Patriot Parliament

Patriot Parliament is the name commonly used for the Irish Parliament session called by King James II during the Williamite War in Ireland which lasted from 1688 to 1691. The first since 1666, it held only one session, which lasted from 7 May 1689 to 20 July 1689. Irish nationalist historian Sir Charles Gavan Duffy first used the term Patriot Parliament in 1893.

The House of Commons was 70 members short since there were no elections in the northern counties; as a result, its members were overwhelmingly Old English and Catholic.^[1] Sir Richard Nagle was elected speaker, while the House of Lords was led by Baron Fitton; the opposition was led by Anthony Dopping, a Church of Ireland cleric who served as the Bishop of Meath.^[2]

The term is controversial, for this Parliament was deeply divided.^[3] The deliberate destruction of its records after 1695 means that assessments, both negative and positive, often rely on individual accounts.^[4]