Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Aidan Clarke: an appreciation
- Conventions
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Making good: New perspectives on the English in early modern Ireland
- 2 The attainder of Shane O'Neill, Sir Henry Sidney and the problems of Tudor state-building in Ireland
- 3 Dynamics of regional development: processes of assimilation and division in the marchland of south-east Ulster in late medieval and early modern Ireland
- 4 The ‘common good’ and the university in an age of confessional conflict
- 5 The construction of argument: Henry Fitzsimon, John Rider and religious controversy in Dublin, 1599–1614
- 6 The Bible and the bawn: an Ulster planter inventorised
- 7 ‘That Bugbear Arminianism’: Archbishop Laud and Trinity College, Dublin
- 8 The Irish peers, political power and parliament, 1640–1641
- 9 The Irish elections of 1640–1641
- 10 Catholic Confederates and the constitutional relationship between Ireland and England, 1641–1649
- 11 Protestant churchmen and the Confederate Wars
- 12 The crisis of the Spanish and the Stuart monarchies in the mid-seventeenth century: local problems or global problems?
- 13 Settlement, transplantation and expulsion: a comparative study of the placement of peoples
- 14 Interests in Ireland: the ‘fanatic zeal and irregular ambition’ of Richard Lawrence
- 15 Temple's fate: reading The Irish Rebellion in late seventeenth-century Ireland
- 16 Conquest versus consent as the basis of the English title to Ireland in William Molyneux's Case of Ireland … Stated (1698)
- Principal publications of Aidan Clarke
- Index
16 - Conquest versus consent as the basis of the English title to Ireland in William Molyneux's Case of Ireland … Stated (1698)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Aidan Clarke: an appreciation
- Conventions
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Making good: New perspectives on the English in early modern Ireland
- 2 The attainder of Shane O'Neill, Sir Henry Sidney and the problems of Tudor state-building in Ireland
- 3 Dynamics of regional development: processes of assimilation and division in the marchland of south-east Ulster in late medieval and early modern Ireland
- 4 The ‘common good’ and the university in an age of confessional conflict
- 5 The construction of argument: Henry Fitzsimon, John Rider and religious controversy in Dublin, 1599–1614
- 6 The Bible and the bawn: an Ulster planter inventorised
- 7 ‘That Bugbear Arminianism’: Archbishop Laud and Trinity College, Dublin
- 8 The Irish peers, political power and parliament, 1640–1641
- 9 The Irish elections of 1640–1641
- 10 Catholic Confederates and the constitutional relationship between Ireland and England, 1641–1649
- 11 Protestant churchmen and the Confederate Wars
- 12 The crisis of the Spanish and the Stuart monarchies in the mid-seventeenth century: local problems or global problems?
- 13 Settlement, transplantation and expulsion: a comparative study of the placement of peoples
- 14 Interests in Ireland: the ‘fanatic zeal and irregular ambition’ of Richard Lawrence
- 15 Temple's fate: reading The Irish Rebellion in late seventeenth-century Ireland
- 16 Conquest versus consent as the basis of the English title to Ireland in William Molyneux's Case of Ireland … Stated (1698)
- Principal publications of Aidan Clarke
- Index
Summary
William Molyneux's The Case of Ireland's being bound by Acts of Parliament in England, Stated (1698) is generally regarded as the key text in discrediting the claim that English rights over Ireland rested on the conquest carried out by Henry II in 1171–72, a presumption then widely current, not only in England but also amongst those whom for reasons of convenience (if perhaps not strict accuracy) we may term the Anglo-Irish. In its place Molyneux argued that the submission of the Irish kings to Henry had been entirely voluntary and that in return Henry had conferred upon them the benefits of English laws and customs, including the right of holding parliaments. Moreover, by terming the agreement between Henry and the Irish the ‘Original Compact’ of the English government in Ireland, Molyneux assimilated his narrative to the language of Revolution principles which carried such weight in both England and Ireland after 1688. Finally, he sought to ground Ireland's status as a possession of the English crown, but independent of the English parliament, on the universal, natural right to consent to government, thereby making Ireland's case not just a local issue but an assertion of what he termed ‘the Inherent Right of all Mankind’ (p. 3). However, closer examination shows Molyneux's arguments to be considerably less transparent than they might at first seem.
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- British Interventions in Early Modern Ireland , pp. 334 - 356Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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