English ministers, Irish politicians and the making of a parliamentary settlement in Ireland, 1692-5 *.

At the conclusion of the Irish war of 1689-91, the new Williamite government faced the arduous task of trying to bring about a settlement of a devastated and divided country. Government finances were in a critical state, with rapidly escalating pay arrears and drastically reduced income. At the same time, the minority Irish Protestant community, although on the victorious side in the war, viewed its future with trepidation. The Articles of Limerick, which had brought the war to a close, were, as far as many Protestants were concerned, too lenient towards a treasonous Catholic population, a factor that contributed to a belief within Irish Protestant circles that their position in Ireland remained insecure, despite the Williamite military victory. (1)

In October 1692, the all-Protestant Irish Parliament was summoned with a view to bringing about a settlement of Ireland in the Protestant interest. Instead of legislating for such a settlement, however, the Irish House of Commons endeavoured to assert what they believed to be their constitutional right, by claiming to have the 'sole and undoubted right' to initiate, and control, supply legislation. In light of this so-called 'sole right' claim, the Lord Lieutenant, the English Whig, Henry, Viscount Sidney, brought the session to an abrupt conclusion after only four weeks. (2) In a short time it became apparent to both the Irish executive and the political nation that as long as the 'sole right' issue remained unresolved, a further meeting of the Irish Parliament, and with it the hoped-for settlement of Ireland in the Protestant interest, remained improbable.

It is the aim of this article to address the question of how the political impasse of 1692 was resolved, by examination of the negotiations that took place between the English and Irish governments and Irish politicians on the 'sole right' issue during 1693-5, and the extent to which the emerging Whig predominance in English government from 1693 onwards provided the necessary political will, and ideology, for facilitating such negotiations. These negotiations eventually enabled the respective parties to move from a position of entrenched opposition to one of working compromise. The 1695 compromise in turn facilitated a legislative resolution to the Irish government's financial difficulties, enabled the Irish Protestant political nation to place their nascent ascendancy over the Catholic Irish upon a more secure footing, and ultimately heralded the advent of regular parliamentary sessions in Ireland. Prior to the 1690s, and excluding the Jacobite Parliament of 1689, only four Parliaments had met in Ireland in the seventeenth century, the last being in 1661-6. However, from 1695 onwards the Irish Parliament began meeting on a regular basis, and for most of the eighteenth century settled into a timetable of biennial sessions. Therein, the 1695 compromise was the first stage in the evolution of a new constitutional relationship between the executive and legislature in eighteenth-century Ireland. (3)

The cornerstone of the Irish constitution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was an Irish Act of 1495, known as Poynings' Law. In accordance with that law, before an Irish Parliament could be summoned the Irish executive was required to certify, for consideration by the English monarch and Privy Council, the proper 'causes and considerations' for calling Parliament, inclusive of all proposed legislation. Such of the 'causes, considerations, and acts' as were 'affirmed by the King and his Council to be good and expedient' were then returned to Ireland with the monarch's licence under the Great Seal of England to summon an Irish Parliament. (4) Thus, whenever an Irish Parliament assembled, the whole body of legislation to be considered during a given session had already been prepared by the executive, and could only be accepted, without amendment, or rejected. Parliament had no initiative in preparing legislation. In the 1550s, Poynings' Law was amended so as to allow the Irish executive, during the time that Parliament was sitting, to draft and transmit to England any further legislation deemed to be necessary, the need for which had not been apparent prior to the commencement of the session. Such further draft legislation was thereafter proceeded upon in keeping with the normal process dictated by Poynings' Law. (5)

The primary intention of Poynings' Law was that it should enable the English Crown and government to curb the independent tendencies of native Irish viceroys, and make the Irish executive subordinate to, and dependent upon, the English government. For the same reasons, Poynings' Law was also long considered by the Irish political community as a safeguard against corrupt and arbitrary government by the Irish executive. However, the utilization in the first half of the seventeenth century of Poynings' Law as a means to reduce the Irish Parliament to little more than a cipher for English Crown policy, in particular during the government of Thomas Wentworth in the 1630s, resulted in a change of attitude within the Irish political community, and the identification of Poynings' Law as their main constitutional grievance. (6)

At the same time, a degree of parliamentary legislative initiative began to develop on the basis of the 1550s amendment to Poynings' Law. At first Parliament presented petitions or requests to the executive desiring that certain bills be drafted by the Irish Privy Council. This initiative was continued by various means, culminating in the 1660s in the 'heads of bills' procedure. Heads of bills differed from ordinary bills in the form of address in the title, and in the procedure for their enactment. Both the Lords and Commons, independent of each other, could draft heads and send them to the Irish Council desiring that they be drawn up in the form of a standard bill, which, if the Council saw fit, was then transmitted to England, where it could be amended, postponed, respited or returned. If returned, the bill went through both Houses in accordance with the normal procedure under Poynings' Law. (7)

The various restrictions imposed upon the Irish Parliament by Poynings' Law were made even more unpalatable to the political community by the concurrent assumption by the English Parliament of a right to legislate for Ireland. Thus the Irish constitution at the time of the 'Glorious Revolution' was one in which the Irish Parliament was, in theory at least, subordinate to both the English and Irish executives and the English legislature. (8) Yet at the same time, the 1689-91 war had demonstrated that the fate of Protestant Ireland was inextricably tied to the fate of Protestant England. (9) Therefore, it might not have been considered unreasonable for Williamite government officials to think that Protestant Ireland's dependence upon the English connection would result in a Parliament that was compliant with the wishes of government and accepting of its subordinate status.