Fai.kiner — The Counties of Ire lam/. 191 



the six counties now embraced in it was, in fact, clelaycd until after 

 the other provinces had assumed their present form. The shiring 

 of Munster was effected chiefly through the instrumentality of the 

 provincial government known, as the Presidency of Munster, whir-h 

 was established by Sydney in 1570. No single act of Elizabethan 

 policy had more important or more satisfactory results than the insti- 

 tution of the Presidencies of Munster and Connaught; and as the 

 gradual demarcation of the counties of both provinces as they now 

 exist was largely effected by their means, it seems desirable to give a 

 brief account of an institution which was devised by Sydney, as 

 Davies puts it, "to inui'e and acquaint the people of Munster and 

 Connaught again with English Government." 



The first idea of these instruments of administration was formed in 

 the time of Edward YL, when a scheme was devised for the appoint- 

 ment of separate Presidents for each of the three provinces of Munster, 

 Connaught, and Ulster. But although Sussex had a clearly defined 

 scheme for giving effect to this policy, it was not until Sii- Henry 

 Sydney's first administration that, in 1565, definite shape was given 

 to it, or that the constitution of what for the next century were 

 known as the Presidency Courts of Connaught and Munster was formally 

 drafted. The Presidency not only included a President answerable to 

 the Lord Deputy, but a Council composed of prelates and nobles of 

 the province, and a Chief Justice with two Justices and an Attorney- 

 General, together with a Treasurer, Clerk of the Council, and other 

 administrative officers. In 1568 Sir John Pollard was nominated first 

 President of Munster, and in the year following Sir Edward Fitton 

 became President of Connaught. No President was appointed for 

 Ulster, the charge of which was confided, under a temporary Com- 

 mission, to a marshal, an officer whose duties were half-civil, half- 

 military. Pollard, however, never entered on his Government, and the 

 first acting President of Munster was Sir John Perrot, who, appointed 

 in 1570, was for six years a strenuous representative of the Crown 

 in that province. 



It is a matter of great regret that the records of these Presidencies 

 have long since perished.^ They seem to have been lost in the 



1 See Prendergast's " Introduction to Cal. S. P. Ireland," James I., 1606- 

 1608, pp. xx.-sxxv. A volume called "The Council Book of Munster" 

 survives in the Harleian Collection at the British Museum (Harl. Col., No. 697) ; 

 but it only extends from 1601 to 1617. The " Instructions for the Lord President 

 and Council of Munster," in 1615, have been printed in "Desiderata Curiosa 

 Hibernica," vol. ii, 



