in I PROPOSE in this Volume to redeem the promise I made my last of entering into a more specific examination of the Carew Papers relating to the early periods of the Tudor dynasty. I was prevented by the limits of the space prescribed to me from placing this subject before my readers in as full detail as I could have wished. Some account of Sir George Carew, to whom we are indebted for the preservation of these valuable documents, so important for the elucidation of Irish history, appeared to challenge priority to all other considerations. Hitherto the life of Sir George has been involved in great obscurity; and in consequence of three George Careys or Carews,-the name is spelt indifferently,-living at the same date, the accounts of all three have been frequently confused in biographical dictionaries. It was necessary, therefore, to examine carefully Carew's own manuscripts, and gather from them whatever materials could be found for elucidating his career. I may add, that the important part played by Sir George Carew, both as President of Munster, and as the main and most confidential adviser in all matters connected with Ireland, during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., seemed to justify this course. In fact, it is impossible to understand either the policy of this country in reference to Ireland during that period, or many of the allusions in Sir George Carew's own papers, without a more detailed account of his life than has hitherto been submitted to general readers. But the task of examining these documents in detail, and showing their relation to the history of Ireland, is not an easy one. They contain no connected view of the times. They are at best only occasional papers filling up blanks in our information, and subsidiary to the great body of authentic materials, which, through the munificence of the Treasury and the sound judgment and discretion of the Master of the Rolls, have now of late been made accessible to the historians of Ireland. Pre-eminent above these in bulk, authenticity, and completeness are the Irish State Papers preserved at the National Record Office in England, of which a Calendar is now in the course of preparation by Mr. H. C. Hamilton under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. The Irish Calendar of the Patent Rolls, by Mr. Morrin, published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls in Ireland, contains, so far as it goes, a full and connected view of the proceedings of the Council in Ireland, and its correspondence with the English Government, and though inferior in extent and variety to the Irish papers in the English Record Office, is a most important contribution to the historical memorials of that country. The selection from the Ormond Papers, now in progress at the Bodleian Library at Oxford, though it takes up the subject at a later date, can scarcely be regarded with less favour and less interest than the works already mentioned. To these I may be permitted to add, without vanity, this Calendar of the Carew Papers. Their importance has been already tacitly acknowledged by the copious use made of them by the editors of the State Papers of Henry VIII. When to these are added the |