Crown of Ireland Act 1542 - Subsequent Developments

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. 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. In reply, Irish diplomacy was in receiving the recognition of the sovereignty of Ireland from Catholic Europe, thereby ending future Catholic sovereign incitements of the larger Catholic peasantry and securing the western flank of Great Britain from Catholic invasion. This recognition was eventually granted in 1755 by the Holy See when the last Catholic inspired invasion of England ended in failure during the Jacobite rebellion and in subsequent treaties with other Catholic sovereigns, following British global victories during the remainder of the century.

Until 1801, Ireland continued to exist as a Kingdom in its own right, with its own Parliament; however, its government remained in English hands even after Grattan's constitution came into effect in the 1780s. Most of the country's population remained Catholic, but its Protestant minority remained socially, politically, and economically dominant; and even many Protestants were excluded from power as not being members of the Anglican Church of Ireland. The Penal Laws preserving the position of the Protestant Ascendancy began to be dismantled in the 1780s and 1790s. However, fear of revolutionary violence in the wake of the French Revolution and the French Revolutionary Wars and subsequent republican Irish Rebellion of 1798 led the British government to seek the union of Ireland with Great Britain; this resulted in the formation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.