485 



just referred to), to live free from all Irish service, and to enjoy the 

 English laws.* In the latter part of that century among the forty-one 

 Mac's and twenty-six O's, who, on October 5, 1585, surrendered their 

 Irish names and customs of inheritance to Sir Richard Bingham and 

 the Commissioners, the " Mac Granils' ' are enumerated. Notwithstand- 

 ing this surrender, however, we find them figuring among the Irish 

 force which opposed Bingham several years later, in 1590. And, 

 nearly forty years later, in 1629, among the grants of lands in the county 

 of Leitrim, by Charles I., seven distinct grants were made under the 

 old name to Connor Mac Murragh Mac Grannell, Tirlagh Mac Grannell, 

 and five others, while but a single roll contains the English name of Rey- 

 nolds — that containing a grant of lands in the barony of Mohill, to 

 " Humfry Reynolds, his heirs and assigns for ever."f Still the change, 

 if slow, has been complete. The English name Reynolds has long entirely 

 displaced the Irish patronymic, even in its hereditary seat ; and the well- 

 known George Nugent Reynolds, of Letterfian, in Leitrim, a notable local 

 celebrity in the last generation as a wit and poet, whose name attracted 

 considerable notice some years since on account of a claim made on his 

 behalf to the authorship of the " Exile of Erin," was a descendant of the 

 Mac Rannalls of Muintir Eolus. 



Of the parties to the covenant named on the side of the Earl I am 

 only able to recognise by independent notices two — William Walsh, 

 who, as appears from another deed cited by Lord Kildare in his 

 "Earls of Kildare," j was the Earl's standard bearer, § and father of 

 Silken Thomas's devoted follower, Robert Walsh, who was the pro- 

 tector of the infant heir after the arrest of Silken Thomas and his 

 uncles, and whose name, together with those of his brother, Prior Walsh, 

 and the Cahil Mac Rannall, already referred to, is included in the Act 

 of Attainder ; and James Boyce, who was Governor of the Castle of May- 

 nooth,|| of whom an interesting letter is preserved by the Marquis 

 of Kildare in his" Earls of Kildare, 1 ' and whose pithy exclamation on 

 occasion of the retribution which awaited the treason of Parese, the 

 betrayer of Maynooth Castle to the Deputy, during the absence of Silken 

 Thomas, was, as I am reminded by my friend Mr. Gilbert, the original 

 of the long proverbial, and not yet entirely forgotten saying, " ' Too 

 late,' says Boyce." Concobhair Mac Culruadh was, as appears from 

 the document itself, the Earl's steward or bailiff. 



But the chief interest involved in this curious document lies in the 

 light which it appears to throw on the social and military condition of 

 a large portion of the Irish districts of the kingdom, about the middle 

 of the reign of Henry VIII. For it is impossible to doubt that this 

 covenant with the Mac Rannall sept, although now an exceptional and 

 perhaps unique instrument, must be regarded as one of a class, and as 

 the representative of a system which prevailed at the time over a large 



* Motrin's " Calendars of Irish Rolls, Henry VIII.," p. 2. 



f Morrin's " Calendar of Patent Rolls, Charles I.," pp. 441-2. J p. 189. 



§ "The Castle of Maynooth," pp. 13-4, quoting Holingshed's " Chronicle," 1570. 



|| Lord Kildare's " Earls of Kildare," p. 146. 



