Notes on the Mac Rannals of Leitrim and Their Country

THE writer of the Diary belonged to the old Keltic family of the Mac Ragnaills, of Leitrim.

Camden, in “Britannia,” published in London in 1617, says of this county:—” The principle families are O’Rorck, O’Murrey, Mac Lochleein, Mac Glanchie, and Mac Granell, all downright Irish.” Camden has a way all his own for writing these “downright Irish” surnames. Though, however, like O’Rourke, spelt in Keltic in half-a-dozen fashions, Mac Rannall, more fortunate than O’Rourke, is invariably Anglicised as Reynolds.

According to a marginal note in the Book of Feenagh, they are descended from Ragenall, son of Muirceardoig Maol, of the race of Conmac, son of Fergus; and so the surname is accounted for. The first of the family to change his name from Mac Rannall to Reynolds was Thomas, grandfather of John, the builder of Lough Scur Castle, and therefore great-great-grandfather of the diarist. He did so in obedience to an Act of Queen Elizabeth’s Parliament, “for which, and for bringing his country to the obedience of the Crown of England, and introducing the English customs and fashions among them, he was called Mac Rannall Galdda (the English Mac Rannall), and also Magrannell.”^[2]

The bearers of the name were the chief family of Muinter Eolais. Muinter Eolais was a part of Brefny. This is attested by ancient maps and documents. A map as old as 1150 so indicates it; an official document as recent as 1585, “Perrot’s Indenture,” confirms it. “Wytnesseth,” states this indenture made between Perrot, Lord Deputy General of Ireland, “for and behaulfe of the Queen’s most excellent Majesty [Elizabeth] of the one parte, and… Sir Brian O’Royrke, of Dromahaire, Knt., Cahall McConnor Carragh Magrannyl, of Irishmurryne, otherwise called Magrannell, of Moynishe, chief of his name, Tirlaghe McMolaghline oge Magrannyll, of Dromarde, otherwise called Magrannyle, of Clonmolaghlyne, chief of his name, &c., on the other parte… that wheare the whole territory called O’Royrke’s country, comprendeth Breny O’Royrke, both the Moynterolyes,” &c.^[3]

Among the ancient documents in the possession of the Dublin Corporation is a curious old map of Ireland drawn in the eighteenth century by Charles O’Connor. In it are inserted the principal families of Irish and English extraction who possessed the kingdom at the beginning of that century; and the family of the Reynolds are seen to own South Leitrim.

Muinter Eolais, or Moy Rein, comprised the whole of what is now regarded as South Leitrim (i.e. the present three baronies of Mohill, Leitrim, and Carrigallen), and extended besides over a portion of County Roscommon and the parish of Killoe, North Longford. It included within it, amongst other houses of note, the Castles of Rinn, Lough Scur, Leitrim, Jamestown, built by Sir Charles Coote about 1625, Castlefore,^[4] erected by Colonel Coote about twenty years later, Cloncorrick,^[5] and Longfield. The latter two were numbered among the many fortresses of the O’Rourkes. Leitrim Castle was one of their frontier strongholds. It was thither O’Sullivan Beare made his way in January, 1603, in his Xenophon-like retreat from Glengariffe; and princely was his welcome, and most hospitable the entertainment bestowed on his poor, shattered followers.

Jamestown, though it was, as stated, built by Sir Charles Coote about 1625, yet in 1642 we find it occupied by the O’Rourkes. In the Diary of Sir Frederick Hamilton, of Manorhamilton—a rare reprint of which happens to be in the writer’s possession—there is the following entry, which shows this, under date January 30, 1642:—

“This day, Owen O’Rourke, with the assistance of Colonell Con Mac Donnell O’Rourke, and his regiment from James Towne, with the O’Connors and MacGawrans, from the Counties of Sligoe and Cavan, to the number of 1500 or 1600 men, burnt our town and mills of Mannour Hamilton, which lay upon the rogues retreat from that good service,” &c.^[6]

Muinter Eolais, besides fortresses, also comprised the religious foundations of Jamestown, Lough Scur, Annaduff, and the widely known Feenagh of St. Caillen. Dun-Baile, or Feenagh, was an old-world University. According to a saying ascribed to St. Columba, 1200 “saints” were living there in the time of Caillen.^[7] All these, both castles and religious establishments, are now in ruins. Others, too, are mentioned in the “Annals,” “Monasticon Hibernicum,” &c., but all traces of them are now obliterated. It was in the Franciscan Monastery of Jamestown that the Roman Catholic prelates and clergy held a convention in 1650, issued their declarations, and appointed commissioners to treat with any foreign power to aid them in opposing the Parliamentary army.

The Reynolds Country is further thickly studded over with raths and duns and “giants’ graves,” or cromleacs, and with, besides, it is believed, some genuine Druidical altars. Quite close to Feenagh Lough, to the north, in the townland of Greagh, is a remarkable cromleac, or, more likely, I think, a Druidical altar. In the Ordnance Survey Sheets, No. 29, it is marked barely as a “giant’s grave”; locally it is termed “Leaba Diarmid agus Graine,” or “Dermot and Graine’s bed”—a term applied by the peasantry to, indiscriminately, all cairns and dolmens. At Edintinny, near Ballinamore, are the ruins of an altar which is claimed to be that of the famous deity, Crom Cruach. Before it stretches the plateau of Magh Slecht. Crom Cruach and his sun-gods twelve, overthrown by St. Patrick in A.D. 434, are seen around in a very abject condition indeed. It differs in many respects from the ordinary sepulchral monument or cromleac.

Muinter Eolais, and, indeed, Leitrim, although Borlase in his “Dolmens” devotes but a page or two to them, contains more raths and forts, and “giants’ graves” than, perhaps, any other county in Ireland. This would attest its very early occupancy. In North Leitrim country folk have the saying, “You cannot stand on one fort without seeing three from you.” So plentiful are they that cresset fires might be readily flashed in a double or treble chain all the way from the Bundrowes, beside Bundoran, to Slieve-an-Ierin (or the Iron Mountain), near Drumshambo, the first resting-place of the mist-enshrouded Tuatha-de-Danann. Further south, in the Mac Rannall country, giants’ graves crown the conical hills of Sheenmore. Amongst them is pointed out the mound of Finn Mac Cumhal’s son, Fillan, doubtless a veritable “giant’s grave.” Fillan was slain in a duel by Cahoier Mor, King of the Firbolgs. Conal Gulban, one of the fourteen sons of Niall of the Nine Hostages, and ancestor of the O’Donnells, a noble and ancient family, the last representatives of whom have made Leitrim^[8] their home for over two centuries past, went down similarly before Ferga, Prince of Brefny. His sepulcher is to be seen on a hill above Feenagh.

I should scarcely omit that, greatest honour of all, a plain near the village of Battle Bridge in the Mac Rannall country claims against the plain of Cong to be the genuine Southern Moytura where was fought, in or about 1897 B.C., the fierce pitched battle between the Firbolgs and the invading, magic-aided Tuatha-de-Danann. As became the Hastings of two such mighty peoples, the engagement lasted four whole days. Twenty-seven years later the conquering invaders became in turn the invaded, and had to fight it out all over again with the incoming Fomorians. This second great conflict took place some miles nearer the sea, at Kilmactranny, County Sligo, according to the historian of Sligo. Sir James Fergusson, however, in his “Rude Stone Monuments,” maintains that the Fomorians were met and conquered some twenty miles nearer the sea at Carrowmore, beside Ballysodare Bay; and the Society in its last excursion to Sligo (in 1897), as well as the Field Naturalists’ Clubs last summer (1904), seem to have followed without any misgiving this high authority. Dr. O’Rorke expresses much surprise at the mistake of the distinguished antiquary.^[9]

As these decisive battles of the pre-Christian Keltic world took place some 600 or 700 years before the siege of Troy, or about as long before the birth of Christ as we are now after it, we cannot be too sure as to particulars, nor even, I am afraid, can we be too confident that we shall ultimately discover decretorial data to establish such main facts as the location of either the battlefields, whether that of the Moytura of the Firbolgs, or of the Moytura of the Fomorians. I recognise it is now taken for granted, though Hennessy, for one, throws doubt on the existence of any such battlefield,^[10] that Cong is the site of the Southern Moytura, or Moytura of the Firbolgs. The proofs of this, too, are in a great measure of the nature of “taken for granted.”

Douglas Hyde, indeed, boldly advances the rather revolutionary statement that “the whole story of the Tuatha Di Danaan [sic] contending with Fomorians is all obviously mythological.”^[11] This he proves by quoting other no less weighty authorities. But we remain unconvinced. Before the discoveries at the antiquarian excavations at Troy some twenty years ago, the opinion of the hypercritical school of Mommsen and Niebuhr was gaining ground, that Priam and Priam’s sons never had been, and that Ilium itself was to be considered a city that never was. In ancient Erin, between invaders and invaded there must have been battles, let them have been fought where you will. Men have not made much advance in their respect for the dead. Even if individual prowess was not then of such vast account, it was quite as natural for the rude pre-historic victors to raise monuments to their fallen brothers, monuments too demonstrating what they set store by—immense strength and labour—as for the English to pile up a lion-crowned mound, of graceful outlines, at Waterloo.

I should readily allow though that the wonderful feats of arms claimed in saga or tradition for the conquering heroes may be set down to the equally extraordinary flights of the imagination of our early Keltic Homers, partially prompted, it may be, by their efforts to adequately explain such cromleac-strewn plains as that in the Mac Rannal country, in Leitrim, or at Moytura (so called), in Kilmactranny.

Fighting the first Moytura battle in Leitrim squares best, one can readily see, with all the undisputed facts. Further, in the Leitrim district mentioned, cromleacs, mounds, raths, and cairns were, if not as plentiful as at Cong, so very numerous that, to borrow an expression of Petrie’s in a letter to Sir Thomas Larcom, “one can hardly look over a ditch without seeing some of these remains.” The number is now much reduced. Similarly at Carrowmore, where Petrie, in 1837, counted sixty three cromleacs, and where, he states, there could not have been originally less than one hundred, one can now barely count fourteen or fifteen. “The most extraordinary sight which I ever saw,” says this antiquary, “or which can be seen in the way of pagan antiquities in Great Britain, is the assemblage of sepulchral stones and cromleacs at Carrowmore.”^[12]

In this connexion I should not miss mentioning that at Rathcroghan, which, though in County Roscommon, is but five miles from Carrick-on Shannon, the capital of Leitrim, and lies within the Mac Rannal territory, most of the kings of the race of Heremon were buried. King Dathi, the last pagan monarch of Ireland, while leading his army on a continental raid, was struck dead by lightning at the foot of the Alps, in the beginning of the fifth century of our era. But home to Moy Rein his faithful soldiers carried the body. It was buried at Rathcroghan, “where to this day,” wrote Duald MacFirbis in 1666,^[13] “the red-stone pillar remains on a stone monument over his grave.”

The MacEannals, of Leitrim, have been traced back both to the Ulster kings of the line of Ir, son of Milesius, and also through Queen Maeve to Connaught kings of the line of Heremon. From the latter they inherited the territory of which Muinter Eolais is a part. Though, perhaps, the oldest and strongest family in the county, yet they were early subdued, and were made tributary to the O’Rourkes, whose principal stronghold was at Carrigpatrick (now called Dromahair),^[14] in the north of the county. They usually appear in native annals as peaceably acknowledging the suzerainty of the Princes of Brefny, but now and then they are revealed as having thrown aside their dependence, and setting up as rival tanists. In 1184, e.g., one of them slew Awlave, son of Fergal O’Rourke, Prince of Breffny, and in 1223 Breffny O’Rourke was plundered by the MacRannals; but in 1176 all the Reynold chiefs had been slain by Cathal. In 1419 Geoffrey MacRannall assisted as chief of his clan at the inauguration of Art, son of “Teigue O’Ruarc,” overlord of Breffny. On many pages of Irish history, as is but to be expected, the MacRannalls figure. In 1535, for instance, MacRannall, Archdeacon of Kells, in Kilkenny, was deputed by Silken Thomas to solicit aid in his insurrection from Pope Paul III., and the Emperor Charles V. The “Book of Clonmacnoise” has a record of another of them, not quite so honourable. He died at Christmas, 1409, from a surfeit of aqua vitæ. “Mine author sayeth,” writes McGeoghegan, the translator, very quaintly, “that to him it was not aqua vitæ but aqua mortis.”

John Reynolds, who died in 1632, grandfather of the diarist, was a captain in the Elizabethan army, and he it was that built the island castle of Lough Scur, hence sometimes called Castle John. It was erected about the year 1570, and at the time James wrote these notes, was the residence of his parents. Throughout the diary the name is constantly cropping up. Quite close to the beautifully-situated mansion, erected by the first Earl of Leitrim in the early part of the last century, on the shore of Lough Rynn, are seen the ruins of another castle of the MacRannals, which was also erected in or about the year 1570.

At the present day the country round Mohill and Drumshambo is full of traditions about the island-fortress of Lough Scur, and about the cruelty of John Reynolds, nicknamed Seaghan Na-g-Ceann, or John-of-the-Heads, from his summary way of dealing with his prisoners. One of his cruellest acts was the butchery of all the leading chiefs of Muinter Eolais. He invited them to Lough Scur Castle to a banquet, but no sooner had they laid aside their arms than they were set upon and assassinated to a man (Cronnelly’s “Irish Family History,” p. 73), This was in the time of Queen Elizabeth. He was the first to conform to the established religion, and he cared little for St. Caillen’s threats, or St. Columbkille’s prophecies, which dealt specially with the race of Conmac. “This Booke” writes James Reynolds, “I bought ye 21st March, 1658, in Fleet-street [London],” and it was compiled day by day as events seemed to him worth recording, from that till the 23rd of May, 1660, when the book was filled. He then started entering up another Diary. But the latter, if accomplished, is not now known to exist. Neither are some other MSS. written by him to which he refers in these Memoirs.

Humphrey Reynolds, the author’s father, was one of the most noted men of his time, and the greatest of the family for many centuries. He had in 1610 license for markets both in Clone [Cloone], in Leitrim, and in Dounamona, in County Mayo. He was, moreover, prison-keeper for County Leitrim.

In the Irish Archaeological Society’s “Tracts relating to Ireland” (vol. ii., p. 67) it is recorded that his father, John, and himself were appointed gaolers in County Leitrim—a post that in those days could be filled only by men of position.

In notes in the Library of the British Museum (5783/2) it is stated that “the ancient or ‘mere’ Irish had also their prisons, or places of punishment. For the former in early times they generally selected ‘Drus,’ or fortified houses, and sometimes fastnesses in islands. At later periods they made use of old castles in imitation of the English. Thus in the Lake, called Lough Scur (Irish—Lohain Scuir), situate in the County of Leitrim, there is an island known as Prison Island, oilean a prioseon, wherein according to tradition, MacRannall [Reynolds], lord of Muinter Eolais, confined his prisoners.” An island of the same name, which name doubtless denotes a similar origin, is in Lough Derg, in County Donegal, a mile or so, if I remember aright, from the well-known Pilgrim Island, and another, of apparently crannoge formation, in Lough Laine, or Glencar’s beautiful lake in North Leitrim. Local tradition has it that the last-mentioned belonged to the O’Rourkes, and that on it the first iron sword in Ireland was fashioned. In a novel, published as a serial simultaneously in Dublin and Boston about a dozen years ago, The Knight of Glencar, a description of this island prison, and of the vast difficulty in escaping from it despite the apparent flimsiness of its walls and ramparts, is very graphically sketched. The description was founded on historic fact.

The diarist’s father enjoyed a third important position. In 1619 the office of Auditor of the Court of Wards was created, and then Humphrey Reynolds was its first occupant. He was appointed for life by patent, dated Dublin, 25th January, 1619, but he surrendered in 1627. In “King James’s Army List” three Miss Dalys, of County Galway, are mentioned as his wards. This Humphrey was indeed a man of many activities. He was elected Member of Parliament for Leitrim in the Irish Parliament in February, 1639. But he was but one of the many members of the family that represented the county. A William Reynolds, also of Lough Scur, an uncle of his, was Member in 1613; and his youngest son, John, styled “Major John,” along with Theophilus Jones, represented Leitrim in 1692 and 1695; while a Captain Edmond Reynolds had the distinction of being one of our Members in 1688–9, in King James’s Parliament. This Captain Edmond, styled “of Leitrim,” with half-a-dozen of his kinsfolk of Dublin, are in consequence of their adhesion to James, in the black list of the attainder of 1691.

The above-named Major John’s will is dated 1699, and a good many particulars of his life are known. He is mentioned as “of Kilbride,” and in the patent of 1666 “the Vicarage of Tullagh and Kilbride, in Leitrim,” is referred to. He married a Jane Pottinger. She was, there is reason to believe, his second wife. On his death this lady had, as a second husband, Sir E. Butler. He soon died, and then she married Vesey, and so became the ancestress of the Veseys of Lucan. (Vide “Burke’s Peerage.”)

The year 1691 was not the only time that the Reynolds family suffered for either their genuine patriotism or for an unhealthy growth of the sybil’s prophetic instinct—an instinct with which they would seem to have been pretty liberally endowed.

After the rebellion beginning on the 23rd October, 1641, their lands were seized.^[15] However, under the “Acts of Settlement and Explanation,” by patent dated 10th November, in the eighteenth year of the reign of King Charles II., they were restored, and our diarist, James, is the representative of the family to whom they were made over. In Roll 18th Charles II. (second part, face, skin 23) his name “James Reynolds, Esq., Loughscur Castle, &c.,” is mentioned, and the titles and acreage of the restored lands are given in minute detail. They are found to amount to over 10,000 Irish acres. Of these, 6,661 were situated in Leitrim, and over 1000 in Roscommon. This patent was enrolled on 23rd November, 1666.^[16] Another Reynolds, belonging to Newcastle, County Dublin, also lost his estates at the same period; and I am not sure but that he was a relation of the English Sir John Reynolds, so noted in Irish history, who was a brother-in-law of Henry Cromwell, and who perished on the Goodwin Sands in 1657. I have not succeeded in finding anything to decide this.

In the enrolment of certificates for “adventurers, soldiers, &c.,” in the office of the Chief Remembrancer of the Exchequer, Dublin, the names of our journalist, and his father, and of eight others of the Reynolds clan occur. His brother, Charles, sat among the Confederate Chiefs, at Kilkenny, in 1646, and in the same year Bernard, Conrad, and Cornelius, his kinsmen, and their adherents, were amongst those who repudiated the so-called “Peace of Ormonde.” In the office of the Chief Remembrancer, too, the name of the diarist’s active father, Humphrey, also appears (Roll ii., skin 35), and his certificate as “Commissioner for hearing the claims of transplanted persons in the Province of Connaught, and County Clare,” is enrolled. Plainly, Humphrey succeeded in obtaining as many lay, as some of his ecclesiastical contemporaries, e.g. the Archbishop of Cashel, managed to acquire clerical, benefices. He died in Dublin on 19th May, 1661, and, contrary to a wish expressed in his will (which is dated 26th July in the previous year), he was buried in St. John’s Church, in the city. According to an ancient tradition, St. Caillen ordered that all of the race of Conmac (of which were the MacRannals) should be buried in Feenagh, and threatened with direst curses those of them who should abandon it. Probably this tradition prompted Humphrey’s anxiety as to his place of interment.

It will forestall the necessity for much annotation, and may, moreover, infuse a little more of the personal interest into the reading of the manuscript, if I be allowed still to add a fact or two more.

In South Leitrim and Longford the holders of the name are very numerous.

At the General Sessions held in Carrick-on-Shannon on the 10th July, 1704—two centuries ago—among the Leitrim parish priests registered, in obedience to a clause in the “Act for Registering the Popish Clergy,” of the previous year, were two of the name of Reynolds, both of Mohill: Rev. Terence Reynolds, aged 52, who lived at Cloonart, and had been ordained in Louth in 1677, by Oliver Plunket, the famous Archbishop of Armagh; and Rev. James Reynolds, whose residence was the townland of Cavan, also beside Mohill. The latter had been ordained at Kilkenny, but returned to St. Manchan’s country. His two “sureties” were a John Duke, of Taughnagh, and a Charles Reynolds.

George Nugent Reynolds, the poet, was the seventh in direct descent from Humphrey. He was the last male representative of the eldest or Leitrim branch of the chieftain house. He died unmarried a hundred years ago, on the 24th February, 1802, at Stowe, in England, on his way to visit the Marquis of Buckingham, his near relative.

However, the family, in the female line, is not extinct in Leitrim. Catherine, sister of the writer of the book, married, though against her father’s consent, John Peyton, of Boyle, County Roscommon, and from them was descended the John Peyton, of Laheen, who was High Sheriff of Leitrim in 1731. A more fortunate intermarriage occurred in 1802, when the poet G. Nugent’s^[17] sister was united to another John Peyton, and this line is continued in the James Reynolds Peyton, J.P., of our own times, who was High Sheriff in 1879. A branch of the family settled besides in Westmeath,^[18] obtaining property in the seventeenth century, “in right of soldiers”; another in County Dublin, where was born in 1771 the weak-kneed Thomas, whose history is woven up with that of the United Irishmen; another in County Donegal; and still another, I understand, established itself in London.

From a branch of the Lough Scur family that settled in Kildare in the time of Elizabeth, sprang the Michael Reynolds who, in 1798, led the Kildare men in the attack on the military barracks of Naas. Between him and Lord Edward Fitz Gerald there is said to have been a relationship in blood as well as in sympathy.

I must not omit mentioning that the George Nugent Reynolds who died in 1802 composed, amongst other charming poems, which are still extant, one of the most fascinating and well-known lyrics in the English language, “The Exile of Erin.”

If similarity of style to his existing compositions be not considered a sufficiently convincing proof, unimpeachable documentary evidence can be advanced to establish this, and to do away with the contention for authorship put forward by the Scotch Thomas Campbell,^[19] as well as the more recent fame-hankerings for a County Clare man of the same name identically as the Scotch claimant. Duffy examined the evidence. He acknowledges its strength, though he was eventually overborne by the high reputation of Campbell. Lover, too, declares for Campbell. In “Poems of Ireland,” edited by him in an introduction to the celebrated lyric (p. 289), and in one or two other places, he discusses the matter. The introduction is very pretty and witty, but contains, as far as I can judge, not a shred of solid argument. We can sympathize with his strong feeling in a case where “his honoured and lamented friend” is involved; but mere passion and declamation can scarcely settle the matter. It is rather the merits of the case itself, than the merits of the rival claimants, that should be the first elements in deciding it.

A mere paragraph, however, cannot do more than indicate this controversy. Dr. More Madden, a member, too, of one of the oldest Leitrim families (the Fordes of Corry), relates, in one of his books, that when he visited the famous Father Tom Maguire, “in his house, or rather cabin, in Ballinamore,” they sat up till three o’clock in the morning arguing over it, and they ended as they had begun, each holding his own opinion. Father Maguire, who was both an excellent critic and very familiar with Reynolds’ poetry, championed Reynolds’ claims, and made little of those of the Scotchman (vide Cronnelly’s work, already quoted, Appendix). The poet’s^[20] father, also a George Nugent, but better known as “Squire Reynolds,” was shot dead in a duel he fought on 16th October, 1786, at Dinane, County Leitrim, with an attorney named Robert Keon, of Keonbrook. Keon (or Kane),^[21] who, it is alleged, fired before the signal was given, was tried and executed for it two years later. At the first trial in Carrick-on-Shannon the jury disagreed. The case was then brought to Dublin, and a verdict of guilty was returned. Attorney Keon was hanged in February or March, 1788. John Philpot Curran was counsel for the prosecution.

A very quaint old Leitrim ballad, which now stands in danger of perishing, relates all the minutiæ of this fray, and awards praise and blame in true Homeric fashion, and at a length which out-distances the catalogue of the ships. Squire Reynolds was something of a fire-eater, a man who, like Teig O’Rourke, of Dromahair, “was not expected to die in his bed,”^[22] and his fearlessness and generosity made him a great favourite with the Leitrim peasantry.^[23]

I am trespassing on you with all these details about a County Leitrim family, not only for the reasons already outlined, but partly also because that county’s history and antiquities have been very rarely indeed brought before this Society, and partly also because I would fain atone for my inability to discover many authentic particulars of the author’s life. A short biography, I fully allow, would alone form a proper introduction to the extracts. I am permitting myself the much easier task of enlarging upon the whole family.

However, I must not be understood as owning to utter failure in coming at details of his life. We can settle approximately the dates of at least his birth and death.

A note in Latin in the Diary has it that Humphrey Reynolds, of Lough Scur, James’s father, was married on January 12th, 1614. Humphrey, as already stated, died on 19th May, 1661. A record of his will, made in the previous year, is still to be had. In it James is named his heir. We may venture to take it, therefore, that he was the eldest son, and we may accordingly make a good guess at the approximate date of his birth, some few years after his father’s marriage. He was the eldest of a large family of eight, four sons and four daughters. James was alive in 1666. The Act of Settlement and Explanation, already referred to, made over to him the family acres in Leitrim and Roscommon. But the mention of his name in the Patent giving back the property is the last authentic trace of him that can be come across.^[24]

At all events his brother William appears as the de facto successor to the Leitrim estates, and this leads one to surmise that possibly the diarist may have died not long after 1666. This William, too, appears in 1702 as proving his uncle’s, Charles of Laheen, will (made in 1636), and is there actually spoken of as Humphrey’s heir.

James’s mother was Russel Ware, the third daughter of Sir James Ware, Auditor-General of Ireland, and sister to the second Sir James Ware (1594-1666), the author and antiquary, who on the death of his father, in 1672, succeeded to his post. Not improbably it is owing to the latter’s wise guidance that the family were steered so safely through these troublous times, though he himself was not quite so successful.

From the memoirs it can be gathered that James spent practically all his time from 1658–60 with this distinguished uncle, who was then back from his exile in France. He resided in his home in Dublin. Hence he had the opportunity not only of living at the centre of news during those stormy years, but also of meeting some of the most noted men of the day, not a few of whom indeed were his near relations.

As to his personal character “the Booke” affords ample evidence that he was not an unworthy scion of an old Irish—”downright Irish”—chieftain family.

He was of refined tastes, well educated, with all the instincts for accuracy of the scholar. He writes simply and well, and occasionally breaks into Latin. He was something of a lawyer, and a first-rate business man. He was also very kind and affectionate to his father, mother, and sister, to whom he seldom misses, when opportunity serves, to send down from Dublin to Lough Scur, not only such letters as people in a remote district like to get—long and full of news—but he forwards them also appropriate presents—gloves, reams of paper, the last new book, &c., for his father; green satin dresses, almanacks, scarfs, and pins, copies of the last Diurnal, &c., &c., for the mother and sisters. Nor did he fail even when in London to be mindful of them, or to send them curios. Under date April 29th, 1659, in the Diary, he jots down, for instance: “Writ to my father, by Sir Henry Piers^[25] his man, by whom I sent a tobacco-box to him, having a little looking-glass, and a burning-glass set in it.” That looking-glasses were then something of a novelty, and not, as now, objects that stare one out of countenance in every second-class restaurant, is pretty evident from the fact that a page further on, under date of Saturday, May 21st, 1659, he gravely records the circumstance that his cousin, Robert Ware (Sir James’s son), “committed to him his looking-glas to keepe for him.”

The entries in the Diary extend from March, 1658, till 15th May (old style), 1660—a period of fourteen months. The Diary is, in fact, a little nut-shell history of that eventful time.

It is well to recall that on the 3rd September, 1658, Oliver Cromwell died. From that till 25th May, 1659, his son Richard was Lord Protector. Then succeeded the year that historians like to term “the year of anarchy”; and finally Charles II. made his triumphal entry into London on 29th May, 1660. In the little book before you, you have, mixed up indeed with matters of limited interest, a record at first hand of some of the main incidents which occurred in that distant and very eventful period during the space mentioned, i.e. from two months before the collapse of the Commonwealth until the Restoration.

The diarist, James Reynolds, went over to London in the company of his uncle, Sir James Ware, Lord Windsor, and another, on the 8th March, 1658 (old style), and remained there till September 5th, 1659—i.e. for a period of six months. The remainder of his time he spent in Dublin.