In this first battle, Parliament, taken by surprise, was defeated. Every attempted safeguard was thrown down, and nothing left but the royal tyranny. “The King’s causes in Parliament take good effect,” wrote the Commissioners; and twenty-four Acts were passed. Having finished their work, and having discovered in searching among old Acts that this Parliament was illegally held, they hastily dissolved it, making provision to hide its unlawful character.
The Parliament of 1541 which gave to Henry the title of king was the only one of the century in which we find no proposition to repeal Poyning’s Act. Other means had been used during four years of widespread and deceitful negotiations (1537-1541) to ensure the King’s success. A series of false promises as to rights in land had been cunningly dispatched through the country. There was a careful scrutiny of the coming Parliament. Lists were drawn up for Henry’s benefit. The House of Lords was safe. The vast majority of prelates in it were docile nominees of the new head of the Church. Of the score of peers on the list six were reported to Henry as having “neither wit nor company of men”; one was wise in counsel but without any soldiers; and nine were new creations, at the King’s bidding—six of them scarcely a month old, some indeed still waiting for their letters patent. In the Common House were divers knights and many gentlemen of fair possessions, but no list of these is given. The House had evidently been packed: for an Act was passed repealing the old statute against non-residents and proroguing of Parliaments. There was indeed a concession to placate opponents. “From henceforth” the knights and burgesses were to be resident, under penalty of fines—a provision well calculated to disappoint the hopes it raised. Under these circumstances the repeal of Poyning’s Act was for once dispensed with. Having secured his title of King, Henry could fling away his Parliament, and no assembly met again for thirteen years.
Queen Mary called her one Parliament in 1556 to carry two Acts which surpassed in terror and ferocity any yet proposed. The Act for the confiscation and plantation of Leinster lands, ordered Leix and Offaly to be turned into the King’s and Queen’s counties, the first shires made since the time of John; and desired they should be “planted” with “good men.” A second Act gave power to Commissioners to perambulate the whole realm and divide it into shires as they thought convenient, without further reference to Parliament. Henceforth any Irish chief or Norman lord might learn suddenly that by a mere decree of the Deputy his authority was abolished, his territory dissolved into a chaotic mass of helpless people, under officers speaking a foreign tongue, and laws wholly unknown to them, the land leased out according to English tenure, new taxes imposed, and a Commissioner with his hangmen placed in their midst to govern “in a course of discretion.”