A History of Poynings Law

The Lancastrian Tudor, Henry VII succeeded to the English throne in 1485 after the Battle of Bosworth. Henry was determined to bring order to England after almost a century of civil war. His marriage to Elizabeth of York had the effect of combining the Lancastrian and Yorkist factions within the Tudor line thus eliminating further dissension regarding the line of succession. However, Ireland was involved in two Yorkist plots centred around the pretenders who claimed a closer dynastic link to the Plantagenets than Henry. Henry crushed these two insurrections and moved to cease the threat that Ireland now presented. In 1494 he dispatched Sir Edward Poynings to bring the country to heel and prevent Yorkist pretenders from using Ireland as a base. Poyning summoned parliament to Drogheda in December 1494 which passed a number of acts, the most important been that which was afterwards known as Poynings’ Law. Under it’s terms, parliament was to meet in Ireland only after royal permission had been granted and after the king and the council in England had been informed of and had approved the measures which it had proposed to enact. The interpretation of Poynings’ Law varied massively in the centuries that followed, it’s main intent was to prevent a chief governor in Ireland using the parliament for their own gains and to the King’s detriment as Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare had done in 1487 when he had encouraged it to give official recognition to Lambert Simnel, a pretender to the English Crown. Poynings' Law would greatly subjugate Ireland until a movement led by Henry Grattan pressed for it's drastic modification and virtual repeal in 1782.



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