King's deputy Edward Poyning. The first of these was the blanket extension 
to Ireland of all statutes of England belonging to the common or public weal 
of the same 102 —a rough-handed departure from the earlier policy of selective 
extension, but a highly significant rejection of the recent Irish claim themselves 
to be judges of the matter. The second act is the justly celebrated 
"Poyning's Law" by which the King's control over the legislative process in 
Ireland was to be resumed. 193 
The mechanism introduced by this statute was remarkable in that before any 
Parliament was convened, the King's lieutenant and his council were to certify 
to the King the "causes and considerations" and such acts as it seemed to them 
should pass at the ensuing Parliament. The King and his Council were to 
affirm such of these items as seemed good and expedient, and the royal license 
thereupon under the Great Seal was to serve both as an affirmation of the 
causes and the acts and as a summons for the Parliament. 
We are not prepared to say whether this procedure was novel or whether it 
was an adaptation of medieval practices with respect to representations on 
the state of the country, already mentioned. 194 In any event, it was not completely 
out of the contemporary pattern for dealing with types of inferior enactment. 
Many years earlier the English Parliament had set up local machinery 
for the examination of gild ordinances within the realm, 195 and less than a 
decade after the passage of Poyning's Law another act of Parliament provided 
for a central supervision of corporate by-laws. 196 The safeguarding of the 
prerogative and the maintenance of common law supremacy were both involved 
in these measures, motives which were equally active in the work of 
the Drogheda Parliament. 
As the statute was actually executed, 197 it was at first regarded as sufficiently 
flexible to allow new bills to be transmitted for approval after Parliament had 
convened, and there is evidence even that bills were amended in Parliament 
without being resubmitted. Subsequently this practice was corrected by forwarding 
the amended bills to England, the final action in Ireland being taken 
at a subsequent session. A clarifying statute passed in Mary's reign 19S recognized 
the right of the governor and council to send draft bills to England while 
192 1 Statutes at Large Passed in Parliaments 
Held in Ireland, c. 22. On the interpretation see 
Coke, Fourth Institute, 351; "Parliament in 
Ireland," 12 Co. Rep. 109, ill. 
193 1 Statutes at Large (Ireland), 10 Hen. VII, 
c. 4.; and corrected text in Quinn, Early Interpretations 
of Poyning's Law 1494-1534, in 2 
Irish Historical Studies, 242. 
194 Supra, p. lv. 
195 St. 15 Hen. VI, c. 6 (1436); 4 Rot. Pari. 
507. 
196 St. 19 Hen. VII, c. 7 (1503). 
197 Cf. Quinn, op. cit.; Edwards and Moody, 
The History of Poyning's Law, 1494-1615, in 
2 Irish Historical Studies, 415. 
198 1 Statutes at Large (Ireland), 384 Ph. & M. 
c. 4.