The English convocations are a unique institution in the Christian church, with no real parallels elsewhere, but inevitably certain comparisons with other countries can be made. The most obvious of these is with Ireland, where there was a convocation which was clearly an offshoot of the English ones and cannot be understood without them. The Manx convocation is another obvious derivative, despite the many differences between it and the convocations of Canterbury and York. More problematic and controversial, but also more fascinating, are the assemblies generates of the French church, which began in 1561 and continued until the revolution of 1789. To a casual observer, it is clear that there are genuine resemblances between these and the English convocations, though it is hard to decide whether these are causal or coincidental. If there is a causal link, it can only be that the English convocations, which were already fully established in 1561, somehow influenced the French clergy assembly, which continued to operate long after the English convocations had given up their right of taxation. During the convocation controversy in England (1697-1708) those who favoured the development of the institution into a full-blown clerical parliament appealed overtly to Ireland and perhaps also covertly to France, so that the picture of what was going on in the province of Canterbury at that time is not complete without at least a glance beyond the shores of England.

Ireland

The origin of tax convocations in Ireland goes back to the time of King Edward I and was therefore virtually simultaneous with the same development in England. There is clear evidence that convocations were held in each of the four Irish provinces in 1291, though they all refused to grant the king any money. Nevertheless, the Nova taxatio was soon extended to Ireland and, in principle at least, the same system of taxation was meant to apply to the clergy there as in England. The difficulty was that Ireland was only partly under royal control, which covered parts of all four provinces but failed to embrace the whole of any one of them. As a result, it was impossible for the king to collect his taxes by using the provincial system and he had to rely instead on the Irish parliament, which could only legislate for the parts of the country which were under royal control.