335 



thorities with much critical acumen.* It is therefore but reasonable 

 to conclude, that he is equally correct in his allusions to, or extracts 

 from the native authors, not only those of the seventh, eighth, ninth, 

 and tenth centuries, but even those lost " monumenta Scotorum,*' 

 which were then still echoed in tradition. He begins his history, not 

 with the introduction of Christianity, as Doctor Beauford asserts,-!* 

 but with the year 305 before Christ, and concludes with A. D. 1088, 

 when the annalist himself died,]: In the same century, Flannus, of 

 the monasteiy of Bute, (County Meath,) wrote his metrical history of 

 the kings of Ireland, still extant at Stowe.§ With this century too 

 the Annals of Inisfallen terminate. In the close of the twelfth cen- 

 tury, a detail of the exploits of the early English adventurers in Ire- 

 land was composed; it is ascribed to Maurice Regan, secretary of Der- 

 mot Mac-Murrough, and is published in Harris's Hibernica,|| In the . 

 same age flourished Concubran, who wrote the Biography of Saint 

 Moninna, In the thirteenth century, if we may be allowed to look 

 somewhat beyond our cordon, the most remarkable chronicles are the 

 Annals of Ulster, Connaught, Inisfallen, Boyle, and Multifernam ; 

 in the fourteenth the annals by Pembrige and Clynn, and those of 

 Ballymote and Lecan; in the fifteenth those annals of Ireland com- 

 posed by Charles Maguire, a canon of Armagh, and comprising the 

 period from 444 to 1498. In the sixteenth century those of Flattis- 

 bury and Stanihurst, and in the seventeenth the Annals of the Four 

 Masters are eminently entitled to notice. The latter history is par- 



* See Annal. Tigem. ad ann. A. C. 164 — ad ann. A, D. 91, 1 10, &c. And see O'Conor's 

 Catal. Stow. vol. i. pp. 37 and 193. 



t Vallanc. Collect. De Reb. Hib. vol. ii. p. 209. X Nichols. Irish Hist. Library, p. 30. 



§ See O'Conor, Rer. Hib, Script, vol. iii. p. 142. 



II Doctor O'Conor woiild throw some doubt on this being Regan's work. — See Catal. Lib. 

 Stow. vol. i. pp. 209,210, . . ; .^ .a 4. 



