l90 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Acadeuii/. 



the various accoimts which, remain to us of the division of Ireland at 

 this time. These exhibit considerable confusion, not only as to the 

 counties of* which each province was made up, but even as to the pro- 

 vinces themselves. Thus Haynes, in his " Description of Ireland," 

 in 1598, states that Ireland is divided into five parts. He includes 

 Meath among the provinces, mentioning it as containing four counties, 

 viz., East Meath, Westmeath, Longford, and Cavan, though he adds 

 that the last is by some "esteemed part of Ulster." On the other 

 hand, in a survey printed in the Carew Calendar,^ revised to the 

 year 1602, Longford is included in Connaught, while Cavan is not men- 

 tioned, and the completeness of the relapse of Ulster from " civility " 

 is shown by the description of that province as containing three 

 counties and four " Seignories." 



Thus it was not until after the accession of James L, in the time 

 of Sir Arthur Chichester, that, in the words of Sir John Davies, " the 

 whole realm being divided into shii-es, every bordering territory 

 whereof doubt was made in what county the same should lie was 

 added or reduced to a county certain." The boundaries of the counties 

 forming the provinces of Connaught and Ulster were ascertained one 

 after another by a series of Inquisitions between the years 1606 and 

 1610, which confirmed in the main the arrangements tentatively made 

 by Perrot, though in the case of Ulster these were necessarily varied 

 in some important respects, particularly as regards Londonderry, by 

 the changes resulting from the Flight of the Earls and the Plantation 

 of the northern province. The enumeration of counties and provinces 

 in Speed's "Description of the Kingdom of Ireland," in 1610, shows, 

 as already noted, that in that year the precise allocation of counties 

 among the provinces still remained vague and indeterminate in the 

 popular estimation. But Meath had by that time finally disappeared 

 from the list of provinces ; and though some years were to elapse ere 

 all the counties could be finally delimited, this process had been 

 practically completed when Sir John Davies left Ireland in 1616, 

 except in the case of Tipperary, where the exceptional conditions 

 created by the existence of the Ormond Palatinate long retarded the 

 final settlement. 



Although Munster is of all the great divisions that which, if com- 

 pared with the original distribution imputed to King John, shows the 

 least alteration in its county system, the southern province has not 

 been without its vicissitudes in this respect. In Perrot's time Munster 

 consisted of as many as eight counties, and the final settlement of 



1 Carew Calendar, iv., pp. 446-454. 



