368 



learning were redeemed, "vvas *not extended to the former country; 

 In the reign of EHzabeth, Carew and Sidney were instructed to de- 

 stroy all the MSS. they could find,* and too etFectually did they 

 accomplish the order. 



The visitation of Cromwell succeeded, — "a career of slaughter,; 

 confiscation, and religious persecution. ""f- Two rebellions, the result of 

 miguided loyalty and ill-requited enthusiasm, having involved all that 

 was respectable in the country, were crushed with frightful reaction. 

 All Ireland was in a manner declared forfeited to the crown, and its 

 ancient inhabitants subjected to the ruinous consequences of one par- 

 liamentary 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 endu- 



rance 



The detail of these literary mortalities might damp the ardour of 

 inquiry. Even the most enthusiastic might well question the authen- 

 ticity of what could survive such a succession of deadly enmity ; but 

 we live in an age, when, happily, every day presents us with the cheer- 

 ing assurance of an Irish record rescued from oblivion, and endued 



* See Button's Survey of Galway, p. 244. f Edinb. Review, vol. xli. p. 147. 



I Booth, (Analecta, p. 557.) Lynch, Walsh, and others, who were contemporaries with the 

 times of which they speak, bitterly lament the destruction of the Irish MSS. and monasteries 

 in the days of CromwelL 



