Head
The head of the administration was variously known as the Justicar, the Lord Deputy, from the seventeenth century the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and later the Viceroy. Before 1707 he represented the government of the Kingdom of England, then that of the Kingdom of Great Britain, and finally from 1801 that of the United Kingdom. He was also the personal representative in Ireland of the monarch.
By the nineteenth century, the Lord Lieutenant was declining in importance by comparison with his chief aide, the Chief Secretary for Ireland. By the late nineteenth century the Lord Lieutenant was sometimes, but not always, a member of the British cabinet, but the Chief Secretary invariably was a member.
The Government of Ireland Act 1920 gave the Lord Lieutenant a new role, that of the Crown's representative in the two new Irish UK regions of Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. However, Southern Ireland's institutions never came into operation due to the Irish War of Independence. Upon the independence of the Irish Free State from the United Kingdom in 1922, the Lord Lieutenancy was abolished, with its functions being transferred to the two new offices of Governor-General of the Irish Free State and Governor of Northern Ireland respectively.
Read more about this topic: Dublin Castle Administration
Famous quotes containing the word head:
“Between my head and my hand, there is always the face of death.”
—Francis Picabia (1878–1953)
“The traveller on the prarie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I don’t care for success. The ideas sitting in my head are annoyed by, and envious of, that which I’ve already written.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)