59 
the latter, it must be observed, merely detailed the civil division as it 
- stood in his time, founded on that of Fintan, or, as has been sup- 
posed, on another survey detailed in the annals of Multifernan ; a 
record which terminates in the year 1274, and which, on all hands, 
is admtted to be of unquestionable authority. 
From the days of Henry II. to the reign of Elizabeth, the en- 
quirer will seek, in vain, for any general or particular chart or 
plan of this distracted land. The incessant warfare kept up be- 
tween the inhabitants of the pale and their surrounding neighbours, 
and the cruel and unnatural dissentions continually subsisting both 
among the British settlers and the native princes and chieftains, al- 
lowed neither time nor inclination for improvement: so that it was 
not until after the division of the greater part of Iréland into coun- 
ties, during the 16th century, that any map or survey of an exten- 
sive nature, as far as I can at present ascertain, was made. Seve- 
~ral, however, were then formed, many of which are now fortu- 
nately preserved in the valuable manuscript library of Trinity Col- 
lege, Dublin. Speed,* Blaeu, Ortelius, and others who published 
* Speed, in his general map of Ireland, presents his readers with six portraits. Ist. Of a 
wild Irishman and woman ; 2d of a civil Irishman and woman ; and 3d of a gentleman and lady, 
all in the national costume of the time.—Though the subjoined abstract of a grant of James I, 
about this period, “to abolish the Irish habit,” be not strictly relevant to the present subject, 
yet the curious nature of its contents may, perhaps, excuse its introduction.—“ The King, having 
an earnest desire to abolish all the rude and barbarous habits and fashions of the Irish, which had 
always made a kind of difference betwixt them and the civil English people of Ireland, and by 
the eye deceived the multitude, and persuaded them that they should be of sundry sorts, or ra- 
ther of sundry countries, where indeed they were one whole entire body, whereof his Majesty 
was the only head under God; and to the end that for ever hereafter, all his true and faithful 
subjects, Irish and English, might be the sooner induced to live together in sociable union, when 
the diversity of their apparel and habit should be taken away, and thereby the ruder sort might 
be drawn to amore civil kind of behaviour and manners ; his Majesty, in consideration of the pains 
and travails to be taken by Daniel Birne and Charles Hedley, gent. in reducing and compelling 
