The House of Lords entrance to the Parliament House (east view). The entrance, which was part of an extension to the original building, was designed by renowned architect James Gandon by 1789.
The Lords started as a group of barons in the Lordship of Ireland that was generally limited to the Pale, a variable area around Dublin where English law was in effect, but did extend to the rest of Ireland. They sat as a group, not as a separate House, from the first meeting of the Parliament of Ireland in 1297. From the establishment of the Kingdom of Ireland in 1542 the Lords included a large number of new Gaelic and Norman lords under the policy of surrender and regrant.
Religious division was reflected in the House, but as late as the 1689 "Patriot Parliament" a majority of Lords had remained Roman Catholics, while the administration and a slight majority in the Commons were Anglicans, adherents of the Church of Ireland. In 1634 the campaign to secure "The Graces" came to a head. Most of these Catholic lords lost their titles in the ensuing 1641 rebellion, notably during the 1652 Cromwellian Settlement. These dispossessed lords were regranted their titles (if not always their lands) after the Restoration of 1660 by the Act of Settlement 1662. Others took the losing side in the Williamite War in Ireland (1689–91), and a much smaller number of them were re-granted their lands in the 18th century.
By the 1790s most of the Lords personified and wanted to protect the "Protestant Ascendancy". By the time of the abolition of the Irish House of Lords in 1800 some of the peerages were very ancient, such as the lords Kingsale, created in 1397, and the viscounts Gormanston from 1478. The first Earl of Kildare had been created in 1316.
The Parliament of Ireland was a bicamerallegislature, and bills could originate in either the Commons or the Lords; both had to pass a bill for it to stand a chance of becoming law. Either house could amend or reject the others' proposals. Under Poynings' Law, matters passed by the Irish parliament had to be approved and could be amended by the Irish Privy Council and English Privy Council; main debates before this stage were thus technically on "heads of bills". Following approval the Parliament of Ireland voted on the formal finalised "bill" (which could only be rejected or passed unamended).
The House of Lords was presided over by the Lord Chancellor, who sat on the woolsack, a large seat stuffed with wool from each of the three lands of England, Ireland and Scotland. At the state opening of the Irish parliament Members of Parliament were summoned to the House of Lords from the House of Commons chamber by Black Rod, a royal official who would "command the members on behalf of His Excellency to attend him in the chamber of peers". Sessions were formally opened by the Speech from the Throne by the Lord Lieutenant, who sat on the throne beneath a canopy of crimson velvet.
^James, F. G. (23 May 1979). "The Active Irish Peers in the Early Eighteenth Century". Journal of British Studies. 18 (2): 52–69. doi:10.1086/385737. JSTOR175512.
^E.M. Johnson-Liik History of the Irish parliament in 6 vols. (Belfast, 2002).
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