the Lansdowne MSS., the Harleian MSS., and the Sloane* Collection; in the Lambeth Library there are the Carew Papers; in the Bodleian Library there is the Carte Collection; in the Public Record Office, Dublin, there are the Philadelphia Papers; in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, there are the Ussher MSS., the Stearne MSS., the Alexander MSS.; and, besides all these, there are numerous private collections, each with its fragment, more or less precious, of Ireland's past. The mere mention of these names will, as we have said, give some faint idea of the toil and ability which the Calendar represents. But, for the general reader, the idea must be only a faint one. It is the initiated alone who will be able to appreciate properly the work of the editors. None but they who have some time or other engaged in work of a similar kind can form anything like a just estimate of the vast knowledge, the solidity of judgment, and the delicacy of discrimination which that work required for its proper performance. It is very little certainly for the editors to say, in sketching their labours, that "the task of bringing together the materials of a work so comprehensive has involved considerable difficulty and research," and that "it is often a work of much difficulty to bring into harmony and assign to their proper chronological order documents so miscellaneous, so widely dispersed, and in some cases with so few extrinsic notes of date or authority." To do all that is indeed a difficulty, but to do it as it has been done by Dr. Russell is also a triumph. Whatever we say we cannot exaggerate the historical importance of the documents themselves. It is true that they cover, as we have already remarked, only three and a half years of a single reign. But that reign is of such moment in Irish history, and its first years are so surrounded with historic suspense,-their ultimate aim remaining so long in such sustained uncertainty,-that perhaps there is no other period of the same duration in the annals of Ireland more curiously and variously interesting than those three and a half * Sir Hans Sloane. It was of him that Young wrote:- Than Sloane, the foremost toyman of his time! That touch'd the ruff that touch'd Queen Bess' chin." No one will be likely to doubt that most of the old collectors were little better than toymen in intent. But, in effect, they were very frequently among the best servants of science. What their contemporaries looked on as toys, our contemporaries have often to look on as treasures. The years with which the present Calendar is concerned. editors promise in their preface to point out on a future occasion the bearing of the documents before us on the whole reign of James I; and to the performance of that promise we look forward with much expectancy. Meanwhile, we shall, we think, be doing the reader a service if we prepare him to profit by the performance of the promise. We may do so by sketching for him the history of Ireland from 1603 to 1606, and by sketching it for him as it is told in the Calendar. We shall take especial care to adhere to our text. For the most part we shall set the Calendar to speak for itself. We ourselves shall say nothing which is not authorized by the papers published in the volume before us, we shall keep as far from irritating subjects as we find feasible; and, if we have to speak about them, we will take care to speak as temperately and respectfully as shall be permitted by human infirmity. "James, the sixth of that name, King of Scotland" became 'King of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland,"* on the 24th of March, 1603, the day on which Queen Elizabeth died. On that day, six hours after the Queen was discrowned for ever, his Scottish Majesty's accession to the throne was proclaimed in London. But the parallel proclamation in Ireland did not take place till the following 5th of April,† the delay, it is thought, being occasioned by the difficulties of communication between the two countries at the time. On the 5th of April, however, the Queen's death, and the King's succession, were publicly announced at the High Cross, in Dublin. Lord Mountjoy was Lord Deputy at the time of the Queen's demise, and when news of that event arrived he was elected (9th of April) Justice and Governor of Ireland till such time as the will of the new sovereign should be made known. On the 17th of April it was announced in Dublin that Mountjoy had been reappointed Lord Deputy. Shortly after he was made Lord Lieutenant; and "on the 26th of May he was called over to England and continued to reside there assisting the Council with his great experience of the affairs of Ireland (as appears by his signature attached to the papers from the Council) until his death, on the 3rd of April, 1606."+ In his absence *Calendar, p. 1. Our references, when they are not made to the date of the documents, will be made to the page of the Calendar. It is said in the preface (cx.) that "the Queen's death does not seem to have been known in Ireland until the 5th of April. Father Meehan, on the authority of Fynes Morrison, maintains that Deputy Mountjoy knew it on the 27th March. (Fate and Fortunes, &c., p. 5.) Preface, p. cxi. Sir George Carey and Sir Arthur Chichester were successively Lord Deputies, deputies, however, not of the Lieutenant, but of the King. Sir George Carey continued in office till the 24th of February, 1605, when he resigned the sword to Sir Arthur Chichester. Sir Arthur was Lord Deputy from that time till his retirement from public life in the end of 1615. But the papers in the present volume go no further than the end of October, 1606. The present volume, therefore, accounts for a little less than two years of Sir George Carey's rule,* and a little more than a year and a half of Sir Arthur Chichester's. Besides those three just mentioned, Chichester and Carey and Mountjoy, the most remarkable characters of whom the papers speak are Cecil (known also in the Calendar as Viscount Cranbourne and Earl of Salisbury), Sir John Davys, Sir Jeffrey Fenton, Sir George Carew, Sir Henry Brounker, Lord Clanrickarde, the Duke of Ormond, Sir Patrick Barnewell, the Earl of Tyrconnel, and the Earl of Tyrone. But these are only a few of the more prominent political actors. We have numberless others who, though politically of less importance, are often quite as interesting, and sometimes distinguished by a more admirable originality. In fact our drama, as is generally the case in real life, has many more characters than the stage can conveniently accommodate. But they are so beautifully diversified, that, in an artistic sense at least, we cannot wish one of them away. Even Lieutenant Downing, who hanged two poor idiots for pastime on a Sunday morning; Sir Toby Caulfield, who, in the service of his royal master, tempts Tyrone's wife to enter into a charming little conspiracy against her husband; and the Protestant Bishop of Limerick, who asks his Majesty to make him bishop of Dromore as well, because Limerick and Dromore are conveniently contiguous; even these, and others like these, have their artistic charms. Mr. Froude has lately told us that we never produced a single national drama, and he has advanced that fact as a crowning justification of his unconcealed contempt for the Irish race. We could, if we chose, assign special causes for our want of a worthy national drama, just as we could assign general causes for our want of a worthy national literature. But we do not choose to enter upon that subject here. We only ask permission to say that, if we have no great drama, it is not because of a dearth of characters, and *Sir George was Deputy for two-and-twenty months. F. Meehan (p. 51) restricts the period of his deputyship to nine months. That is an obvious error, but perhaps it is a printer's error for " a year and nine months," which would be sufficiently accurate. that, thanks to Mr. Froude's countrymen, an Irish dramatist will for the production of tragic incidents require no large amount of originality.* And, not only the characters introduced, but the documents themselves rejoice in a most interesting variety. We have a proclamation from the sacred pen of King James, in which his Majesty indignantly repels the atrocious suspicion that he would tolerate popery; and we have a connubial note from Lady Carew, in which she announces to her absent spouse that "ther hatheben gret shuting at the castel, and I amnot a frade." We have very learned but very lengthy legal arguments from Sir John Davys, in which he shows that the English kings had from the beginning an instinctive predetermined antipathy to the popes; and we have an equally learned and far more lengthy argument from Chief Justice Saxey, in which, while his knowledge of Zorababel and Nehemias, and his anxiety for the reformation of the reformed Church in Ireland make one think him a saint fresh from the celestial mint, his intense malice against the Irish Catholics suggest the very opposite of a heavenly origin.† But, with all their variety, the documents are in one or two respects somewhat monotonous. We have a little too much mendicancy, and rather an over-supply of hounds and hawks. Most of the letters from the Irish side of the Channel are addressed to Cecil; most of them are begging letters; and most of them offer the sporting secretary a dog or a falcon. The communications of the city of Waterford and of Sir George Carey, are honourable exceptions. The city sends a present to Cecil, but, wisely remembering that nights of comfort are quite as necessary as days of sport, it elects to offer him, not a bird or beast, but "two coverings for his bed, and two rundells of aquavitæ." Sir George writes to Cecil very often, *It has amused us not a little to meet in the Calendar a charge against the Irish analagous to that preferred by Mr. Froude. Sir Henry Brounker tells us (p. 545) that "there was never yet any Irish martyr." And yet, as we shall have to show hereafter, this same Sir Henry was daily hanging both priests and people because they would neither attend the Protestant service nor abandon the Catholic. Mr. Carlyle has said that of the two it is better to live an heroic poem than merely to write one. It might be added that people whose lives are heroic poems rarely think of writing heroic poetry. And it might be suggested that Ireland has written no tragedy because her own life is so terribly tragic. She may yet do something even in the literary way to satisfy Mr. Froude. But she may be excused from doing it till her sorrows are made nothing more than a memory. At a later period (Calendar, p. 482) Saxey 'sought to be Lord Chief Baron. Chichester opposed his appointment on the ground that he was very corrupt and unfit.” and never that we remember asks Cecil "to carve for him."* But Sir George, as we shall see, very wisely helped himself. All the other officials of Government are beggars. Nor is it the government officials alone who cringe, and wriggle, and whine, and look for the crumbs from their master's table. The same or similar conduct is patronized by even the Earl of Tyrone; and many of the other Irish chieftains excel their conquerors in meanness and servility. It must, however, be allowed in defence of these latter, that the wretched state to which they and their country were reduced, was enough to break any but the strongest spirit. Indeed, when King James succeeded to the. sovereignty of Ireland, he did not succeed to a prosperous or promising in. heritance. Both the country and the people were reduced to the extreme of misery. All the woes that afflict humanity had gathered together in league against an unhappy land :— war, famine, pestilence, a brutal soldiery, a malignant executive, laws which the devil himself would be ashamed to sanction, and a king whose life is an everlasting argument of the vast extent of popular patience. From the beginning of the Calendar to its end, the tale it tells of the state of Ireland is a tale of lamentation and mourning and woe. In page 9 we read that the country lies waste in all parts, save where his Majesty is outwardly obeyed; and, in the very next page but one, we have a petition from the Council in Ireland to the King, asking his Majesty to send over at once victuals, munitions, and money. In page 26 the Deputy Mountjoy makes the pregnant remark that all the garrans in Ireland would not be able to draw a single cannon. Further on we learn that the soldiers-even they have victuals for only a few days, and that the officials are unable to divine what will become of them for want of supplies. Connaught, we are told, is in such a condition of distress that the Government may, without a sin, allow the O'Rourkes to hold it, "for none but devils could live in such a hell." When Sir John Davys comes to Ireland for the first time, he finds pestilence and famine raging around him, and he cannot call the kingdom a commonwealth, but is forced to call it a common misery. Sir John arrived in Ireland about the middle of November, 1603, and the plague was then only just beginning. It became so serious after * Vide Calendar: Sir Randall McDonnell to the Earl of Salisbury, p. 518. Lord Deputy Mountjoy to Cecil, p. 25. This same plague had already done much damage in England. It afterwards visited Scotland, and almost decimated that kingdom in 1606. “The printed histories of Scotland take no notice of a most dreadful pestilence that broke out there this year, which according to the Chancellor's letter to the |