw the Plantation of Ulster, the largest of the schemes that settled English and Scottish Protestants on confiscated land, with lasting effects on the province's population. During the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, Irish Catholic Confederates held most of the island from 1641 until the conquest led by Oliver Cromwell, after which Ireland was ruled under the republican Commonwealth until the monarchy returned in 1660. The Catholic James II's reign led to the Williamite War of 1689 to 1691, and William's victory confirmed Protestant rule.

The kingdom had its own two-chamber parliament, but Poynings' Law of 1494 and later measures left it little real power, and the Declaratory Act of 1719 formally confirmed Ireland's subordinate status. A small Anglo-Irish Protestant elite, known as the Protestant Ascendancy, dominated land and office, and the Church of Ireland was the established church although most of the population remained Catholic. A series of penal laws restricted Catholics, and also Presbyterians and other dissenters, barring them from parliament from 1693 and denying them the vote from 1728 to 1793. The kingdom maintained its own standing army, for much of the period the largest force available to the crown.

In 1782 Poynings' Law was repealed, giving the Irish Parliament legislative independence. Led by Henry Grattan, it eased some restrictions, and in 1793 Catholics regained the vote, though not the right to sit in parliament. Executive power still lay with ministers appointed in Britain. In 1798 the United Irishmen rose in a republican rebellion with French support, which was suppressed. In its aftermath both parliaments passed the Acts of Union 1800, and on 1 January 1801 Ireland joined Great Britain in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Irish Parliament was abolished, though the viceroy's administration in Dublin continued.

The period left deep marks on modern Ireland: a largely Protestant and unionist population in much of Ulster, a Catholic majority with long memories of dispossession and legal discrimination, and a disputed relationship with Britain. The Church of Ireland remained the established church until 1871.

Our 1715, 1783 and 1800 maps show the Kingdom of Ireland covering the whole island, beside Great Britain, the kingdom formed when England and the Kingdom of Scotland united in 1707.