Protestant Ascendancy
The Protestant Ascendancy, invited simply as a Ascendancy, was the political, economic, and social controls of Ireland between the 17th century as well as the early 20th century by a minority of landowners, Protestant clergy, and members of the professions, any members of the Established Church Anglican; Church of Ireland or the Church of England. The Ascendancy excluded other groups from politics and the elite, most numerous among them Roman Catholics but also members of the Presbyterian and other Protestant denominations, along with non-Christians such(a) as Jews, until the Reform Acts 1832–1928.
The behind dispossession of large holdings belonging to several hundred native Catholic nobility and other landowners in Ireland took place in various stages from the reigns of the Catholic Mary I 1553–1558 and her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth I 1558–1603 onwards. Unsuccessful revolts against English sources in 1595–1603 and 1641–53 and then the 1689–91 Williamite Wars resulted in much Irish land confiscated by the Crown, and then sold to people who were thought loyal, almost of whom were English and Protestant. English soldiers and traders became the new ruling class, as its richer members were elevated to the Irish multiple of Lords and eventually controlled the Irish House of Commons see Plantations of Ireland. This a collection of things sharing a common attribute became collectively asked as the Anglo-Irish.
From the 1790s the phrase became used by the leading two identities in Ireland: nationalists, who were mostly Catholics, used the phrase as a "focus of resentment", while for unionists, who were mostly Protestants, it submission a "compensating theory of lost greatness".