The servile obedience which the king exacted from his subjects in England was not everywhere exacted with the same rigour; Henry VIII. had furnished proof of skill and foresight by his government of the almost independent principalities ranged under his sceptre. { 252} In 1536 he had definitively annexed Wales to England, subjecting the whole territory to English laws, which hitherto had only ruled in a portion of that country. The Welsh counties had been admitted to the privilege of sending members to Parliament, as well as the Palatinate of Chester, hitherto administered according to local customs. But the most important reform which King Henry VIII. effected in this respect was the elevation of Ireland from the rank of a seigniory to that of a kingdom. From generation to generation the hereditary struggle of the Butlers under their chiefs, the Earls of Ormond and Ossory, with the Fitzgeralds, at the head of whom was the Earl of Kildare, had kept the country in a continual state of agitation; by dint of political reverses, treasons, acts of perfidy, executions, and murders, the great Irish Houses had wearied and destroyed each other, and the government had never failed to interpose to further the work. In 1541 the king, wishing to secure the attachment of the more powerful of the Irish chiefs, elevated a number of them to the honours of the peerage. The eagerness of the chiefs was extreme: the great noblemen swore fidelity to the king, undertook military service, and accepted houses at Dublin, whither they were to repair to sit as members of the Parliament of Ireland. The king had granted letters patent to them for their property, which removed their former fears of seeing the English sovereigns one day confiscate all their estates. The appropriation of the ecclesiastical property to the crown was accomplished with prudence; "Do not press them too vigorously," said the instructions of Henry VIII.; "but persuade them discreetly that the Church lands are my legitimate inheritance." { 253} The Catholic fervour of the Irish had some difficulty in accepting this mode of succession, but the work proceeded, though slowly, and did not prevent the progress of English authority in Ireland from being real and important under the reign of Henry VIII.