during their military occupation of Ireland, an interval of nearly 250 years, laboured unceasingly to accomplish that total annihilation of native MSS. which they subsequently so effectuated in England. In the beginning of the eleventh century, a deplorable conflagration reduced to ashes the great Library of Armagh, the shrine of much that had escaped the fury of the northern invaders. The first English adventurers were scarcely less rapacious of the gleanings which their forerunners had overlooked; the same policy, that dictated the destruction of the memorials of Scotland in the reign of Edward the First, continued to be openly professed towards Ireland to the days of James. The literary spoliation, induced by the suppression of the monasteries, was not less wantonly exercised in Ireland than in the sister island, while the happy result of King Henry's appointment of Leland to the office of Royal Antiquary, by which so many valuable monuments of learning were redeemed in the latter country, was not extended to the former. In the reign of Elizabeth, Carew and Sidney were instructed to destroy or carry off all the MSS. they could discover, and too effectually did they accomplish the order. The visitation of Cromwell succeeded, a career of slaughter, confiscation, and religious persecution. Two rebellions, the result of misguided loyalty and ill-requited enthusiasm, having involved all that was respectable in the country, were crushed with frightful re-action. All Ireland was, in a manner, declared forfeited to the Crown, and its ancient inhabitants subjected to the ruinous consequences of one parliamentary attainder. The victims of this fatal policy, expatriated from the scenes of their hereditary history, were at least eager, where they could, to carry with them its records and memorials; they snatched from the libraries, and monasteries, and cabinets, the annals, the muniments, the title-deeds of the land; they carried them as all of venerable that could then be saved from the desolation that rioted over their homes they treasured them as the Penates of their early attachment, and when they looked upon the mouldering fragments of these national documents, in the respective lands of their exile, the remembrances of their country were softened into melancholy endurance The detail of these literary mortalities might damp the ardour of inquiry; even the most enthusiastic might question the authenticity of what could survive such a succession of hostility: much, however, is yet treasured as relics amongst the Manuscripts of the Royal Irish Academy, those of Trinity College, the British Museum, the Bodleian and Lambeth Libraries, the invaluable but, unhappily, less accessible Collection at Stowe; and withal in the too little investigated literary receptacles of foreign states and monasteries, the repositories of Copenhagen and Stockholm, the libraries of France and Germany, Spain, and those of Italy, especially that of the Vatican. With such of these materials before him as he can collect, it will be the duty of the calm Irish historian, to take from fable its extravagance, to disembarrass truth from the drapery of romance, to raise the vision to a perspective of ages when tradition held the place of history, to draw out the concurring testimonies of facts from songs and ballads, to discover the identity of biography in the fleeting tales of the bards, the adulatory genealogies of the 'Fileah', and the varying traditions of the 'Seanachies;' all of which it were as unbecoming to receive with implicit credulity, as to reject with uncompromising scepticism"(a). When the materials from the internal sources of information, the annals, poems, laws, biography, tales, and genealogies of the country are explored, there is yet much to be consulted of what may be (a) Dalton's "Essay on the Ancient History, Religion, Learning, Arts, and Government of Ireland," p. 368, &c., published as a Prize Essay by the Royal Irish Academy (Trans. vol. xvi. part i.) considered external evidences-the Rolls of Parliament, the ancient Statutes and decisions affecting Ireland, the Acts and orders of Council, the various classes of records in the Tower of London; the charters, patents, and inquisitions in the Chancery and Exchequer of Ireland; the manuscript collections in the Libraries of Primate Marsh, and of that most nationally serviceable, liberal, and effective institution, the Dublin Society; the Bulls of the Popes; the "Acta Sanctorum" and monastic memorials; the publications and Transactions of learned bodies in connexion with the subject; the existing general and local histories and biographies; the newspapers, journals, gazettes, magazines, and pamphlets, from the earliest attainable periods; state Letters, and official correspondence; parliamentary papers and journals. If the attention is to be further directed to literary or legal inquiries connected with local topography, as rights of manors, royalties, fisheries, lay and ecclesiastical patronage; or with the history of families, their honours, achievements, possessions, and pedigrees, in the former instance, in addition to many of the foregoing authorities, tour books, maps, diocesan registries, plea-rolls, and memoranda rolls in Bermingham Tower, must be explored; and in the latter, the heraldic and peerage books, especially that of Lodge; the pleadings in Chancery and Exchequer; the parliamentary writs, parochial registries, private Acts of Parliament, ancient family deeds, and, in very many cases, the continental records of the Irish Brigade, might be effectively consulted. From all these sources, and from even more than are here enumerated, the manuscript indexes and compilations before alluded to, and which have facilitated the author's pursuits, both legal and literary, were digested, and through these indexes the volumes, as well those which he has printed as those which remain unprinted, but are detailed in the following catalogue, were compiled. CATALOGUE OF THE MANUSCRIPT INDEXES AND COMPILATIONS OF JOHN D'ALTON, Esq., BARRISTER-AT-LAW, M. R. I. A., CORRESP. MEMB. S, A. S., ETC., 1. INDEX, one volume folio, entitled, "Antiquarian Dictionary," containing full references to the Diocesan History of Ireland, in which the Provinces and Sees are distinctly classified, and their records and notices, with the authorities, subdivided, to facilitate research, into legal and literary notices; with these are here indexed, similarly subdivided, the records and notices of the Counties of Antrim, Armagh, Carlow, Cavan, Clare, Cork, Derry, Down, Kildare, Limerick, Meath, Tipperary, and Waterford. There are also arranged in this volume, references to the chief sources for information on the following, amongst many other subjects: Absentees; Annals; Archery; Architecture; Arms and Armour; Arms genealogical and Heraldry; Arts and Sciences; Bards; Baronages, Knights, &c.; Boroughs; Brigade Irish; Crosses; Druidism; Ecclesiastical Biography, History, Ornaments, and Revenues; Education; Fisheries; Forfeitures and Forfeited Estates; Funerals and Modes of Burial; History, &c., of Ireland; Legislation, Parliaments, &c.; Manners and Customs; Manufactures; Music; Natural History. General references for Pedigrees (subdivided into legal and literary, and those deducible from England classed by its Counties); Peerage; Tithes; Topography general of Ireland, similarly subdivided. Likewise some selected references relative to the reigns of Charles the First, Charles the Second, and Anne, in Ireland; and to the provinces of Leinster and Munster. This volume closes with directions for searches in cases of title, forfeitures, advowsons, pedigrees, peerages, &c., &c. 2. Indexes, three volumes quarto, to materials for the pedigrees and memoirs of every family of tenure or station in Ireland, giving, in all instances, the authorities, and comprising those of upwards of 2,500 surnames, and most especially comprehensive on those of Aylmer, Baldwin, Barnewall, Barry, Bellew, Bermingham, Blake, Brabazon, O'Brien, Browne, Burke, Burton, Butler, O'Byrne, Carew, Mac Carthy, Chichester, Cole, O'Conor, Conyngham, Courtney, Crawford, Cusack, D'Alton, D'Arcy, De Courcy, Delamer, Devereux, Dillon, O'Doherty, Mac Donnell, O'Donnel, Everard, Eustace, O'Ferral, Fitz-Gerald, Fitz-Maurice, Fitz-Patrick, Fitz-William, Fleming, French, Gardiner, Grace, Hamilton, O'Hara, Harcourt, Herbert, Heron, Hill, Hussey, Johnstone, Jones, Kavanagh, O'Kelly, Kennedy, De Lacy, Lambert, Leigh, Leslie, L'Estrange, Loftus, Luttrel, Lynch, Mac Carthy, Mac Mahon, Mac Namara, Malone, Mandeville, Marshall, Matthews, Maxwell, Meredith, Molyneux, Montgomery, Moore, O'More, Nangle, O'Neill, Netterville, Neville, Norris, Nugent, Palmer, Parker, Percy, Phillips, Pigot, Plunket, Power, Preston, Radcliffe, O'Reilly, Reynolds, Roche, Rochfort, O'Rourke, Russel, St. Leger, Savage, Smith, Spenser, Stafford, Stanley, Stewart, O'Sullivan, Swift, Sydney, Taaffe, Talbot, Taylor, Tyrrell, De Verdon, De Vesci, Walker, Ward, Warren, Wellesley, Wentworth, White, Wingfield, Wyse, Young, &c. These volumes have also comprehensive materials for the History of Ireland, arranged and indexed under General History before the invasion of Henry the Second, and after that under the several and respective reigns of the English Sovereigns, and the titles of the Commonwealth, Cromwell, and the Pretender. They likewise contain references on many of the subjects enumerated in the preceding folio volume, and close with collections on the Law of Evidence, in Peerage and Pedigree cases. 3. Indexes, eight volumes octavo, to materials for topographical illustrations of Ireland, arranged, with the authorities, in strict alphabetical order. These extensive collections direct the inquirer to the historic associations, legal records, and statistics, |