Finglas‘ proposal for political reform involved the expansion of royal power within the Pale as a prelude to the reformation of the Irish lordship as a whole. "Furste, our Souveraigne Lorde the Kyng shuld extend his gracious power, for the Reformacion of Leinsterwhich is the Key and highwaye for the Reformacion of the Remanent."(22) The political reform of Ireland, however, ultimately required the Irish government to enforce English law uniformly throughout Ireland. [W]hensoever our Souveraigne Lord shall extend the Reformacion of Irlaund, he must Reduce the Lordes and Gentilmen of this Londe whych be of English Nacion to due Obedience of his Grace‘s Lawes, which is very harde to doe, unless the Kyng with an Army represse Irishmen upon the Borders, to contribute in a good conforming.(23) Finglas and the other Old English reformers demanded, and expected, the reformation of the Irish government to proceed on their terms. They sought efficient, centralized English governance sensitive to their own interests. Only when the king acted on these interests would the English foothold in Ireland be secure. The crown took little account of these Old English reform programs in framing the government that replaced the fallen Kildare administration. The crown responded to the Old English demands in only the most formal of ways. In the new Cromwellian administration (1534-1536), the Irish government gained a nominally expanded jurisdiction but lacked the manpower, financial resources, and commitment to enforce it. The new administration acted conservatively to fill the vacuum of power left by the collapse of Fitzgerald hegemony. The crown replaced the traditional governing mode of aristocratic delegation with a more centralized apparatus that included an English-born deputy, a standing garrison, and stronger control by the government in London. This new administration limited its reforms to the Englishry in Ireland; it attempted to create around the Pale a network of fortified garrisons similar to those defending the English settlement at Calais. Among the Irishry, the government attempted simply to secure and maintain traditional agreements with the Gaelic lords.(24) The Cromwellian administration thereby provoked bitter resentment in the Old English community. The suspension in 1536 of Poyning‘s Law(25) during the so-called Reformation Parliament undermined the executive function of the local Dublin administration; legislative initiative passed from it to Cromwell and the Council in London.(26) The frustration of the Old English over their exclusion from traditional legislative processes provoked "the first appearance of organized opposition to government policy which became so marked a feature of parliaments in early modern Ireland."(27) The succeeding Irish administration of Lord Leonard Grey (1536-1540) served only to exacerbate Old English dissatisfaction. The expansion of English jurisdiction to include the Irishry strained the resources of an already understaffed Dublin administration, and the regime threatened to deprive the Old English of the little influence that they had maintainedin the government. "All Palesmen greatly resented the army of one thousand soldiers over whom they had no control," Nicholas Canny has explained. "[T]his left the Dublin government even more isolated than usual, since the army was resented even by those whom it was purporting to defend."(28) Thus, the outlines of future conflict emerged as crown and community pursued increasingly divergent goals for the government of Ireland. The Old English demanded a transformation of the Irish polity; the crown sought only to maintain the medieval lordship. In the Irish parliament of 1541, the Old English struck preemptively to advance their program for reform against the crown‘s reluctance. Through the Act for the Kingly Title, which declared Ireland to be a sovereign kingdom under the rule of the English monarch, the Old English secured the comprehensive reform of the Irish administration for which Finglas and other reformers had called. The text of the Act reveals an attempt to bind the king to the enforcement of English laws in Ireland. [L]ack of naming the king‘s majesty and his noble progenitors kings of Ireland, according to their said true and just title, style, and name therein, hath been great occasion that the Irishmen and inhabitants within this realm of Ireland have not been so obedient to the king‘s highness and his most noble progenitors, and to their laws, as they of right, and according to their allegiance and bounden duties ought to have been.(29) This Act provided for the political unity of all inhabitants of Ireland, both Gaelic and English, under the unilateral jurisdiction of the crown and revealed an emergent impulse among the Old English to use the Irish parliament as their forum for political action within the new polity.(30) In repudiating the divided structure of the medieval lordship established in the Statutes of Kilkenny (1366), the Act for the Kingly Title envisaged a single Irish community under the rule of the king, and it committed the crown‘s energies to making this single community a reality.(31) The parliament of 1541, which included members of both the Irishry and the Englishry, acted for the first time as an instrument of national governance. By emphasizing their position as loyal subjects, the Old English constitutionally prevented the government from neglecting their interests. By transforming Ireland into a sovereign kingdom under the crown, the Old English gave constitutional legitimacy to their version of Englishness.(32) The implications of the Act for the relationship between crown and community were vast. "A local reform group lobbying for royal initiative to impose order throughout the island," Steven Ellis explained, "had finally succeeded in committing the crown to just that, despite rebuffs in 1494, 1520 and the mid-1530s."(33) What the Old English had not accomplished through persuasion and argument they achieved through constitutional manipulation. In emphasizing Henry‘s kingly duty towards his subjects in Ireland, they bound the crown to political reform on Old English terms. Kingly duty would become "a much-used weapon in the armoury of persuasives" on which the Old English would rely as conflict with the colonial administration escalated.(34) |
