INTRODUCTION.

THIS volume completes the Calendar of the Carew Papers now remaining at Lambeth. In thus terminating my labours, I feel bound to express my gratitude for the liberality of the late Archbishop of Canterbury in permitting the Carew MSS. to be removed to the Public Record Office for the purposes of this Calendar, and to his Grace the present Archbishop for continuing this permission. As the various documents, of which a notice will be found in this volume, are arranged as nearly as possible in chronological order, an order by no means observed in the manuscripts into which they are now distributed, it is obvious that the progress of the editors must have been exceedingly slow, if not altogether obstructed, without this concession. Access to one or even two volumes at a time, the usual privilege allowed to historical inquirers, would have been altogether fruitless; the comparison of one document with another, and of its proper place and arrangement in the series, would have been almost impossible but for the thoughtful indulgence of the two Archbishops. Half the value of this Calendar, whatever that value may be, must have been sacrificed, and no other arrangement could have been adopted, except that which still prevails in some libraries, and ought long since to have been abandoned, that of mere inaccurate and inefficient notices of important letters and historical documents, in the hap-hazard arrangement, or rather dis

order, in which they had been left by the original collector. What would be thought of any man who, having received various boxes and parcels of invaluable fossils, should insist on retaining them in the primitive confusion in which they were accidentally discovered or thrown together by miners and excavators? Yet this is the state in which many historical collections of vast importance are not only suffered to remain, but it is even contended by some that they ought to remain. If the Carew Papers now appear in this Calendar in a better order, and are free from this obstinate absurdity, that result is due, as I have stated already, to the liberality of the late and the present Archbishop.

That this volume, though containing many curious papers, should be less noteworthy and important than some of its predecessors is no more than the reader might have expected, for in this single volume is contained the whole of the reign of James I., and all that Sir George Carew had thought fit to collect respecting the plantation of Ulster and the events of Ireland during that eventful period. For some years there are no documents at all; for others they are scanty and dispersed at long intervals. And even for those years when Carew was sent over expressly to Ireland to take the supervision of affairs, to direct the reforms, and carry out the intentions of the English government in reference to that country, the materials he amassed, as compared with his opportunities, seem meagre and inadequate in the extreme. Had he grown tired of his task, or have portions of his collections been lost? Or, like other men in similar circumstances, did he think that the wars in which he had been engaged under Queen Elizabeth, his hair-breadth escapes, and the formidable rebellions and insurrections crushed during her reign, were more worthy of the pen of the chronicler and his

torian than the more peaceful policy of her successor? In his Pacata Hibernia, prepared by himself and published after his death by his kinsman, Thomas Stafford, with a dedication to Charles I., there runs a passage which reads like a protest against the tone adopted by Sir John Davys and other writers of a similar stamp, in attributing the success of the pacification of Ireland, at the commencement of the 17th century, exclusively to James I. Here," says Stafford, echoing the sentiments of Carew, "here you may behold a fatal period given to the rebel"lious insurrections, under whose burthen that country "hath groaned some hundreds of years, and a firm and "assured peace established, to the comfort of them and "their posterity. And, whether English or Irish, forget "not (next after the right hand of the most High bringing mighty things to pass) to acknowledge the

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prudence, courage, and felicity of that late Sovereign "who, in her deep and declining age, did seal up the rest "of all her worthy acts with this accomplishment, as if "she had thought that her task would be unfinished, and "tomb unfurnished, if there could not be deservedly engraven thereon PACATA HIBERNIA: the lot whereof was cast, and fell happily on our side, by the pros

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perous success of those preparations and encounters "which befell this short time of about three years." * And again, in the same dedication, the writer, speaking of these collections of Carew, and his excessive modesty in withholding from the world what he had written, attributes it to a wish on his part of not appearing to set forth his own special services in Ireland "under the narration of public proceedings;" thus allowing the reader to infer

That is from 1599 to 1602.