Falkiner — FarUament of Ireland under Tudor Sovereigm. 513 



by the same Deputy in Dublin in the following year. Henry VII.'s 

 last Parliament, which was likewise summoned by an Earl of Kildare, 

 held three sessions in Dublin, and one at Tristledermot in the last year 

 of the reign. 



In the absence of any kind of record beyond the bare enactments 

 upon the rolls of Parliament, it is impossible to form for ourselves 

 anything like a picture of the procedure of Parliament under Henry VII. 

 It appears clear indeed, from the language of the Address of the 

 Parliament of 1492, already referred to, that the first Parliament of 

 the reign, like that of Gormanston's at Trim, which is described by 

 Ware as consisting of the " nobles and prime men " of the Pale, was 

 little more that a representation of the peers of the four counties 

 adjacent to the capital. It is at any rate very improbable that in such 

 an assembly there can have been any separate representation of the 

 Commons as a distinct House. The only clue to the form and fashion 

 of the meetings of the Legislature at this time is fui-nished by an Act 

 of Poynings' Parliament, from which we may infer the informal 

 character of the earlier assemblies. The statute 10 Henry VII., cap. 16, 

 required that the Lords should wear their Parliament robes, this 

 custom having lately fallen into disuse. The only other indication of 

 the usages of Parliament in the last years of the fifteenth century is 

 afforded by the records prefixed to the statutes of each Parliament, 

 which preserve for us the names of the towns in which each session 

 was held. Prom this it appears that, although confined by law to 

 Dublin and Drogheda,^ the Parliament sat at the pleasure of the 

 Deputy in different towns of the Pale, and that Trim and Tristle- 

 dermot were favourite venues. 



The obscurity in which the usages of Henry VII.'s Legislature 

 are wrapped extends to the three first of the five Parliaments of his 

 successor. Of the Parliaments of the 7th, 13th, and 25th of 

 Henry VIII., we know almost nothing beyond what the Statute Book 

 tells us, notwithstanding that the two last-named were held under 



^ Of the Acts passed in the Parliament of 1498 only one is printed in the Statute 

 Book. But several others were passed, and these have been printed in Sir John 

 Gilbert's National Manuscripts of Ireland, from a roll discovered in England in the 

 last century. Those passed in 1508 have not hitherto been printed. Ware laments 

 in his Atinals that the laws made in the Parliament of 1498 were not upon record 

 in his time. He mentions that one Nangle was imprisoned in England on a charge 

 of having surreptitiously taken away the Rolls. 



- See Statute, 33rd Hen. VIII., s. 2, c. 1. 



