Henry VIII, King of Ireland

1541: Ireland stops being a lordship held under the Pope and becomes a kingdom held by the English crown.

Until 1541 the English king was Lord of Ireland, and the title rested on a grant said to have come from the Pope in the twelfth century. Henry VIII had broken with Rome, which made holding Ireland on the Pope's authority an awkward piece of paperwork.

The Irish parliament met in Dublin in 1541 and passed the Act of Kingly Title, making Henry King of Ireland. Westminster followed with its own Crown of Ireland Act the next year. On the face of it this was constitutional tidying. In practice it changed what the crown was claiming. A lord has tenants. A king has subjects, and that includes the Gaelic lords who had never regarded themselves as subject to anyone.

The policy built on it was surrender and regrant. A Gaelic chief gave up his lands and his Irish title to the crown, and received them back as an English peer holding by English law. Manus O'Donnell made such an agreement in August 1541. Conn O'Neill became Earl of Tyrone in October 1542.

It looked generous and it was deeply corrosive. Gaelic lordship was not owned, it was held on behalf of a kin group, and a chief was chosen by that kin group rather than inheriting as a son. English title made the land his property and his eldest son's after him. Men signed up for the security and the peerage, and in doing so signed away the system that had made them chiefs in the first place.