The operation, practices and procedures of the Irish House of Commons from 1692 to 1730

• Main Author: McKee, Glenn
• Other Authors: O'Flaherty, Niall ; McBride, Ian Richard
• Published: King's College London (University of London) 2017
• Subjects: 941.507
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.713094

Despite the pretensions to antiquity in the Modus Tenendi Parliamenta ... in Hibernia (1692), and the claims to sovereignty in Molyneux’s Case of Ireland (1698) the Irish House of Commons from 1692 looked to Westminster and the parliamentary transformation that followed the 1688 Revolution not only for constitutional parity of status but also for procedural and operational efficiency. The Irish parliaments of the 1690s saw innovation, compromise and improvisation in procedures, and after 1703 distinctive historic Irish practices were eclipsed. The main differences with Westminster that emerged were adjustments, to operate within Poynings' Law and divergent Irish political and constitutional arrangements. The stimulus and conduit for change were a growing print culture, the shared political alignment of politics in Westminster and Dublin and contacts between politicians and parliamentary officials. Westminster practices were adopted in the Commons silently, as standing orders or under the cloak of 'the constitution of parliament', to protect emerging patriotic sensibilities. The procedural similarities between the two Houses of Commons have been noted in the historiography but not examined in detail. While the historiography has moved on from the view of the eighteenth century as a crescendo to 1782, 1798 and union, some parts of the legacy still colour the approach to the Irish Parliament. First, there is a lingering teleological waiting for the removal of the distortions caused by Poynings' Law. Second, there has been a focus on a top-down management of the Commons, to secure the Government's priorities, which, although providing structure to each session, did not take up the bulk of the time that the Commons was in session. The Commons was for the most part an adaptation, rather than an exact copy, of post-1688 Westminster.