Just one hundred bishops held sees in Ireland in the thirty-five years of the reign of Edward I. Fifty-one of these can be identified with certainty, on the evidence of their names, as native Irish. Of forty-eight foreigners, perhaps some thirty were of colonial or Anglo-Irish stock, the other eighteen being born in England. The odd man out, a papal appointment, was an Italian.

The ratio of Irish to English varied considerably from province to province. There was some change in the ratio over the reign as a whole. In 1272, no native Irishman held a see in the Dublin province nor had done so for nearly half a century nor was to do so in the medieval period to come. By contrast, no Englishman held a see in Tuam province. The other two provinces stood between these extremes. In Armagh there were seven Irish and four foreign. In Cashel, six Irish and five foreign. By 1307, however, three of the Tuam dioceses, including the archbishopric, were held by Anglo-Irishmen or Englishmen. Numerically the ratio remained the same in Armagh as it had been in 1272. Qualitatively, however, it had worsened in that the archbishopric was now held by an Englishman. This was for the first time since Luke Netterville (1217–27). Armagh was to have but one other Irish prelate in the remaining medieval period. In Cashel province the ratio had changed quite markedly: there were now seven foreign to four native Irish.