The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1913-06-14
Near the End of Elizabeth's Reign
Before There Was Any Fixed
Place of Meeting.
They Met Whenever and Wherever
it Suited the Lord Deputies
to Hold Them.
Several Towns in Ireland Have Seen
an Irish Parliament Within
Their Walls.

We have come in a way to connect
the life of the Irish Parliament chiefly
with the sixty mine years that it spent |!
in the structure on College Green,
says L. McManus in the San Fran
cisco Leader.
Perhaps, because it was for the first
time splendidly housed, and that its
history within the walls of the build
ing has been rendered vivid to us by
the speeches of Grattan and other
patriots that we do this. Up to nearly
the end of Elizabeth's reign the Par
liaments had been ambulatory. For
neither them nor the Law Courts was
there any fixed place. They met
wherever it suited the Lord Deputies
to hold them. Thus several towns in
Ireland have had the distinction oil
seeing the Irish Parliament meet
within their walls. Parliaments have;
been held in Trim, Drogheda, Mas,
Wexford, Clare. Conall Limerick, Bal
doyle, Castledermot, Kilkenny, Water
ford and Cashel. All these towns have
ancient castles or abbeys, where the
men of the Pale met to pass laws
which the greater portion of Ireland
T iss Esriy Z S csnspes asi i & fa on . = 4.
= 'rhe first Parliament of which some
acts remain, met in 1895. The Com
mons were represented by knights of
the shire, and the attendance was
small. The Bfehon Laws ran in the
larger portions of the provinces, and
the heads of the princely houses sum-
1noned, when they wished, their own
assemblies, Indifferent to, or unaware
of, the enactments directed against
them and their rights. Burgesses
were admitted early in the next CEN
eighty years before we find record
of the composition of the Irish Par
lament. Then we discover that twen-
ty members formed the House of
Commons in the Parliament sum-
moned in 1874. The restriction of the
English power at that time in ireland
is shown by the names of the counties
and towns from which they were sent.
Dublin, Louth, Kildare, Carlow, the
City of Dublin, Drogheda, Dundalk
and the Liberties and Crosses of
Meath supplied the twenty. Before
the end of the fifteenth, century the
number of the Commons increased to
about sixty members. In the House
of Lords the Bishops and mitred Alb
bots exceeded the temporal peers; but
not allowed to vote.
The "lrish Enemy" and Other Legis-
Iation.
Early in it's history, when from the
informal meeting of the Lord Deputy
and few Of his advisers the assembly
took the form of Parliament with
1A oPpCA duu AOWOI I1OuSc, Vic
lish Government determined to pre-
vent its absolute independence. A
statute, known as an Ordinance for
the State of Ireland, was passed in
London and sent over to this coun-
try to be observed as a law; and by
q second act the Irish Treasurer was
ordered to send annually his state
ment of accounts to the English
Chancellor Of the Exchequer. But, in
spite of these enactments, the Lords
and Commons of the Pale during the
Middle Ages maintained their inde-
pendence in a great measure. Their
legislation was directed first against
"the enemy" the Irish, and, secondly,
In attempts to restrain the power of
the crown-vassals, the great Norman
Irish houses, the heads of which ex-
ercised palatinate Jurisdiction on their
own lands, and who, in a. generation
or two after their settlement In Ire
land, were ready on slight provoca-
tion to go into rebellion. Absentees,
also, engaged their attention, and in
the Parliament of 1895 those absent
English knights, or adventurers, who
had become possessed of land were
taxed to pay the hired soldiers and
military bands that guarded the