39 



MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1861. 



The Yert Rev. Chaeles Geaves, D. D., President, in the Chair. 



W. H. Haedinge, Esq., read the following paper : — 



On Manusceipt Mapped Townland Sueyeys in Ieeland of a Public 

 Chaeactee, feom theie inteodtjction to 23ed Octobee, 1641. 



Me. Peesident and Gentlemen of the Royal Ieish Academy, — The 

 information which my paper of this evening aims at communicating on 

 the subject of MS. mapped townland surveys in Ireland of a public 

 character, is a simple statement of facts and occurrences, many of which, 

 from whatever cause, have escaped historic notice ; and yet they strike 

 me as meriting, even at this advanced period of literature and time, 

 to be drawn from their long repose in the public archives of the king- 

 dom, clothed in unpretending though suitable attire, and presented to 

 this Academy, and society at large, for consideration, if not instruction. 



The popularly received notion is, that our earliest MS. mapped surveys, 

 of lands admeasured by scale and chain, are those known as the Down 

 Survey collection, compiled between 1654 and 1659, — as to apart, under 

 the sole able geometrical and strong common sense guidance of Doctor 

 "William (afterwards Sir William) Petty, the ancestor of the present noble 

 house of Lansdowne ; and as to another part, under the joint responsibi- 

 lity of the Doctor and Benjamin Worseley ; and as to the residue, under 

 said Doctor and Vincent Gookin, said Worseley and Gookin being the 

 then surveyors and escheators-general of the Commonwealth of England. 



I am not ignorant that Howard, in his " Irish Exchequer," published 

 in 1776, represents Strafford's survey of 1639 as being the earliest; but 

 other than what the term survey conveys, he gives no intimation of maps 

 having flowed from it; and every lawyer and well-informed person 

 knows that ancient surveys taken by juries before the provincial eschea- 

 tors were descriptive only, and without any such accompaniment. These 

 surveys, also called extents and inquisitions, were returned " virtute 

 If ems''' into Chancery, and virtute officii^'' into Chancery or the Ex- 

 chequer. 



I am also aware that Leland, in the first chapter of his fifth book on 

 Irish History, refers to Strafford's inquisitions, finding the title of the 

 crown to Connaught, and the Byrne's country in Wicklow; but neither 

 does this writer appear to have been aware that mapped townland sur- 

 veys followed close on the inquisitions. 



Strafford's letters and despatches, published by Knowles, in 1740, 

 lead us nearer to the truth, as in more than one of this collection. 

 Raven and his thirty surveyors, and the slowness of the work," are 

 spoken of; but they do not further satisfy as to the nature of the work, 

 or that it was brought to a successful issue. But the most mysterious 

 circumstance in reference to that important survey is, that when Stone, 

 the surveyor and escheator-general of the crown, in whose office and 



