A little Parliament held Sessions in Dublin, or in some other part of the Pale, or in one of the southern cities. There was a Commons’ House, in which sat representatives of the counties and boroughs of the Pale, and occasionally some representative of places more remote.

Also there were two clerical proctors from each diocese under the English influence. The House of Lords was poorly attended ; sometimes scarcely a dozen temporal peers were present at a session.All, of course, were nobles of English blood.

The bishops and abbots, the “lords spiritual,” too, came from the dioceses within or near the Pale and from Anglo-Irish monasteries.

Now and then a bishop of an Irish diocese or of a southern city appeared, but he seems always to have been either an Englishman or a foreigner from the Continent.
The similarity between chiefs and lords was not confined to the latter’s independence of the English Crown, and their adoption of Irish national life and customs. If the Normans had become Irish the clans had become feudal. The constant growth of the arbitrary power of the chiefs still continued, and the common rights and privileges of the free clan had sunk under the personal influence of the chief and his immediate military dependants.
There was little now to mark any difference between the relations of the military chief with his clan and those of the lord with his followers. The important element of the ownership of the land was the only thing that prevented the chief from being equivalent to a feudal lord.