Falkinek — Parliament of Ireland under Tudor Sovereigns. 511 



assembly. of which he was the spokesman ; and it is evident from a 

 •consideration of English constitutional history, that down to a date very 

 much later than that which Davies assigns, the Parliaments summoned 

 by the Deputies of the Plantagenet sovereigns must have been deficient 

 in many of the essentials of a f roe Legislature. Whatever the constitu- 

 tion of the earlier Parliaments of Ireland, we can hardly suppose it to 

 have been more fully developed than that of the English Legislature 

 irom which it was copied. Yet the separation of the two Houses of the 

 English Parliament cannot be certainly placed earlier than 1343, nor 

 was it until the year 1377 that the Speaker of the House of Commons 

 was definitely recognised as an indispensable functionary of that body. 

 Indeed, it is by no means clear that between the reigns of the Third 

 and Fourth Edwards the Parliaments summoned to Westminster were 

 apt models of what would now be termed a constitutional assembly. 

 We need not insist on the other point which Sir John Davies, anxious 

 to emphasise the administrative reforms effected in the reign of James 

 •the First, laboured so assiduously in his speech. The fact that the 

 county representation remained incomplete down to the Stuart epoch, 

 •because it was not till then that the counties were completely formed, 

 ^certainly detracted from the importance of the preceding Parliaments ; 

 but it did not detract from their constitutional character. The early 

 Parliaments were representative as far as the political conditions of 

 the time permitted of representation. It is far from certain to what 

 extent the later Plantagenet Parliaments adopted the procedure of 

 the contemporary English Legislature. But Parliaments were, 

 undoubtedly, called in Ireland with great frequency in the reigns of 

 the Lancastrian and Yorkist Sovereigns. At least ten Parliaments 

 were called in Ireland under Henry YI. ; and it was even found 

 necessary to enact that the Deputy should not summon Parliament 

 more than once in the same year. In the reign of his successor the 

 Legislature met almost annually ; while under Eichard the Third — 

 a sovereign whose reign is a complete blank in the printed statutes of 

 Ireland — two Parliaments were held, the first in 1482, the second 

 in 1483-84. In the first of these Parliaments no less than twenty- 

 seven statutes were enacted, and in the second eighteen.^ 



^ See the transcripts of the statutes made nearly a century ago under the 

 direction of the Irish Record Commissioners, and preserved at the Irish Record 

 ■Office ; and also an annotated copy of the printed statutes in the same repository, 

 M'hich affords much valuable information on the early statutes. I owe my 

 acquaintance with these sources of knowledge to the courtesy of the present 

 Assistant Deputy Keeper, Mr. H. F, Berry. 



