Acts of Union 1800 - Background

Background

Before these Acts, Ireland had been in personal union with England since 1541, when the Irish Parliament had passed the Crown of Ireland Act 1542, proclaiming King Henry VIII of England to be King of Ireland. (Before then, since the 12th century, the King of England had been overlord of the Lordship of Ireland, a papal possession.) Both Ireland and England had come in personal union with Scotland with the Union of the Crowns in 1603.

In 1707, the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland were united into a single kingdom: the Kingdom of Great Britain. Upon that union, each House of the Parliament of Ireland passed a congratulatory address to Queen Anne, praying that, "May God put it in your royal heart to add greater strength and lustre to your crown, by a still more comprehensive Union". The Irish parliament at that time was subject to a number of restrictions that placed it subservient to the Parliament of England (and following the union of England and Scotland, the Parliament of Great Britain).

In the century that followed the union of England and Scotland, Ireland gained effective legislative independence from Great Britain through the Constitution of 1782. However, access to institutional power in Ireland was resricted to a small minority, the so-called Protestant Ascendancy and frustration at the lack of reform eventually led to a rebellion in 1798, involving a French invasion of Ireland and seeking complete independence from Great Britain. The rebellion was crushed with much bloodshed, and the subsequent drive for union between Great Britain and Ireland that passed in 1800 was motivated at least in part by the belief that the rebellion was caused as much by loyalist brutality as by the United Irishmen.