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  • Publication
    Central Aspects of the Eighteenth-Century Constitutional Framework in Ireland: The Government Supply Bill and Biennial Parliamentary Sessions, 1715-82
    (Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society, 2001-07)
    In the period 1692-1714, the Irish constitution was redefined through a process of political conflict and compromise between the executive and legislature over the question of the provision of money for the government's financial needs. The conflict centred upon two central elements of the existing constitution: Poynings' law and the crown's prerogative in initiating supply legislation. The resulting compromise constitutional framework was characterised by five principles, two of which concerned the government supply bill in the first session of a new parliament and the use by the House of Commons of supply legislation as a means of ensuring biennial parliamentary sessions. This article addresses the question of the application of these two principles in the period 1715-82, and examines the extent to which the politics of supply resulted in further alterations within the constitutional framework prior to legislative independence in 1782.
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  • Publication
    English Ministers, Irish Politicians and the Making of a Parliamentary Settlement in Ireland, 1692-5
    (Oxford University Press, 2004-06-01)
    In the first post-Glorious Revolution Parliament in Ireland in 1692, a constitutional crisis erupted over the House of Commons’ claim to have the ‘sole and undoubted right’ to initiate financial supply legislation in Ireland, and their rejection of the majority of the government’s legislative programme, including the most substantial provisions for financial supply. Not only did the ‘sole right’ claim result in the loss of desperately needed income for the government, it also represented an attack upon the existing constitutional framework in Ireland, in particular Poynings’ Law and the Crown’s prerogative in initiating legislation. The hasty prorogation of Parliament following these events led to political impasse in Ireland at the end of 1692. This article details the endeavours that were made to break that impasse, and examines the roles taken by leading English ministers, in particular those associated with the Whig party, and by a new generation of Irish politicians, many of whom were also whiggish in inclination, in the negotiation of a compromise settlement in 1694–5. The compromise solution eventually agreed upon in early 1695 resulted later in that year in the summoning of a new Irish Parliament, in which substantial necessary financial supplies were voted for the government. In the longer term, the 1695 compromise came to form the basis for a new constitutional framework for Irish executive-legislature relations that facilitated the advent of regular parliamentary sessions on a biennial basis in Ireland in the eighteenth century.
      328Scopus© Citations 4