Lordship of Ireland in the context of "High Sheriff of County Cork"

Henry II ( (1133-March-05) (1189-July-06)5 March 1133 – 6 July 1189) was King of England from 1154 until his death in 1189. During his reign he controlled England, substantial parts of Wales and Ireland, and much of France (including Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine), an area that was later called the Angevin Empire, and also held power over Scotland for a time and the Duchy of Brittany.

Henry was the eldest son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, and Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England. By the age of fourteen, he became politically and militarily involved in his mother's efforts to claim the English throne, at that time held by her cousin Stephen of Blois. Henry's father made him Duke of Normandy in 1150, and upon his father's death in 1151, Henry inherited Anjou, Maine and Touraine. His marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine brought him control of the Duchy of Aquitaine. Thus, he controlled most of France. Henry's military expedition to England in 1153 resulted in King Stephen agreeing, by the Treaty of Wallingford, to leave England to Henry; he inherited the kingdom at Stephen's death a year later.

The Kingdom of Ireland (Early Modern Irish: Ríoghacht Éireann; Modern Irish: Ríocht na hÉireann, pronounced [ənˠ ˌɾˠiːxt̪ˠ ˈeːɾʲən̪ˠ]) was a dependency of England from 1542 to 1707, and subsequently Great Britain from 1707 to 1800. It was ruled by the monarchs of England and then of Great Britain in personal union, and was administered from Dublin Castle by a viceroy appointed by the English king: the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. By the late 17th century, the state was dominated by the Protestant Anglo-Irish minority, known as the Protestant Ascendancy. The Protestant Church of Ireland was the state church. The Parliament of Ireland was almost exclusively Anglo-Irish. From 1661, the administration controlled an Irish army. Although formally a kingdom in personal union on equal footing with England and later Great Britain, for most of its history it was de facto a dependency with a viceroy sent as an envoy from London. This status was enshrined in the Declaratory Act 1719, also known as the Irish Parliament Act 1719.

The territory of the kingdom comprised that of the former Lordship of Ireland, founded in 1177 by King Henry II of England and the English Pope Adrian IV, after the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. By the 16th century, the Pale, the area of effective English rule, had shrunk greatly; most of Ireland was held by Gaelic nobles as minor principalities notionally subject to London but independent in practice. By the terms of the Crown of Ireland Act 1542, Henry VIII of England became "King of Ireland", theoretically elevating Ireland to coequal status with England as a kingdom in personal union. There followed an expansion of English control during the Tudor conquest. This sparked the Desmond Rebellions and the Nine Years' War. The conquest of the island was completed early in the 17th century. It involved the confiscation of land from the native Irish Catholics and its colonisation by Protestant settlers from Britain. Most Catholic countries at the time did not recognise Protestant monarchs as legitimate kings of Ireland (or indeed of England), instead supporting the Jacobite government-in-exile from 1688 onwards.

The lord chancellor, formally titled Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, is a senior minister of the Crown within the Government of the United Kingdom. The lord chancellor is the minister of justice for England and Wales and the highest-ranking Great Officer of State in Scotland and England, nominally outranking the prime minister. The lord chancellor is appointed and dismissed by the sovereign on the advice of the prime minister. Prior to the union of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain, there were separate lord chancellors for the Kingdom of England (including Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland. Likewise, the Lordship of Ireland and its successor states (the Kingdom of Ireland and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland) maintained the office of lord chancellor of Ireland until the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922, whereupon the office was abolished.

The lord chancellor is a member of the Cabinet and is, by law, the minister of the Crown responsible for the efficient functioning and independence of the courts. The lord chancellor thus leads the Ministry of Justice and is the judiciary's voice within Cabinet. In 2005, there were a number of changes to the legal system and to the office of the lord chancellor. Previously, the lord chancellor was also the presiding officer of the House of Lords, the head of the judiciary of England and Wales and the presiding judge of the Chancery Division of the High Court of Justice. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 transferred these roles to the lord speaker, the lord chief justice and the chancellor of the High Court respectively.

The history of the English monarchy covers the reigns of English kings and queens from the 9th century to 1707. The English monarchy traces its origins to the petty kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England, which consolidated into the Kingdom of England by the 10th century. Anglo-Saxon England had an elective monarchy, but this was replaced by primogeniture after the Norman Conquest in 1066. The Norman and Plantagenet dynasties expanded their authority throughout the British Isles, creating the Lordship of Ireland in 1177 and conquering Wales in 1283.

The monarchy's gradual evolution into a constitutional and ceremonial monarchy is a major theme in the historical development of the British constitution. In 1215, King John agreed to limit his own powers over his subjects according to the terms of Magna Carta. To gain the consent of the political community, English kings began summoning Parliaments to approve taxation and to enact statutes. Gradually, Parliament's authority expanded at the expense of royal power.

The Parliament of Ireland (Irish: Parlaimint na hÉireann) was the legislature of the Lordship of Ireland, and later the Kingdom of Ireland, from 1297 until the end of 1800. It was modelled on the Parliament of England and from 1537 comprised two chambers: the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The Lords were members of the Irish peerage ('lords temporal') and bishops ('lords spiritual'; after the Reformation, Church of Ireland bishops). The Commons was directly elected, albeit on a very restricted franchise. Parliaments met at various places in Leinster and Munster, but latterly always in Dublin: in Christ Church Cathedral (15th century), Dublin Castle (to 1649), Chichester House (1661–1727), the Blue Coat School (1729–31), and finally a purpose-built Parliament House on College Green.

The main purpose of parliament was to approve taxes that were then levied by and for the Dublin Castle administration. Those who would pay the bulk of taxation, namely the clergy, merchants, and landowners, also comprised the members. Only the "English of Ireland" were represented until the first Gaelic lords were summoned during the 16th-century Tudor reconquest. Under Poynings' Law of 1495, all Acts of Parliament had to be pre-approved by the Irish Privy Council and English Privy Council. Parliament supported the Irish Reformation and Catholics were excluded from membership and voting in penal times. The Constitution of 1782 amended Poynings' Law to allow the Irish Parliament to initiate legislation. Catholics were re-enfranchised under the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1793.

Norman Irish or Hiberno-Normans (Irish: Normánach; Old Irish: Gall 'foreigners') is a modern term for the descendants of Norman settlers who arrived during the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in the 12th century. Most came from England and Wales. They are distinguished from the native Gaelic Irish, although some Normans eventually became Gaelicised. The Hiberno-Normans were a feudal aristocracy and merchant oligarchy which controlled the Lordship of Ireland. The Hiberno-Normans were associated with the Gregorian Reform of the Catholic Church in Ireland and contributed to the emergence of a Hiberno-English dialect.

Some of the most prominent Hiberno-Norman families were the Burkes (de Burghs), Butlers, and FitzGeralds. One of the most common Irish surnames, Walsh, derives from Welsh Normans who arrived in Ireland as part of this group. Some Norman families were said to have become "more Irish than the Irish themselves" by merging culturally and intermarrying with the Gaels.

This article lists some of the attested Gaelic kingdoms of early medieval Ireland prior to the Norman invasion of 1169-72.

For much of this period, the island was divided into numerous clan territories and kingdoms (known as túatha). These túatha often competed for control of resources and thus they continually grew and shrank (in both size and number). In addition to kingdoms or túatha, Gaelic Ireland was also divided into five prime overkingdoms (Old Irish cóiceda, Modern Irish cúige). These were Ulaid (in the north), Connacht (in the west), Laighin (in the southeast), Mumhan (in the south) and Mide (in the centre).

The House of Tudor (/ˈtjuː.dər/, TEW-dər) was an English and Welsh dynasty that held the throne of England from 1485 to 1603. They descended ultimately from Ednyfed Fychan and the Tudors of Penmynydd, a Welsh noble family, and Catherine of Valois. The Tudor monarchs were also descended from the House of Lancaster. They ruled the Kingdom of England and the Lordship of Ireland (later the Kingdom of Ireland) for 118 years with five monarchs: Henry VII, Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. The Tudors succeeded the House of Plantagenet as rulers of the Kingdom of England, and were succeeded by the Scottish House of Stuart. The first Tudor monarch, Henry VII, descended through his mother from the House of Beaufort, a legitimised branch of the English royal House of Lancaster, a cadet house of the Plantagenets. The Tudor family rose to power and started the Tudor period in the wake of the Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), which left the main House of Lancaster (with which the Tudors were aligned) extinct in the male line.

Henry VII (a descendant of Edward III, and the son of Edmund Tudor, a half-brother of Henry VI) succeeded in presenting himself as a candidate not only for traditional Lancastrian supporters, but also for discontented supporters of their rival Plantagenet cadet House of York, and he took the throne by right of conquest. Following his victory at the Battle of Bosworth Field (22 August 1485), he reinforced his position in 1486 by fulfilling his 1483 vow to marry Elizabeth of York, daughter of King Edward IV and the heiress of the Yorkist claim to the throne, thus symbolically uniting the former warring factions of Lancaster and York under the new dynasty (represented by the Tudor rose). The Tudors extended their power beyond modern England, achieving the full union of England and the Principality of Wales in 1542 (Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542), and successfully asserting English authority over the Kingdom of Ireland (proclaimed by the Crown of Ireland Act 1542). They also maintained the nominal English claim to the Kingdom of France; although none of them made substance of it, Henry VIII fought wars with France primarily as a matter of international alliances but also asserting claim to the title. After him, his daughter Mary I lost control of all territory in France permanently with the Siege of Calais in 1558.