The legal correctness of this regard for Poyning’s Act disappeared in the course of three years’ preparation for the new assembly. The Parliament met in 1569 to find the Commons packed with strangers, contrary to the renewed law which had been won from Henry VIII. in 1542 against the practice. The gentry of the Pale and the Dublin burgesses protested in vain against the return of strangers for boroughs which they had never even seen: “the more words the more choler.” Elizabeth’s vast schemes of confiscation and breaking up of the old Irish society were met with hostility. Under pressure of the Deputy, therefore, a second session was held to pass a single bill, the “Repeal of Poyning’s Act”; on the plea that grievous sores known to the high court in Ireland could not be reformed as not having been certified to the Queen. This bill was bitterly opposed: “so jealous were they that they would not in long time enter into the consideration thereof.” The remonstrants did in fact force some concessions; that provisions made by the present Parliament for the common weal, the augmentation of the Queen’s revenues, and the assurance to her of lands and profits, which were certified under the Great Seal of Ireland, and returned to Ireland under the Great Seal of England, should first be publicly proclaimed in six cities, and only after these proclamations should pass into law, “Poyning’s Act notwithstanding.” The way was now clear, and the next session brought the attainder of Shane O’Neill and the tremendous confiscation of Tyrone and other lands in Ulster. A beginning was made of Munster confiscations. The Deputy was to appoint English-speaking clergy to all ecclesiastical dignities in Munster. Other Acts ordered all Ireland to be reduced to shire land; and abolished all Irish and Anglo-Norman chieftaincies or “captainships” except by special patent (thus depriving the chiefs of the benefit of their indentures), under penalty of death without benefit of clergy, as the law was drafted in England; the Parliament substituted a fine and passed the decree with great opposition, for “the matter misliked them more than the pain.” The Queen herself sent letters ordering Parliament to pass a heavy impost which must ruin the Irish wine trade, in which matter “they showed themselves so unquiet that they were more like a bear-baiting of disordered persons than a Parliament of wise and grave men.” Taught by experience, the Parliament now insisted on a law to limit the repeal of Poyning’s Act, in which they explained their reasons for objecting to any repeal at any time. Before that Act, they said, when liberty was given to the governors to call Parliament at their pleasure, “Acts passed as well to the dishonour of the Prince, as to the hindrance of their subjects, the remembrance whereof would indeed have stayed us from condescending to the repeal of the said statute,” save for their persuasion that Sydney through