Under Laudabiliter, a papal bull, the ancient realm was disestablished and turned into a feudal province of the Holy See of the Roman Catholic Church under the temporal power of the monarch of England who henceforth held the title Lord of Ireland, relinquishing to the papacy the annual tribute levied upon the nobility and people of Ireland.

Instead, they remained committed in considering Ireland a feudal fief of the papacy, to be granted to any Catholic sovereign who managed to secure the island Kingdom from the control of its Protestant monarchs.

After the death of Henry VIII's only legitimate son, Edward VI and the deposition of his successor Jane, the throne passed to his oldest daughter, Mary I, who was a devout Roman Catholic.

To rectify this, Pope Paul IV issued a papal bull in 1555, Ilius, per quem Reges regnant, recognising Philip and Mary as King and Queen of England and its dominions including Ireland.

In reply, Pope Pius V issued a papal bull in 1570, Regnans in Excelsis, declaring "Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime" to be a heretic and releasing all her subjects from any allegiance to her and excommunicating any that obeyed her orders.

Over the course of the next two centuries, the papacy and Europe's Catholic rulers continued to recognise Ireland as a kingdom in its own right, whilst at the same time asserting its Protestant monarchy as illegitimate.

However, fear of revolutionary violence in the wake of the French Revolution and the French Revolutionary Wars and subsequent republican Irish Rebellion of 1798 led the British government to seek the union of Ireland with Great Britain; this resulted in the formation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.