48 



satisfy the instructions which directed the commissioners to have plots 

 of each county made, and have impressed thereon certain distinctive 

 features, which no language, however clear or strong, could do. Besides, 

 the term plot in connexion with the survey signifies a map, and that 

 only. And, no doubt, as these maps were not returned into the office of 

 the surveyor- general, they were, agreeably to the terms of their instruc- 

 tions, transmitted by the commissioners in cases into England, for the 

 King's consideration and pleasure ; and a further circumstance in con- 

 firmation of this conclusion is found in the fact, that the earliest and 

 most extensive of the plantation grants were passed under the great seal 

 of England in the year 1610. 



As in the case of the maps of the first plantation, in the reign of 

 Queen Elizabeth, I asked at the State Paper Office to be shown those of 

 the counties enumerated of the year 1609, — when the second volume of 

 maps relating to Ireland, embracing all the MS. specimens of the reign 

 of Xing James I., was placed before me; and one of the first objects that 

 attracted and fixed my attention on opening the volume was the survey 

 I was in search of ; I knew it at sight, and upon inspection found, that 

 there were four county books, each vellum-bound, and illuminated with 

 coats of arms after the fashion of the day, representing Armagh, Cavan, 

 Fermanagh, and Tyrone, and containing separate maps of each barony 

 in each respective county, within which were pricked out the several 

 proportions of lands therein, and their subdivisions by name, as required 

 by the articles of instruction annexed to the commission of survey. 



These several subdivisions were, as appears to me, afterwards suc- 

 cessively coloured off, to distinguish the townlands granted from those re- 

 maining undisposed of, and in the hands of the crown, until, by repeated 

 processes of colouring of different hues to denote different grants or pro- 

 perties, all were distributed. 



It is much to be regretted that the maps of Coleraine and Derry, and 

 of Donegal, which would complete the six escheated counties, are not 

 forthcoming. Yet I cannot but hope that they will be found, as they 

 should be, reposing in some unexplored corner of Her Majesty's State 

 Paper Office. 



The subjoined copy of a letter §,ccompanying the six (not the four) 

 books of maps of the escheated counties when deposited in that office, 

 most graphically, satisfactorily, and conclusively proves, that Thomas 

 Hidgeway, under- treasurer of Ireland, and one of the commissioners 

 named in the commission of survey, proceeded to London in the spring 

 of 1610, and personally delivered them over to Lord Salisbury, treasurer 

 of England, for the consideration and pleasure of the King, as the com- 

 missioners were directed to do. 



The letter also suggests a very unsettled state of the north of Ire- 

 land at the time of the taking of the survey, which was carried out in 

 the presence of a military force; and this, no doubt, was the reason that 

 the marshal of the army was constituted one of the commissioners. The 

 letter runs as follows, viz. : — 



