PARLIAMENTThe towns were not requested to send representa-
tives in 1297, but cities and boroughs to which foreign
merchants came were required to send two citizens or
burgesses to the parliament of 1299 and one year later,
all cities and boroughs were required to send represen-
tatives. At the start of the fourteenth century, therefore,
representatives of all the principal local communities
were being summoned to attend parliament. This did
not imply that the Irish parliament had become a dem-
ocratic institution. Only the knights of the countryside
and the burgesses of the towns were allowed to vote
for representatives who were themselves drawn from
this narrow class. Where the names of the representa-
tives are known, it is clear that the local communities
chose men of experience to assent to the legislation
which they would ultimately be required to implement.
The makeup of any single parliament depended on
the precise nature of the business to be discussed and
the justiciar would therefore tailor the summonses to
parliament to meet specific purposes. It is thought that
during the early period of the institution’s existence,
there was a distinction between “general parliaments”
and simple “parliaments,” with only the former requir-
ing the attendance of local representatives. Popular
representatives—also referred to as “the commons”—
cannot be seen as playing an essential part in parliament
before the middle of the fourteenth century when their
summons to Irish parliaments became invariable. Until
this date parliaments are certainly viewed by contem-
poraries as primarily aristocratic occasions and it would
appear that as an institution the Irish parliament made
little or no impact on the popular consciousness.
By the end of the reign of Edward III (1377) the
commons had an established place in the Irish parlia-
ment and had been joined by the clerical proctors,
representatives of the lower clergy. This group was
summoned for the first time in 1371 and thereafter
became a regular part of the Irish parliament.
By the reign of Richard II, the idea of a defined and
limited class of peers of parliament had appeared in
Ireland. This combined with other factors to result in
the steady decline in numbers summoned to parlia-
ment. In the early fourteenth century as many as ninety
laymen might be summoned by individual writ, but by
the end of the fifteenth century there were only fifteen
temporal peers. The numbers of heads of religious
houses summoned shrank from around twenty to six,
often because of claims for exemption from the abbots
and priors themselves. The majority of the thirty-two
Irish bishops seem to have been summoned but not all
attended. Fourteen counties and liberties and twelve
towns were entitled to send representatives but this
number similarly shrank as the area controlled by the
central government became more constricted and cen-
tred on what was to become the Pale.
The 1297 Parliament
The parliament held in Dublin in 1297 is noteworthy
for a number of reasons. Although some fragmentary
memoranda survive for the 1278 parliament, the 1297
one is the first from which substantial legislation sur-
vives. Furthermore, 1297 is regarded by many as the
first real parliament to meet in Ireland as it was the first
time, as far as is known, that the writs of summons
contained a plena potestasclause. This meant that the
representatives sent by the shires and provinces were to
be given full powers to speak and decide for all and that
the legislation of the parliament was to be fully binding.
The legislation passed by the 1297 parliament had much
significance for the localities and this was no doubt why
the presence of their representatives was deemed impor-
tant. The parliament considered the vital question of
how best to establish and maintain peace in Ireland, and
the legislation placed the burden of defense and peace-
keeping firmly on communities and individuals. It iden-
tified the twin evils of absenteeism on the part of the
great lords and what was termed “degeneracy” on the
part of some resident subjects who were not preserving
their distinctive English customs and traits.
These problems and how to deal with them occu-
pied Irish parliaments for many decades to come.Parliamentary Legislation
Parliaments had a judicial and a legislative role and
were used to deal with petitions and settlement of
disputes as well as to formulate legislation and obtain
consent to various measures. One of the most impor-
tant pieces of business regularly transacted in parlia-
ments in the later Middle Ages was the granting of
subsidies to the chief governor. The amounts to be
levied from these subsidies varied considerably until
they became standardized in the fifteenth century. With
the growing threat to the lordship in the fourteenth
century came increased demands for taxation. The rep-
resentatives of the local communities, which had to
bear the main burden of taxation, played an important
part in the granting of subsidies. During the 1370s
William of Windsor’s heavy fiscal demands provoked
opposition in parliament and when the king tried to
bring representatives of the Irish counties and towns
to England in order to ply them with demands for
money, their electors reacted by denying them the
authority to make grants.
It would appear that parliamentary rolls on the
English model were not kept in medieval Ireland and
prior to the fifteenth century our knowledge of parlia-
mentary legislation comes from a variety of documen-
tary sources. In 1427 the statute rolls, which contain
enactments of the Irish parliament, began as a series