Early in 1541 St. Leger received authority to summon a Parliament. The composition of the House of Commons is uncertain, for no list of members is extant between 1382 and 1559. In the former of those years eighteen counties or districts and eleven towns were represented. In the latter, ten counties and twenty-eight cities and boroughs returned two members each. Through the action of the royal prerogative the number was progressively increased until the 300 of the eighteenth century was reached. In St. Leger's time the Upper House was the more important of the two, and was attended by four archbishops, nineteen bishops, and twenty temporal peers, of whom Desmond was one. Among the temporal peers was Rawson, late prior of Kilmainham and chief of the Irish Hospitallers, who had just been created Viscount Clontarf. There were four new Barons--Edmund Butler Lord Dunboyne, MacGillapatrick Lord Upper Ossory, Oliver Plunkett Lord Louth, and William Bermingham Lord Carbery. Richard le Poer had been created Baron of Curraghmore six years before. Besides the peers there were present in Dublin Donough O'Brien, MacWilliam Burke, O'Reilly, Cahir MacArt Kavanagh, Phelim Roe O'Neill of Clandeboye, and some of the O'Mores. O'Brien sent agents or deputies. These and other important persons were present at the passing of the Bill which made Henry King of Ireland; but they had no votes and were not considered as members of Parliament. [Sidenote: Henry VIII. is made King of Ireland.] Parliament met on Monday, June 13; but the Munster lords had not yet arrived, and the solemn mass was postponed until Thursday, the feast of Corpus Christi. By that day all had assembled, and they rode in state to the place of meeting. Most of the peers wore their robes. On the morrow the Commons chose a Speaker in the person of Sir Thomas Cusack, a rising lawyer, who afterwards obtained the highest professional honours. He made a set speech at the bar of the Lords, praising the King for many things, but especially for having extirpated the Bishop of Rome's usurped power. Ormonde then gave the substance of what had been said in Irish, to the 'great contentation of those lords who could not understand English.' At the sitting of the House of Lords on the following day, St. Leger proposed that Henry VIII. should be King of Ireland. A Bill to that effect was read a first time in English and Irish, and was received with acclamation. It was then and there read a second and a third time, and all the Lords subscribed it, lest they should thereafter be tempted to deny their consents. The Bill was then sent down to the Commons and read three times, and on the morrow, in presence of both Houses, St. Leger pronounced the royal consent--'no less,' he wrote, 'to my comfort, than to be risen again from death to life, that I so poor a wretch should, by your excellent goodness, be put to that honour, that in my time your Majesty should most worthily have another Imperial Crown.' This rapid