Irish Glass. 15 



for twenty-one years at an annual rent of fifty marks. So far as is 

 at present known none of them appear to have manufactured any 

 glass in Ireland. 



In the Patent Rolls of Ireland 5 James I., Part L, the fol- 

 lowing is to be found :— " Licence to Adam VVhitty of Arklow in 

 Wicklow to manufacture glass within Leinster Province for ten 

 years on paying the yearly rent of one pound Irish. 23rd 

 P'ebruary, 1607-8." Wliether a glass-house was erected is un- 

 certain, as no other reference to the licence has as yet come to 

 light. 



A glass-house for making window glass was set up at Bally- 

 negery in 1622. This place appears to be somewhere in the 

 South of Ireland, though the exact locality is ncjt at present 

 known. There are townlands of Ballynagerah in Waterford and 

 Cork, but the internal evidence of the manuscript appears to point 

 to the Ballynegerah in County Waterford. 



The next record we have relates to a glass-house near P.irr, 

 early in the seventeenth century, In Ireland's Natural History, 

 by Gerald Boate, published in 1652, it is stated that early in the 

 century several glass-houses were set up in Ireland by the English, 

 among the more important being that near Birr, which was said 

 to have supplied Dublin with drinking glasses and window glass. 

 Boate also states that at this period no glass-houses were erected 

 in Dublin or other towns, but all in the country ; and that the 

 sand for glass making came from England ; the alkali was obtained 

 locally from the ash-tree, and that the clay for the pots came from 

 the north. 



Among the documents preserved at Birr Castle is a lease for 

 :9g years, dated October 9th, 1623, of part of the lands of Clonog- 

 hill, granted by Sir Lawrence Parsons to Abraham Bigo, with a 

 proviso that the tenant was not to set up any glass-house or glass- 

 work on any other land, or to buy any wood of any other for his 

 glass-work, but only of said Parsons. This glass-house appears to 

 have been carried on until Easter, 1627, when the lease was sur- 

 rendered. 



Remains of an old glass-house, which may have been that 



