Ireland’s political and constitutional relationship to England remains a key theme of late medieval and early modern Irish history. Although it was a relationship in which Ireland was undoubtedly the subordinate kingdom, contemporary justifications for this subordination, and assertions of its basis, are often overshadowed by arguments directed against its validity. The text reproduced below is an assertion of that validity. It offers a highly selective analysis of English policy in Ireland from the twelfth century to the end of the seventeenth, based upon the assumption of Ireland’s legal and constitutional subordination to England. More particularly, it seeks to outline attitudes among the Protestant colonial community towards Ireland’s status, and does so at a precise juncture when such attitudes were deemed to be of imminent and crucial importance.