Kingdom of Ireland facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Kingdom of Ireland
Ríocht na hÉireann
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| 1541 – 1651 1659 – 1801 |
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 Coat of arms2
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| Capital | Dublin | ||||||||||||||
| Common languages | Irish, English | ||||||||||||||
| Government | Monarchy | ||||||||||||||
| King3 | |||||||||||||||
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• 1542-1547
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Henry VIII | ||||||||||||||
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• 1760-1801
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George III | ||||||||||||||
| Chief Secretary | |||||||||||||||
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• 1660
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Matthew Lock | ||||||||||||||
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• 1798-1801
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Viscount Castlereagh | ||||||||||||||
| Legislature | Parliament of Ireland | ||||||||||||||
| Irish House of Lords | |||||||||||||||
| Irish House of Commons | |||||||||||||||
| History | |||||||||||||||
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• Act of Parliament
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1541 | ||||||||||||||
| January 1 1801 | |||||||||||||||
| ISO 3166 code | IE | ||||||||||||||
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The Kingdom of Ireland was a client state of England and then of Great Britain that existed from 1542 until 1800. It was ruled by the monarchs of England and then of Great Britain in personal union with their other realms.
The kingdom was administered from Dublin Castle nominally by the King or Queen, who appointed a viceroy (the Lord Deputy, later Lord Lieutenant) to rule in their stead. It had its own legislature (the Parliament of Ireland), peerage (the Peerage of Ireland), legal system, and state church (the Protestant Church of Ireland).
The territory of the Kingdom had formerly been a lordship ruled by the kings of England, founded in 1177 after the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. By the 1500s the area of English rule had shrunk greatly, and most of Ireland was held by Gaelic Irish chiefdoms.
In 1542, King Henry VIII of England was made King of Ireland. The English began establishing control over the island, which sparked the Desmond Rebellions and the Nine Years’ War. It was completed in the 1600s. The conquest involved confiscating land from the native Irish and colonising it with settlers from Britain.
In its early years, the Kingdom had limited recognition, as no Catholic countries in Europe recognised Henry and his heir Edward as monarch of Ireland; although Catholic Queen Mary I was recognised as Queen of Ireland by Pope Paul IV.
Catholics, who made up most of the population, were officially discriminated against in the Kingdom, which from the late 17th century was dominated by a Protestant Ascendancy. This discrimination was one of the main drivers behind several conflicts which broke out: the Irish Confederate Wars (1641–53), the Williamite-Jacobite War (1689–91), the Armagh disturbances (1780s–90s) and the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
The Parliament of Ireland passed the Acts of Union 1800 by which it abolished itself and the Kingdom. The act was also passed by the Parliament of Great Britain. It established the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on the first day of 1801 by uniting the Crowns of Ireland and of Great Britain.
Images for kids
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Charlotte Schreiber's The Croppy Boy (1879), relating to the United Irishmen's Wexford Rebellion. A man, possibly a rebel from his green cravat, kneels before a Catholic priest who is covertly in military uniform. The church hierarchy opposed the rebellion.
See also
In Spanish: Reino de Irlanda para niños
