Falkiner — P(U'U(unent of Ireland under Tudor Sovereigns. 509 



properly called Parliaments, were certainly very far removed from the 

 likeness of what we now understand by that name. The same author, 

 in his treatise on The Law of Electmi in the Ancient Cities and Towns 

 of Ireland^"" carried this investigation a step further, by tracing the 

 evolution of the borough franchise from the fourteenth century to 

 modern times. 



But, although Lynch has printed in the first-named work the 

 several writs of summons and parliamentary lists from Edward I. 

 to James I., he has not dealt with the Tudor Parliaments. And 

 although Sir W. Betham, in his work on The Origin and History of 

 the Constitution of England and the Early Parliaments of Ireland^ has 

 devoted some chapters to the early Councils and Parliaments of 

 Ireland, his inquiry does not extend beyond the reign of Richard III. ; 

 at which point the author abandoned his design of continuing the 

 History of the Parliament of Ireland to modern times. Monck 

 Mason's Essay on the Antic^uity and Constitution of Parliaments in 

 Ireland seems, from its title, to come nearer than any of the other 

 works we have mentioned to a discussion of the subject now in hand. 

 But this treatise is mainly devoted to a refutation of Sir John Davies' 

 assertion, in his well-known speech in 1613, that there was no 

 separate Parliament for Ireland for 140 years from King Henry II. 

 It is, moreover, chiefly occupied with an examination of the nature of 

 the legislative assemblies summoned in Ireland under the Plantagenet 

 sovereigns, and barely touches upon the Tudor Period. There is, 

 indeed, one other work which professes to give a general survey of the 

 history of Parliaments in Ireland. The second Viscount Mountmorres, 

 who in the Grattan Parliament held an eminent position as an 

 authority on Irish constitutional history, published in 1792 a History 

 of the Principal Transactions of the Irish Parliament from 1634 to 1666. 

 This work, in so far as it illustrates its title, is little more than an 

 analysis of the earliest printed journals of the Irish Parliament, 

 which begin with the year 1634 ; but it is prefaced by^ Preliminary 

 Discourse on the Ancient Parliaments of that Kingdom, The principal 

 matter in the preliminary discourse is, however, furnished by the 

 account of the Order and Usage how to keep a Parliament in England^ 

 contributed to Holinshed's Chronicles by John Hooker, in the reign 



^ This work, which was published in 1831, contains a very valuable conspectus 

 of the Irish boroughs returning members to Parliament from 1358 to 1800. But 

 this table does not specify the boroughs returning members to any of tlie Tudor 

 Parliaments prior to that called by Sussex in 2nd Elizabeth. 



[41*] 



