Falkiner — The Counties of Ireland. 193 



two sheriffs — the one particular in Desmond, the other in the rest of 

 the county — and this without any ground of law, but by discretion 

 of the L. Deputies ; the inconvenience thereof being espied, it had 

 been of late thought good that one sheriff should be for Kerry and 

 Desmond, and so two sheriffs in one county against law taken away.' 

 The amalgamation with Kerry appears to have been completed by 

 1606,^ when Mr. Justice Walshe, in describing to Salisbury the 

 Munster Circuit of that year, mentions particularly the successful 

 union of Desmond and Kerry. 



The dual representation of Tipperary in the list of Irish counties 

 was long a puzzle to antiquaries, and even an inquirer so diligent 

 and in general so accurate as Sir John Davies was misinformed on 

 the subject, notwithstanding the minute inquiries he appears to 

 have instituted into the origin of what struck him as a curious 

 administrative anomaly. "At Cashel," he writes in his account of 

 the Munster Circuit of 1606,- "we held the Sessions for the County 

 " of the Cross. It hath been anciently called ' the Cross ' (for it had 

 "been a county above 300 years; and was, indeed, one of the first that 

 " ever was made in this kingdom) because all the lands within the 

 "precincts thereof were either the demesnes of the Archbishop of 

 " Cashel, or holden of that See, or else belonging to Abbeys or houses 

 " of religion, and so the land as it were dedicated to the Cross of Christ. 

 " The scope or latitude of this county, though it were never great, yet 

 " now is drawn into so narrow a compass that it doth not deserve the 

 " name of shire." 



Davies' confusion as to the two counties of Tipperaiy, which con- 

 tinued to be separately represented down to Strafford's Parliament of 

 1634, was extremely natural in view of the limited information avail- 

 able when he thus accounted for the anomalous existence of the 

 County of Cross Tipperary. But, in fact, the duplication had really 

 originated in the Palatine system. To the accident which preserved 

 Tipperary as the last of the Palatinates was due the survival of Cross 

 Tipperary as the last of the counties of the Cross ; and it will be 

 convenient here to trace the history of both jurisdictions. The 

 County Palatine of Tipperary was originally created by letters patent, 

 granted in 1328 by Edward III. to James le BotiUer, Earl of Ormond, 

 and confirmed by successive monarchs to that nobleman's successors 

 in the honours of the Butler family. The jurisdiction thus granted 



1 Cal. of " State Papers," Ireland, 1603-6, p. 573. 

 2Cal. of " State Papers," Ireland, 1606-S. 



R.I. A. PROC, VOL. XXIV., SEC. c] [15] 



