Concomitantly with the programme for assimilating the dynastic lordships to the polity of the crown, the programme designed to abolish the duality of the medieval Lordships at the national level was proceeded with. What follows attempts to show the interrelationship between the two programmes, and how the liberals proposed to reconstitute the island as a political entity, like the local lordships, by changing the infrastructure, constitutionally and politically, while leaving the superstructure intact.

The act for the kingly title, June 1541

Just as surrender and regrant was the pivot for the programme of reconstitution in the dynastic lordships, so the act ‘that the king of England, his heirs and successors be kings of Ireland’ provided the pivot on which the programme for the reconstitution of the state revolved. In fact, the two have always been regarded as the most significant developments in the last phase of Henry VIII's reign in Ireland. Yet the relationship between them has not been satisfactorily demonstrated – not surprisingly, since the significance of each in itself has not been adequately grasped.

The received historiography has blurred the significance of the act for the kingly title by setting it in the wrong context. It has been mistakenly regarded as a manifestation of the king's own political ambitions in Ireland, an earnest of his determination to subjugate the whole island. In addition, its relationship to the religious Reformation tends to be misconceived. In establishing the context to which the act relates, the first misconception to be cleared up is that concerning the source of the proposal. It did not come from Henry VIII or the English administration.