The long title of the Act was "An Act that the King of England, his Heirs and Successors, be Kings of Ireland". Among the 18th-century Irish Patriot Party it was called the Act of Annexation.[2]
The secession of various European rulers during the Protestant Reformation, including Henry VIII, prompted the papacy to initiate the Counter-Reformation. One consequence of this was that the papacy required all Roman Catholic rulers to consider Protestant rulers (and their loyal subjects) as heretics, thus making their realms illegitimate under customary Roman Catholic international law.[citation needed] Consequently, the title "King of Ireland" was not initially recognised by Europe's Catholic monarchs and the papacy. Instead, they remained committed in considering Ireland a feudal fief of the papacy, to be granted to any Catholic sovereign who managed to secure the island Kingdom from the control of its Protestant monarchs.
After the death of Henry VIII's only legitimate son, Edward VI and the deposition of his successor Jane, the throne passed to his oldest daughter, Mary I, who was a devout Roman Catholic. Mary shortly thereafter married Philip of Spain, who was also staunchly Catholic. The new monarch restored papal authority in both England and Ireland. However, the status of Ireland as a kingdom remained in question: would the papacy recognise Ireland's existence as a kingdom in its own right or maintain some fiction of temporal papal power in the land? To rectify this, Pope Paul IV issued a papal bull in 1555, Ilius, per quem Reges regnant, recognising Philip and Mary as King and Queen of England and its dominions including Ireland. Although this did not explicitly recognise Ireland as a kingdom, it represents the surrender of most of the papacy's declared authority over Ireland, elevating it from a mere province of the Holy See to one that united Ireland's and England's crowns in one person.[4]
Mary died without issue in 1558, and the thrones of England and Ireland passed to her half-sister, Elizabeth I, who was a Protestant. Once again, both Kingdoms were removed from papal authority. In reply, Pope Pius V issued a papal bull in 1570, Regnans in Excelsis, declaring "Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime" to be a heretic and releasing all her subjects from any allegiance to her and excommunicating any that obeyed her orders.
Subsequent developments
Over the course of the next two centuries, the papacy and Europe's Catholic rulers continued to recognise Ireland as a kingdom in its own right, whilst at the same time asserting its Protestant monarchy as illegitimate.[citation needed] Simultaneously, they would incite Catholic rebellion to Protestants in the island as a means of recovering Ireland to a Catholic sovereign, preceding the establishment of a Catholic sovereign on the English and Scottish thrones.[citation needed] In reply, British diplomacy concentrated on receiving the recognition of the sovereignty of Ireland from Catholic Europe in the hope of thereby ending future Catholic sovereign incitements of the larger Catholic peasantry and securing the western flank of Great Britain from Catholic invasion.[citation needed]
William III (King Billy of Orange), the Duke of Schomberg and the Pope
As a result of the Anglo-Irish Treaty that ended the Irish War of Independence, most of Ireland officially left the United Kingdom in December 1922 and became the Irish Free State, a mostly self-governing dominion that still retained the British monarch as its sovereign and head of state. Northern Ireland, having been partitioned from what would become the Irish Free State by the Government of Ireland Act 1920, remained in the United Kingdom, with its own parliament and devolved system of government. Despite these fundamental changes, the 16th-century act remained unamended on the statute books.
From a British perspective, the Irish Free State became legislatively independent with the passage in the British Parliament of the Statute of Westminster 1931. However, the Irish Free State considered itself legislatively independent before its passage and did not recognise its legal situation as having changed. The dominion thereafter shared the person of its monarch with the United Kingdom and the other dominions of the then-called British Commonwealth.
Blackstone, Sir William and Stewart, James (1839). The Rights of Persons, According to the Text of Blackstone: Incorporating the Alterations Down to the Present Time. p. 92.
^Grattan, Henry (1822). "Regency: Feb. 11, 1789". The Speeches of the Right Honourable Henry Grattan in the Irish, and in the Imperial Parliament. Vol. II. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown. p. 114. Retrieved 22 February 2016. The act of Henry VIII., commonly called the act of annexation, proves and ascertains what the member's arguments would deny, the existence, properties, and prerogatives of the Irish crown.; A Review of Mr. Grattan's Answer to the Earl of Clare's Speech(PDF). Vol. Part the first. Dublin: J. Milliken. 1800. p. 6. What by a bold flight of imperialism we now denominate the Act of Annexation, (33d Hen. VIII. c. 1.) was in truth no more than an alteration in the Royal style.
^Moody, T. W.; et al., eds. (1989). A New History of Ireland. 8: A Chronology of Irish History. Oxford University Press. ISBN978-0-19-821744-2.
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