170 Proceedings; of the Royal Irish Academy. 



that Tve must chiefly look if we Tvo"uld. seek to realise the body politic 

 of the Ireland of a not very remote past. If this statement should 

 appear at -all exaggerated, let it suffice to note t^ro simple but striking 

 illustrations. As late as the reign of Henry YIII., in a memorandum on 

 the State of Ireland, which is among the most instructive documents in 

 the Tudor State Papers, the names of the " Irish regions," and not the 

 territorial diyisions to which we are accustomed, are the units employed 

 by the writer to describe by far the greater portion of the country. ^ 

 And in the Elizabethan !ilap of Ireland, drawn by Dean Xowel, in 

 the third quarter of the sixteenth century, division by territories, or 

 " chief eries," and not that by counties, is the method adopted;- for 

 down to the reign of Philip and Hary, as Sir John Davies observes in 

 the lucid pai'agraphs devoted to the history of the shiring of Ireland in 

 his well-known, work : — " The provinces of Connaught and Ulster, and 

 a good part of Leinster, were not reduced, to shire ground. And 

 though funster were anciently divided into coujaties, the people were 

 so degenerate as no justice durst execute his commission among them."' 

 It is the main object of this Paper to indicate the process by which 

 these large districts were gradually brought within the ambit of 

 English administration, and by which the counties of Ireland, as we 

 now know them, came to be formed. 



" The civil distribution of Ireland," to quote Bishop Pieeves's 

 most valuable Paper on ' The Townland Distribution of Ireland,' "in 

 the descending scale, is into Provinces, Counties, Baronies, Parishes, 

 and Townlands."* But this highly convenient division of the surface 

 of Ireland, as the Bishop goes on to say, is characterised neither by 

 luiity of design nor by chronological order in its development. " The 



i""Who list make surmise to tte King for the reformation of Ms land of 

 Ireland, it is necessary to show him the estate of all the noble folk of the same, as 

 well of the King's subjects and English rebels, as of the Irish enemies. And first 

 of all to make His Grace understand that there may be more than 60 countries, 

 called regions in Ireland, inhabited with the King's Irish enemies ; some region as 

 big as a shire, some more, some less, unto a little ; some as big as half a shire and 

 some a little less ; where reigneth more than 60 chief captains . . . that liveth 

 only by the sword and obeyeth to no other temporal persons, but only to himself 

 that is strong . . also there is no folk daily subject to the King's laws but half the 

 county of Uriel, half the county of ileath, half the county of Dublin, and half the 

 county of Kildare." "The State of Ireland and Plan for its Eeformation." 

 *' State Papers Henry VIII.," vol. ii., Part iii., p. 1.' 



- Copy of an ancient map in the Biitish Museum by Laurence Xowel, Dean of 

 Lichfield, ob. 1576. Printed by Ordnance Survey. 



' " Discovery of the True causes why Ireland was never entirely subdued," &c. 



* " Proceedings of the Puoyal Irish Academy," vol. vii., p. 473. 



