178 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



complexity of Irish, administration under the Plantagenet Kings, the 

 only guide whom we may follow with any degree of confidence is the 

 Sheriff. The whole machinery of local or county administration in 

 Plantagenet times practically centred in the Sheriff, who united the 

 threefold functions of a civil officer in relation to the courts of law ; 

 of returning officer in relation to the election of parliamentary repre- 

 sentatives ; and of revenue collector in relation to the royal exchequer. 

 Owing to the destruction in the reigns of the two first Edwards of 

 most of the early records of the Kingdom of Ireland, the materials 

 available in regard to Plantagenet Sheriffs are unhappily meagre ; 

 and the Act of Henry YII. just referred to indicates the paucity 

 of the records of several of the greater earldoms. But a study of 

 the Plea Eolls, Pipe EoUs, and Patent Rolls, as well as of the Planta- 

 genet statutes, so far as these survive, is not wholly fruitless ; and 

 the last-mentioned source is fairly rich in references to the functions 

 and office of the sheriff. An examination of these sources establishes, 

 at least negatively, the fact that from the time of King John to that of 

 the Tudors no new county was formed, or if formed that it did not 

 survive ; and that no Sheriff was created for any new district, with 

 the single exception of the subdivision of the great territory of 

 Connaught into the separate districts of Connaught and Eoscommon.^ 

 It is impossible to say how much or how little of Connaught was 

 intended to be included in Eoscommon, or precisely when the division 

 was made. But the separation is certainly as old as the thirteenth 

 century, and Eoscommon is among the counties and liberties^ whose 

 respective Sheriffs and Seneschals were directed by the Statute 25 

 Ed. I. (1296) to return to the " general parliament " held in Dublin in 

 that year "two of the most honest and discreet knights of each 

 county or liberty." This vagueness of the territorial divisions and of 

 the shrievalties associated with them was not confined to the western 

 province, but was characteristic of all the so-called counties of King 

 Jolin. And this was especially so in the case of the Leinster counties, 

 whose south-western borders were probably in a state of continuous 

 flux. Thus in 1297 a list of Coroners of Kildare shows that county 

 to have included Offaly, Leix, and Arklow, and therefore to have 



^ See Hardiman's " Statute of Kilkenny," p. 106. 



2 The following is the enumeration in the Statute : — " Likewise the Sheriffs of 

 Dublin, Louth, Kildare, "Waterford, Tipperary, Cork, Limerick, Kerry, Con- 

 naught, and Eoscommon ; and also the Seneschals of the liberties of Meath, "Weys- 

 ford, Katherlagh, Kilkenny, and Ulster." See Betham's " Feudal Dignities," p. 262. 



