public offices in Ireland, and others were CHAP. fent to England.

Among the latter, a copy which was shipped for England, was taken by a French privateer, and carried into France about the latter end of the laft, or the beginning of this century; and fome time afterwards they were deposited, with a defcription of their importance in the hand-writing of cardinal Dubois, in a great literary collection.

The copy of this furvey was discovered, it is faid, by the industry of colonel Vallancy before the late Revolution. The liberality of the French government enabled him to take a copy, and to complete the maps of three counties, or more, which were wanting: this collection, with the note of the French minifter in his autograph, I remember to have seen about fix years ago in the king's library at Paris.

III.

1666.

L 4

CHAP, IV.

Of the principal Speakers in the Irish Par liament from 1613 to 1666;—Characters of Sir John Davis, Primate Ufher, the Duke of Ormond, Primate Bramhall, Sir James Ware, Sir Audley Mervyn, Mr. Whalley, Sir John Temple, Lord Massereene, the Earl of Rofcommon, Sir William Petty, and Sir William Temple,

CHAP. SIR John Davis, who had been chosen a

IV.

member in one thousand fix hundred

1613. and one, in the last English parliament of Elizabeth, and who appears in D'Ewes's Journals to have been a very active and useful, as well as a ftrenuous opposer of the courtly doctrines of monopolies, was appointed folicitor general in Ireland in one thousand fix hundred and three, and foon after attorney general, where he was em ployed in fettling the province of Ulfter, after it had been reduced to the king's obedience; a work which was confidered as

the

the most laudable measure of the reign of CHAP. king James the first.

He was member for the county of Fermanagh, when it first sent representatives to parliament, and was chofen speaker, after a clofe divifion and violent oppofition from fir John Everard, in thousand fix hundred and thirteen. The speech which he delivered upon his presentation is, perhaps, the most comprehensive that was ever pronounced; fince in a short space, he has left us one of the best accounts of the parliaments which were held in Ireland before that period.

His discovery of the true causes why Ireland was never fubdued, is a rich mine of useful information. As a poet, he was admired by cotemporary wits, and pofterity has confirmed their approbation. As a lawyer, he has left us a valuable book of Reports, which is faid to be the only regular collection of this fort upon practical jurisprudence in Ireland.

IV.

1613.

CHAP.
IV.

1616.

When we confider the many volumes of this species in England, when we reflect that few or no reports exift of causes in the Irish courts, when even the cafes of controverted elections are not reported in Ireland, when it is believed that there are only fome detached memorandums of legal proceffes to be found, principally in the chief baron Gilbert's Reports, we must be a little furprised at the difference of the two countries in this refpect, and impute it to its true reason, that few men will be found to write for fame, and many for pecuniary compensation, and to the want of a law for the protection of literary property in Ireland.

Sir John Davis, having left Ireland in one thousand fix hundred and fixteen, was elected for Newcastle upon Tyne, where, in the parliament which met four years afterwards, he appears in the parliamentary debates as a warm advocate for Ireland; contending ftrongly against the oracle of the law fir Edward Coke, that England could not make laws to bind Ireland without her own con

fent,

IV.

fent, and oppofing a law for the prohibi- CHAP. tion of the importation of Irish cattle, with great ability.

He had been designed for chief justice of England before his death in one thousand fix hundred and twenty-fix: and it is not a little to his credit that he does not appear to have acquired any landed property in Ireland, from his great employments,

That polite and amiable nobleman the late earl of Huntingdon, whofe friendship and converfation I am happy to recollect, informed me of this laft, with many other particulars. The heiress of fir John Davis married into that family; and though that truly noble lord could boast of a princely lineage, he was ever pleased with reckoning fir John Davis amongst his illuftrious

ancestors.

In the feffions of one thousand fix hundred and thirty-four and one thousand fix hundred and forty the great primate

arch

1616.