Ireland was a totally different story. The degree of separation was much greater than between Wales and England: because of the far greater distance not merely between Westminster and Dublin (to say nothing of the distance between Westminster and Galway) but between the two cultures within the island. One was a decayed version of high medieval England; the other was a Gaelic society of much greater antiquity. Their relationship to the English Crown was radically different, both in formal terms and in practice.
