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( United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland)
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name of the United Kingdom from 1 January 1801 until 12 April 1927. It was formed by the merger of the Kingdom of Great Britain (itself having been a merger of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland) and the Kingdom of Ireland. Following Irish independence on 6 December 1922, when the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty came into effect, the name continued in official use until it was changed to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland by the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act of 1927. The part of the island of Ireland that seceded from the United Kingdom in 1922 is today the republic of Ireland. Under the terms of the merger, the separate Parliaments of Great Britain and Ireland were abolished, and replaced by a united Parliament of the United Kingdom.[1] The new House of Commons consisted of all Members of Great Britain's 18th Parliament and 100 Irish MPs co-opted in a special election in 1801.[1] The new House of Lords consisted of all members of Great Britain's House of Lords, and 4 Lords Spiritual and 28 Lords Temporal from the Irish House of Lords.[1] The new Parliament met in the Palace of Westminster, formerly the home of the Parliament of Great Britain and, until 1707, the Parliament of England. Part of the trade-off for Irish Catholics was to be the granting of Catholic Emancipation, which had been fiercely resisted by the all-Anglican Irish Parliament. However, this was blocked by King George III who argued that emancipating Roman Catholics would breach his Coronation Oath to act as protector of Protestantism.
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