Falktner — Parliament of Ireland under Tudor Sovereigns. 521 



sumptous fabric " in the precincts of Christ Church in which the 

 Four Courts were situate in the seventeenth century.^ 



The Parliament of Lord Leonard Grey is further remarkable for 

 the abolition of an interesting surviyal of the ancient constitution. 

 Clerical Proctors had been summoned in England by the Plantagenet 

 sovereigns to complete the representation of the spiritual estate.* But 

 their parliamentary functions had been early forgotten ; and, their right 

 to a place in the High Court of Parliament having merged in their 

 privileges as members of Convocation, they had ceased to be summoned 

 to "Westminster long before the opening of the Tudor era. The case 

 of the Proctors is, however, only one among many examples of the 

 survival of constitutional and administrative usages in Ireland long 

 after they had become obsolete in England. Down to, and including, 

 the Parliament of 1536-7, two Proctors of every diocese had been 

 " used and accustomed to be summoned and warned to be at Parlia- 

 ment,"^ though some doubt appears to have existed as to their precise 

 position and powers in the Legislature. Their attempt to assert a 

 complete equality with the Commons in the Parliament of 1537 led 

 to an abridgment of their functions which finally destroyed what- 

 ever legislative authority they had at any time possessed. In their 

 opposition to the ecclesiastical legislation which was the principal busi- 

 ness of Grey's Parliament, the Proctors advanced pretensions which, if 

 admitted, would in effect have constituted them a separate estate, and 

 would have enabled them to veto whatever legislation they disapproved. 

 For the purpose of over-riding the preponderating influence of the 

 spiritual peers, who were opposed to the assertion of his supremacy in 

 matters ecclesiastical, Henry VIII. had made such additions to the 

 temporal peerage as were necessary to secure a majority in the Upper 

 House. To meet this abridgment of their powers, the spiritual peers put 

 forward the claim of the Proctors to a concurrent voice in the Lower House. 

 They declined to receive any bills sent up from the Commons till they 

 knew whether their Proctors in the Convocation House had a voice or 

 not. The claim was vigorously asserted by the Proctors themselves. 



^ Camden's Britannia, p. 1367. 



' Stubbs's Constitniional History of England, iii., 462. The historian notes that 

 in 1547 the Lower House of Convocation in England petitioned that, according to 

 the custom of this realm and the tenor of the king's writ," they should be associated 

 with the Lower House of Parliament. He adds " we have here, possibly, a trace 

 of a long-forgotten usage." The usage had evidently been preserved in Ireland. 



3 Statute 28th Henry VIII., cap. 12. 



