Declaratory Act of 1719

An Act for the better securing the dependency of the Kingdom of Ireland on the Crown of Great Britain (6. Geo. I, c. 5) was a 1719 Act passed by the Parliament of Great Britain which declared that it had the right to pass laws for the Kingdom of Ireland, and that the British House of Lords had appellate jurisdiction for Irish court cases. It became known as the Declaratory Act, and opponents in the Irish Patriot Party referred to it as the Sixth of George I (from the regnal year it was passed). Legal and political historians have also called it the Dependency of Ireland on Great Britain Act 1719 or the Irish Parliament Act, 1719. Prompted by a routine Irish lawsuit, it was aimed at resolving the long-running dispute between the British and the Irish House of Lords as to which was the final court of appeal from the Irish Courts. Along with Poynings' Law, the Declaratory Act became a symbol of the subservience of the Parliament of Ireland, and its repeal was long an aim of Irish statesmen, which was finally achieved as part of the Constitution of 1782.

In 1709 the Irish Court of Exchequer heard a lawsuit between Maurice Annesley and his cousin Hester Sherlock over which of them had the right to possession of certain lands at Naas, County Kildare. The Court found in Annesley's favour; Mrs. Sherlock appealed to the Irish House of Lords which upheld her appeal. Annesley then invoked the long-disputed jurisdiction of the British House of Lords to hear appeals from the Irish Courts, and that House pronounced in his favour. The Court of Exchequer duly complied with the decree of the British House, but Mrs. Sherlock appealed again to the Irish House, which ordered the Barons of the Exchequer to comply with its own decree and, when they refused, imprisoned them for contempt. The political uproar was out of all proportion to the importance of the case itself: in the words of John Pocklington, one of the imprisoned Barons, "a flame broke forth, arousing the country's last resentment". An unimportant lawsuit had turned into a Constitutional crisis, and it was perhaps understandable that the British Parliament decided to finally resolve the matter.

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