Sovereign

The term sovereign is generally used in place of "grand master" for the supreme head of various orders of European nations.

Once the parliamentary franchise was lost with the Acts of Union 1800, the role became largely ceremonial or forgotten.

[5] Ireland had established self-governing municipal boroughs which gave a city-state status to the locality in existence since the Norman conquest.

Freemen and burgesses were the usual governing members of the council and elected their chief officer, the Sovereign.

The Liber Primus Kilkenniensis is a contemporaneously written account of the proceedings of Kilkenny municipality beginning in 1230 and running to 1538.

[8] Early Irish borough had a city-state status, however with the unification of Ireland under the crown in 1603 they were transformed into more ordinary municipal towns on the English model.

The new charters placed the government of the borough with the Sovereign and twelve chief burgesses, who are to elect all the rest and stipulated that all had to conform to the established church by taking the Oath of Supremacy.

[9][10][11] Sir John Davies, Attorney General for Ireland wrote "the newly erected boroughs ... will be perpetual seminaries of Protestant burgesses".

There is a sailing race held in Kinsale which references back to the chief officer of the town council.