Falkiner — Parliament of Ireland under Tudor Sovereigns. 517 



been left by tbe Irish Lord Chancellor, Weston, in a letter to Cecil. ^ 

 After describing the contentions, well knoTvn to us through Hooker's 

 description in Holinshed, over the composition of the House of 

 Commons, and the opposition to the presence of a number of English 

 members with no stake in Ireland, the Lord Chancellor thus refers to 

 the discussion on Poynings' Act : — 



" The first Eill that was readd was touching the suspending of 

 Poynings' Acte : a good and profitable bill, and worthie of much 

 favoure : and so wee thought it should have found. But it was 

 handled as things are used to be that fall into angrie men's hands, 

 without good advice and consideracon, it was with great earnestnes 

 and stomake overthrowen and dasshed." 



The Commons, however, were not long in repenting their rejection 

 of the Eill. In effect they had reduced both Houses to the position 

 which the House of Lords in England now occupies towards the 

 House of Commons in respect of a Money Bill. On passing to the 

 consideration of the other Bills submitted to them, they found the 

 result of their action was to prevent their making any amendments 

 in them, and to involve the acceptance or rejection of all measures 

 submitted in the precise form in which they had been certified to 

 the English Council. They accordingly addressed the Lord Deputy 

 to procure a prorogation of Parliament in order that the Suspensory 

 Bill might be re-introduced in a fresh session. After a brief interval 

 of three days, Parliament reassembled, and the Bill was passed 

 through all its stages in both Houses in a single day : the Lord Deputy, 

 Sydney, who had opened the Session in the morning, coming down 

 specially to the House of Lords to give the royal assent. For the 

 judges considered, as Weston observes, that " neither any amendment 

 might be made of any of the bills sent out of England under her 

 highness' great seal, nor treaty of any new bill, except first the said 

 bill of Poynings', by the said royal assent, were confirmed as the very 

 ground and foundation on which all the others were to be layd and 

 bylded." But though it thus concurred in the suspension of the Act, 

 as the only means of preventing its whole proceedings from becoming 

 abortive, this Parliament marked its sense of the importance of the 

 original Act of Poynings as a security of the Legislature against the 

 arbitrary action of the Deputies, by enacting in the same session that 

 no bill should be certified into England for the repeal or suspension 



1 See Holinshed, vi., p. 34, and a Letter of Lord Chancellor Weston to Cecily 

 dnted February 17, 1569, in State Paj)ers (Ireland), vol. 27, No. 25. 



