Poynings, Sir Edward (1459–1521), lord deputy, was born in 1459, probably in Southwark, the son of Robert Poynings and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of William Paston. From a young age he experienced the harsh side of English politics. His father took part in Cade's rebellion, and was killed in the second battle of St Albans (1461). Poynings himself supported the rebellion of the duke of Buckingham (1483) against Richard III and was then forced to flee to France, where he came to support the claims of Henry Tudor. He landed with Tudor at Milford Haven in August 1485 and was soon knighted; he was made a council member by the new king and a knight of the Garter. He regained the estates his father had forfeited and was rewarded by Henry with generous grants of manors in the English midlands. In 1492 he was sent to the Netherlands with troops to help Maximilian, king of Spain, suppress a rebellion. After negotiating the surrender of the rebels, he joined Henry VII at Boulogne, but arrived after hostilities had ended. He was appointed deputy of Calais in 1493 and negotiated with the Burgundians to expel the pretender Perkin Warbeck (qv), and – as part of the king's attempts to end Warbeck's threat – was sent to Ireland as lord deputy to secure the lordship against him.
Poynings arrived in Ireland on 13 October 1494. His objectives were to deal with the Irish dimension of the Warbeck threat, protect the Pale, contain the Gaelic lordships, and reform the administration of the English lordship to make it self-sufficient. His military campaigns started well, with an expedition into Ulster in November supported by Gerald fitz Maurice FitzGerald (qv), 8th earl of Kildare, and Sir James Butler (qv) (‘Sir James Ormond’), which led to both O'Hanlon and Magennis submissions to his authority. Despite initial good relations with Kildare, Poynings became suspicious when he learned of the earl's contacts with the Gaelic Irish before they had submitted. He accused Kildare of secretly encouraging the Irish and a breach ensued which effectively stymied Poynings's plans for further military initiatives, since the lord deputy needed Kildare's active support.
Poynings's attempts to reform the administration of the lordship were more successful, as he was supported by a group of English lawyers and administrators, but the costs of his reforms could not be supported by the ordinary revenues of the lordship. He called a parliament which met at Drogheda on 1 December 1494 and between then and February passed forty-nine acts, among them the reenactment of the statute of Kilkenny (1366) forbidding the use of Gaelic customs among the English of Ireland, and measures requiring government officials to hold office only during pleasure, and constables of the king's castles to be Englishmen born in England. Another statute contains the first recorded reference to the pale in Ireland (‘diches to be made aboute the Inglishe pale’ (S. Ellis, ‘Edward Poynings’, ODNB). One measure (ch. 39), whose intention and scope were unclear at the time and remained so later, provided that all statutes made in England which concerned the common weal should be deemed good in law in Ireland. Most memorably this parliament passed the eponymous ‘Poynings’ law’ (ch. 9), which required the king's consent for the summoning of any future Irish parliament and the English council's prior approval, signified by the attachment of the great seal of England, of bills to be laid before the Irish parliament for enactment. Its immediate purpose was to stop Yorkist pretenders, such as Warbeck, from seeking to use an Irish parliament to legitimise their claims. The act was subsequently popular with members of Irish parliaments, curtailing as it did the power of the Irish administration and protecting parliament from overbearing magnates (such as the Kildares). Modified in Mary Tudor's reign, Poynings' law in the seventeenth century became a means by which government could control parliament and obstruct parliamentary initiative, what Lord Deputy Wentworth (qv) called ‘a mighty power gotten by the wisdom of former times’ (quoted in Clarke, 207). It remained on the Irish statute book until 1782 when its repeal was an essential part of the newly won legislative independence.
While parliament continued until April 1495, Poynings appears not to have attended the later sessions. His main concern was the growing threat from Warbeck and his supporters in Ireland. He had Kildare arrested in late February and sent to England, and the Irish parliament duly attainted Kildare for treason. The arrest of Kildare led his brother, Sir James FitzGerald, to seize Carlow castle, which in turn required Poynings and Sir James Ormond to mount a siege which only succeeded in July. By then the 9th earl of Desmond (qv) was besieging Waterford, a situation made worse when Warbeck arrived off Waterford with a fleet. While Poynings's main priority was to defend the pale, he managed to muster sufficient forces to march south and raise Desmond's siege in early August. The outcome was Warbeck's abandonment of his plans to land at Waterford and his departure for Scotland.
By the time he left Ireland in late December 1495 Poynings could report modest successes. In the short term, his reforms increased the revenues of the English lordship in Ireland. But the experiment of sending over an English army and administration cost the king £12,000 (August 1494–December 1495), and was soon discontinued in favour of the traditional system of appointing an Irish magnate as deputy. Despite these failures, Poynings's initiatives in Ireland were a model for later experiments in the 1520s and 1530s. After his recall to England, he became one of the king's close councillors and controller of the household for both Henry VII and Henry VIII. In the 1510s he served as ambassador to the Netherlands, where he helped negotiate the Holy Alliance against France and Spain before retiring to England. In 1517 he was chancellor of the order of the Garter, and he was present at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. He died on 21 October 1521, and his lands passed to his cousin, the earl of Northumberland. He was survived by his wife Isabella, daughter of Sir John Scott, comptroller of the household, whom he had married in the early 1580s and with whom he had a son John who predeceased him. He also had three sons and four daughters outside marriage.