47 



at in the art of surveying, I do not say that they would be useful. 

 There survive few, if any, of the undertakers' grants which represent 

 the title of present proprietors from the crown; but, should there be any 

 such, the maps in question would to them possess a value beyond that 

 suggested. These maps of large portions of Cork, Kerry, Limerick, 

 Tipperary, and Waterford, I consider to have been the first public MS. 

 mapped townland survey in Ireland. 



The forfeitures of the Earl of Tyrone and his followers in Ulster were 

 allowed to remain in the undisturbed possession and enjoyment of the 

 former proprietors and possessors during the remainder of Queen Eliza- 

 beth's reign. This may have happened from the want of a sufficient 

 military force to deal with two provinces, both decidedly hostile, at the 

 same time ; or it might have arisen from the physical impossibility of 

 simultaneously carrying out so comprehensive an undertaking as the pro- 

 jected English plantations involved. The fi:sed and undisguised design 

 was to subject both provinces to plantation ; and as Queen Elizabeth 

 had the merit of establishing the one, to King James, her successor, she 

 bequeathed the responsibility of effecting that of the other. 



Accordingly, I find that by letters patents, bearing date at Dublin, 

 the 25th July, in the seventh year of the reign of King James I., accom- 

 panied by articles of instructions of survey, his said Majesty nominated 

 and appointed Sir Arthur Chichester, Knt., Lord Deputy of Ireland; 

 the Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin ; two other bishops ; Sir Thomas 

 Eidgeway, Knt., Vice- Treasurer and Treasurer at War; the Marshal of the 

 Army, William Parsons, surveyor and escheator-general ; and many other 

 exalted state and legal functionaries, commissioners to survey all lands 

 in Armagh, Coleraine and the Derry, Donegal, Eermanagh, Cavan, and Ty- 

 rone ; in the execution whereof the ecclesiastical lands were directed to 

 be distinguished by themselves ; and the forfeited lands to be divided 

 into proportions of ballyboes, quarters, and tates, with names and bounds ; 

 and plots were directed to be made of each county, and the commission- 

 ers were to prick out the several proportions therein by name ; and the 

 records, when completed, were directed to be transmitted to England in 

 cases before Hallowmas, 1609, that the King might have time to resolve 

 therefrom in the winter, and to signify his pleasure against the next 

 spring. 



There were two interests to be protected by, and exhibited on, the 

 records of these survey proceedings, namely, those of the crovm and 

 the church. To define and set out the latter, inquisitions were taken 

 and returned into Chancery for each respective county, most minutely 

 describing the ecclesiastical, but not the escheated lands. I have no 

 doubt that books of survey describing as minutely these lands were also 

 taken and returned into the ex-officio custody of the surveyor-general, 

 as William Parsons, who was then surveyor-general, furnished the 

 auditor-general with a roll of these escheated lands in the year 1611, 

 which remains in the proper custody at this day as a record of the fact. 

 But the county inquisitions and survey books combined would not 



