ABSTRACT
The document commonly known as the 'Remonstrance of the Irish princes', which was sent to Pope John XXII in or about 1317, has inspired a great deal of written comment since the text first became generally available during the nineteenth century. The remonstrance then set out to demonstrate how successive English kings and their ministers had abused the authority over Ireland that had been granted to them by the papacy. The Irish remonstrance is therefore associated with manuscripts of the chronicles of John Fordun and of Walter Bower, mostly dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The remonstrance and counter-remonstrance may not have been the first occasions on which the papacy was presented with arguments bearing on the English crown's rights of lordship over Ireland. When the remonstrance and the accompanying text of Laudabiliter reached Avignon in the early months of 1318 the reaction of the pope was unsympathetic.
