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Beyond 2022 - Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury

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You are here: Early modern Irish sources / Beyond 2022 - Ireland's Virtual Record Treasury

Contents

Note at December 2023

Most of what follows was written in the days after the record treasury became available in June 2022. Over the following year, the administrators of the system have made various changes, some additions to the collection some improvements to the search and browse functions and to the highlights of the 'Gold Seams'. I plan to update the text below as much as possible to reflect the site's current operation, noting changes for repeat visitors. However, this task is made more difficult by the absence of a change log or any documentation whatever on what has been done.

The main structural changes to the site appear to be:

  • Additing a lot more metadata. I commented originally that a search for 'Down Survey maps' did not yield any; it now yields most of them, although quite a few still do not show up. I hope that similar searches work too.
  • Populating data on 'Gold Seam Links'. I commented originally that these did not appear to work. You can now restrict a search to results within one of other of the 'gold seams' and this seems to work to some extent at least. Furthermore, when you select an item, linked items within the same gold seam appear together with it. For example, if you select a Down survey map for a particular place, you should see a link to the Civil Survey and Books of Survey and Distribution for the same place. This is useful, although not 100% reliable. However, this data is not complete for reasons that I can guess at.
  • Linking the 'gold seam' introductions to the underlying data. I commented originally that the gold seam introductions looked pretty but did not provide any link to the underlying data; they do now. You can either browse or search within the gold seam you are reading about. The browse function shows a subset of the full hierarchy, restricted to selected nodes within the gold seam. The search function carries out a search limited to that gold seam, which I guess means a search restricted to the nodes highlighted in the browse. However, not all the nodes connected to each gold seam have been included, I guess because the browse would be too complicated. The treasury has Down Survey maps from a large number of different places - the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the British Library, Ferns Diocesan Archives, PRONI, Sligo County Library, The National Library of Ireland and a published source - there may be more. Not all of these show up when you browse or search the gold seam, so not all the results are available.
  • Replacing the original 13 'thematic collections' with nine new 'curated collections'. The absence of the thematic collections is no great loss. They were simply a collection of documents presented in a list to be opened by the treasury's document reader. This really didn't work for things like the Down Survey maps, of which there are far too many for this to be practical. The new curated collections work like gold seams, with their own introductory pages and an ability to browse or search within them. Given that the new 'collections' work like the existing 'seams' is is clear why the duplication between them has been eliminated, but I am not sure why the Treasury has removed other items like grand jury maps, which few will now find.
  • Allowing the user to link to each top node in the hierarchy (each repository) with its own URL. This may seem like a small point, but it is useful as it makes it easier to point users to the right place, and the whole hierarchy sometimes doesn't load when the system is busy. It would be great if this ability were extended to every node in the hierarchy.
  • Introducing research strands said to represent the Treasury's research priorities for 2023 to 2025. Technically, these work like the gold seams and the curated collections. However, the descriptions contain very little detail. For example one of the research strands INSPIRE will work on the State Papers for Ireland from 1660-1715. However, very detailed calendars of these have already been published (see here) and anyone who really wants to see the detail can do so in the UK National Archives. I wonder whether a better priority would not be to publish the papers for 1715-1760 which only exist in typscript.

In addition, at least some new data has been added, although it is difficult to know exactly what. I think that the whole of the contribution from Sligo Libraries is new, and there are more entries from the Registry of Deeds than before, although still only a very small minority of the total.

Further update at March 2024. In fact quite a bit of new data has been added, including lots from PRONI's vast collection, very many back copies of Analecta Hibernica from the Irish Manuscripts Commission, three more volumes of deed memorials from the Registry of Deeds (now listed under Tailte_Éireann) and data from several new archival contributors. Of particular interest to genealogists will be several new collections of wills. I have not yet added these below, but they are all listed in this page on wills and probate. There also appear to be many new sets of data relating to 17th century Ireland - must rolls, subsidy rolls, poll tax records, records from the courts of claims and so on. It will take some time to look through these new records and document what is available.

Introduction

The defining fact for Irish historical or genealogical research is that Ireland’s national archives were destroyed in the opening act of the Irish Civil War on 28 June 1922 in the ‘Four Courts Fire’.

To commemorate the centenary of that event, an international project has created a 'Virtual Records Treasury' in which you can take a virtual reality tour of the repositories of records in the Four Courts before the fire. More usefully for historians and genealogists, you can view and search original documents recovered from the fire, digital copies from other archives, published transcripts of the original records and other documents.

The project's web site says that it contains more than 6,000 maps, 150,000 database records and 50 million words of searchable text spanning seven centuries, created with the support of 70 archival partners.

The project highlights three 'Gold Seams' of specially valuable material, the Medieval Exchequer, Cromwellian Surveys and the 1766 Religious Census.

See also Early modern Irish sources.

Initial impressions

My initial impressions of the virtual records treasury are mixed. There are some marvelous documents which have never been available on line before now as well as better images of other documents that we have seen previously. Some of these documents have transcripts which were not previously available and can now be searched. Some Latin documents have English translations for the first time. The new documents extend to areas well beyond the gold seams mentioned above and all these documents are available in one place. However limits on time and money available have obviously prevented the project from achieving its full potential. Many known substitutes for documents destroyed in the fire are not mentioned in the database - even many of those which are held by the National Library of Ireland or the National Archives of Ireland. It is frustrating to see records like this - a series of transcripts of prerogative court wills held by the National Archives of Ireland which tells you that it is a direct replacement for the records that were destroyed but where the only information is 'see microfilm'. Even some records held by the NLI/NAI which have been scanned and are available digitally on their sites or elsewhere are not included. One hopes that further funds will be made available to allow the project to include these. Disappointingly, where the database includes published sources, books, journal articles etc, it does not enable you to produce a proper source citation for them.

More frustrating is the technology used, which seems to me to favour presentation (eg virtual reality tours) over usefulness. Although the 'Gold Seams' are presented with much fanfare, there are no easy links from the web pages introducing them through to the underlying volumes. The image browser used to view documents is clunky and hard to use. Although it claims to have a full-screen mode, it uses much less than the full screen making some documents rather hard to read. It allows you to look at chapter headings in documents (which it confusingly calls an index) but many of these chapter headings have not been populated. Even in the key guide to finding your way around Herbert Wood's 'Guide to the records deposited in the Public Records Office of Ireland' all the chapter headings are identical 'PROI Wood'. My initial attempts at searches were also unsuccessful, although I had read the user guide and watched the video guides on the site's help page; some searches produced no results for reasons that I don't understand and others produced many thousands, supposedly sorted by relevance but not obviously so; searches specifying all the words x and y seem to include results with either x or y and do not place results containing both at the top. So far as I know, you cannot download the search results, and it would be quite impractical to browse through thousands of entries on screen. Part of the problem seems to arise from the fact that some volumes in the same series have been indexed only to the volume title and others to individual entries within the volume. It would be useful to standardise this and at least to allow you to search only for volume titles. Furthermore, many of the lowest level items in the index do not include a clear description of what they are. For example, most of the entries for individual Down Survey maps do not include any of the words 'Down', 'Survey' or 'map'. Information from higher levels in the hierarchy (which do include these words) is not carried through and no useful meta-data tags have been added. The result is that if you search for 'Down Survey Maps' you do not find them. This is inexcusable. Browsing through the hierarchy of the archive's contents is also difficult; you often get to the end of a long series of browses only to find no information at the end. On my first attempts, some of the software was extremely slow to respond, although on its first day available demand is likely to have been at an all-time high. One hopes that it will speed up as usage settles down.

Finding your way around

The treasury web site has a menu bar (three horizontal lines at the top right). In the menu you will find various options like help (which links to a user guide, research guides etc), and links to the pages on the gold seams and curated collections. It also has a link to a map room (one of only two places, I think, where this link appears) and an image gallery (the second place where the link to the map room appears. However, while these pages show you example maps and images, they do not help you explore the database.

It is worth watching the videos and reading the user guide on the help page. Some of the research guides there may also be of interest. One of these is a guide to the image browser.

If you are interested in one of the Gold Seams (the Medieval Exchequer, Cromwellian Surveys and the 1766 Religious Census), then follow the relevant link to read an introduction.

There are four ways to locate information, browsing the Public Records Office of Ireland (PROI) hierarchy to see the records that the PROI used to hold (from where you can see substitutes) browsing the hierarchies of the different archives contributing to the project (from where you can see what they have contributed), searching and viewing 'curated collections' where the treasury project has published some documents on different themes. These are described in the following.

Browsing the PROI hierarchy

The starting point of the project is the structure of the records treasury of the Public Records Office of Ireland as it existed before the fire. This is based on Herbert Wood's 'Guide to the records deposited in the Public Records Office of Ireland'. The structure outlined by Wood is mirrored in the project's PROI hierarchy. You can 'browse' through this by clicking on a node to expand it. For example, to find records on wills, probate, marriage licences etc, you could click on 'PROI ETC - Ecclesiastical and Testamentary Collections'. From there you could click on 'PROI ETC3 - Probate and Matrimonial Division' to view post 1858 records, from there 'PROI ETC3/1 - Principal Registry', PROI ETC 3/1/1 Administration (Intestate), Papers leading to Grants of, 1858-97 and so on. When you get to the bottom level, you can see whether there are any documents, either from the original records treasury or substitutes. Where documents exist you can click on the document to open the reader, and when the reader is open you can search through the contents of a transcription. In the case above, PROI ETC 3/1/1, there is nothing of interest. This is true of most of the lowest level nodes.

In nodes where there are original records, salvaged records, copies held by other archives or replacements of some kind, you will find links to them. For example, navigating to node PROI E 3/2/51/4 you find the Desmond Survey of lands in Munster confiscated from the Earl of Desmond by Elizabeth I. This has links to replacement documents held by the National Archives of Ireland which have quite different reference numbers which identify them there NAI PRIV/M/5037 and NAI PRIV/M/5038.

You can also search Wood's guide to find things in the PROI hierarchy. Add a keyword in the box. For example key word 'escheated' leads to results including Survey of attainted and escheated lands, Co. Limerick, 1586. There is a link at the bottom to the node in the PRONI hierarchy where such documents would have been found, which unfortunately doesn't take you much further.

Browsing the other hierarchies

It is also possible to browse the hierarchies of these different contributing archives. The browse function works as for the PROI hierarchy above. Only the parts of these archives relevant to the Virtual Treasury project are included, which means that there is rather less redundancy. Even so, some of the final nodes contain gems of documents whose images you can view; others only mention that a document exists in the archive and tell you where to find it. Browsing through the PRONI (Public Records Office of Northern Ireland) hierarchy, for example, leads in most cases to images of documents not previously available on line (and still not available on-line via PRONI), but browsing the UK National Archives leads (among others) to TNA PROB 11 - Prerogative Court of Canterbury ... Will Registers. The end nodes of the hierarchy here correspond to each of the wills proved in the Canterbury Court for people resident in Ireland. This is a useful list, but in a very un-useful format. Even so, browsing this hierarchy is a very useful way to find what is available.

Two of the top nodes in this browse mode are 'Published Sources' and 'Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland'. Very few of the Published Sources end nodes really link to a publication available in the database, and nor (with a few exceptions) do they include links to other sites (like the Internet Archive or Hathi Trust) where they are available and nor do they include all the citation details - author, publisher, date and place of publication. Some of the Virtual Record Treasury entries are more interesting, particularly those relating to the medieval exchequer. [Note Jan 2024; the published sources still feature in the Record Treasury, but for some unfathomable reason the published sources node no longer appears when you browse the hierarchy.]

Searching

The third way of finding your way around is by searching. As noted in 'Initial Impressions' above, it is not obvious how to search for all the volumes or documents relating to a particular topic. If you search all fields, the search results can sometimes produce more results than you can handle. For example, this search for the Pynnar Survey (in 'all categories'), yields 3892 results which would take some time to browse through. Limiting the search to find results which include the words 'Pynnar' and 'Survey' in the title, yields two results, one of which is the copy of the survey reprinted in Hill's The Plantation of Ulster, the standard source. It is hard to tell whether anything important has been missed.

Two other features of the Advanced Search function are important to note. Firstly, the main search boxes presented to you by default, are entitled 'all', 'title', 'transcription' and 'creator'. Clicking on any of these drop down boxes reveals a fifth option 'Reference Code'. For example, if you chose reference code TNA PROB 11 and in another box choose 'all' and enter a keyword, you will find the reference number of any Canterbury Court Wills for Irish people corresponding to that word. eg this search for TNA PROB 11 and 'Bewley' yields the reference code of the will of Joseph Bewley, merchant of Dublin. The number of answers that you will get to a search like this depends on the level to which the item has been indexed. For example, the treasury includes John Lodge's transcripts of items relating to land in the court rolls. For some reason volume one is included as a single entry and a search for NAI Lodge 1 produces a single result (and some rubbish). However, each of the separate items in volume 2 has been indexed separately, so a search for NAI Lodge 2 yields 393 results. Where a search has multiple results, you can search within these, either by specifying a second search box at the outset, or by entering a keyword to search within the results. In principle, I think that one should be able to search at any level of the hierarchies. For example a search for reference code NAI (combined with some other criterion) should apply that criterion to records in the treasury from the National Archives of Ireland or a search including reference code = NAI Lodge should limit the search to all volumes of John Lodge's court rolls. In practice (after one day's experimentation), this option seems slightly unreliable. Unfortunately, it does not appear possible to include results across two or more reference codes.

Secondly using the Advanced Search and clicking to expand further search options, exposes some drop-down boxes including one labelled 'Gold Seams' which has four options, one for each of the three gold seams and a fourth for 'treasures'. Since the 'Gold Seams' pull data from many different sources together, these options allow you to search across all the records forming these collections. Another drop down box entitled 'Link' has an option for 'Cromwellian Survey Link'. Selecting this option seems to limit the search to items which have such a link (ie a subset of the Cromwellian Gold Seam, but I have not been able to make it work to link items together, ie to bring up in a search items related by link data to the original search result. I have not yet found a definition of the 'treasures'.

There is plainly something unreliable about the search function. For example, use the browse function to navigate here

National Archives of Ireland
NAI PRIV - Private Accessions
NAI PRIV/M - Miscellaneous
NAI PRIV/M/5036/A - Records of the Diocese of Cloyne, 1766 religious census, registered priests, 1764-5 religious census

You can open the underlying document and confirm that it exists. Then copy its reference code into an advanced search using the search box for Reference Code. The results here show no corresponding document.

Unfortunately, this bug affects many other reference codes too.

A weakness of the database which shows up in the search function is the lack of any geographical classification. Search results can usefully be narrowed by time, but not by space. Some of the documents have all-Ireland application or are not easily localised; it would be very time-consuming to identify the location of all of the entries in some sources, but others such as the surveys, censuses or maps could easily have been linked to a province, county, barony, parish or townland. Databases showing how these link together are readily available. Being able to search for maps relating to Ulster or Tyrone for example, would have been very useful.

[Note Jan 2024. There have been several improvements to the search function. As noted above, there appears now to be more metadata, so that a search for 'Down Survey Maps' now yields a lot of them, although far from all of them. There is also a new option to search by repository - the different archives that have contributed images to the treasury. Usefully, you can select multiple archives. This mitigates some of the weaknesses in the reference number search, although it does not completely resolve them. It is also possible to search by format (one of the further search options available when you expand the advanced search screen). This should allow you to find all maps, photgraphs, handwritten documents etc, but not all the data has been populated correctly, so that many maps are missed out. (I have not tested the other formats.)

Curated collections

The treasury originally included 13 'Thematic collections'. These were rather clumsy - when you opened one you simply found yourself in the treasury's image viewer with a list of available documents. Depending on the collection that you opened, this might have been a few items or getting on for a thousand Down Survey Maps.

This rather clumsy system has been replaced with six Curated Collections and six research strands. Technically, these work just like the Gold Seams; each has one or more web-type pages giving an introduction, and each can be specified in an advanced search. (All the options appear together under the heading 'Gold Seams' in the further options under an advanced search.) You can also use them to filter search results, where they all appear as 'collections' in the panel to the left.

These changes are probably an improvement overall, although I rather regret the absence of the grand jury maps, other grand jury documents and highlights from PRONI in any of the new collections. There will be less focus on them as a result. And as explained above, the replacement tools for finding the Down Survey Maps, which are supposed to be one of the treasury's highlights, are distinctly unimpressive.

Links to other sites

Some other sites have comment and/or information about the virtual treasury, for example

Gold Seams

For background information on the three Gold Seams (the Medieval Exchequer, Cromwellian Surveys and the 1766 Religious Census), follow the relevant link to read an introduction. To search for information under one or other of the Gold Seams, use the Advanced Search, click to expand the 'further search options' and chose (on the left) the gold stream that you are interested in. Using one of the other search boxes, enter some data to search for.

For example, this search for Cromwellian Surveys and keyword 'Exham' reveals many entries for lands held by John Exham (abt.1630-1722).

And this search looks for the word 'Strangman' in the 1776 Religious Census and finds one result, featuring the names of Thomas and Samuel Strangman. This is result is for a part of the records that were destroyed, but links to a replacement held by the Church of Ireland which shows Mountmellick Parish and lists Thomas Strangman (1708-1787) and Samuel Strangman (1713-1778) (protestants) and James Kelly "Papist".

Medieval Exchequer

I feel less able to comment on this Gold Seam than on the others, so this is just a brief summary of what I have found.

The heart of the Gold Seam consists of Irish Exchequer Rolls (documents from the Royal Treasury kept on long, unwieldy rolls of velum) for the period 1270 to 1446. Like most other documents, the versions of these kept in the Public Records Office were destroyed in the Four Courts Fire, but a copy of each roll was sent at the time to London for audit; the versions now in the UK National Archives remain and are made available on line here for the first time (under refs TNA E 101- King's Remebrancer Irish Accounts, TNA E 364 - English Exchequer: Pipe Rolls Office: Foreign Account Rolls and TNA E 372 - English Exchequer: Pipe Rolls Office: Pipe Rolls). You can look at the index records for any or all of these with the UK National Archives' Discovery and you will see a statement that the documents are not available to view digitally. The treasury also includes summary accounts created in London from the detailed documents sent to them.

Although they look magnificent, the old script is hard to read and the text is all in Latin, so they are not that practical to look up. Some of the rolls covered here had already been translated into English and published in calendar form by the Irish Manuscripts Commission. These calendars are also available in the virtual treasury; if you select one of the original rolls, you will see the appropriate part of the calendar as a linked document. See, this example. The project has also contributed original transcriptions and translations of the rolls that had not previously been translated or published.

Although I feel unqualified to judge, this new content seems to me to be of considerable historical and academic value.

The gold seam web page also explains the fate of another series of exchequer rolls, memorandum rolls. These did not include records of receipts or payments and were not sent to London, but copies of them were made by the Irish Manuscripts Commission (see description here) and consist of 43 volumes of Latin text. These documents are not part of the current treasury, but the web page expresses the hope that they may be included as a future gold seam. Some extracts from them relating to Wexford held by the Ferns diocese archives are, however, included (under ref FernsDA 1/Memorandum Rolls).

The treasury also includes various other collections of court rolls, mainly from the medieval period, for example from the British Library (under ref BL Add Ch), Cloyne Literary and Historical Society (under ref Cloyne PR), The Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (under ref RSAI HolyTrinity) and others.

To search this gold seam, use this search. First enter a search term in the box, then hit return and finally delete my 'dummy search term'.

See also Court Rolls below.

Cromwellian Surveys

A series of surveys was carried out during the Cromwellian settlement of Ireland. The Civil Survey of 1654-5 was collated from existing records down to Townland level and included a valuation. It eventually covered the whole of Leinster, all of Munster other than Clare, all of Ulster except for one Barony in Monaghan and the County of Leitrim. The Down Survey of 1656-8 was the first detailed mapped land survey ever carried out on a large scale and produced a more accurate record. Not commissioned by government, but almost certainly carried out by the Down Survey team was a census of sorts, later published as the Pender Census of 1659. It also goes down to townland and shows the number of people of each race (Irish, English and Scots), the main surnames of the population and the names of any ‘titulados’ – people with a claim on land. The counties of Cavan, Galway, Mayo, Tyrone and Wicklow are missing from the census as is most of Meath and some of Cork. After forfeiture, large parts of the country’s land was re-distributed mainly to former soldiers and ‘adventurers’ who had financed Parliament’s Irish army. These distributions were mainly recorded in the Court Rolls, Adventurers' certificates and records of the Courts of Claims. Many of the former residents who had forfeited their lands were transplanted to Connaught. The people to whom land was awarded were required to pay a land tax or ‘quit rent’, and the ‘Quit Rent Office’ was established to collect it. The Quit Rent Office compiled records of the original owners of the land, the people to whom it had been distributed and the latest owners (who had to pay the tax). These books were called the Books of Survey and Distribution.

Much of the data on these surveys and distributions was already available on line in various sources, not least in TCD’s Down Survey Web Site. However the new record treasury brings some previously published work together and publishes other records on-line for the first time.

The main record sets included in this stream appear to be

  • The publications on the Civil Survey from the Irish Manuscripts Commission (under reference IMC CS)
  • Down Survey Maps held by the National Library of Ireland (under reference NLI MS 712), Bibliothèque nationale de France (references BnF GE CC/260/ and BnF Ms Anglais although only a minority of the index entries is accompanied by an image), PRONI (ref PRONI D597), the National Archives of Ireland (under ref NAI V20), the National Library of Ireland (refs MS 712 to MS 726), from the City of Dublin archives (ref DCLA 212), from Ferns diocesan archives (under refs FernsDA FDA 1/2) from the British Library (ref BL Add Ms 72868 to BL Add Ms 72873), from Sligo Libraries (ref SligoCL Map 1) and from a published series (under ref PUB DS).
  • John Lodge's abstract entries in the Court Rolls relating to land (under ref NAI Lodge) (see Court Rolls below for a more detailed discussion).
  • Various documents published by the Deputy Keeper of Public Records of Ireland (before the fire) including a volume on Decrees of the Innocents (Catholics judged by the Court of Claims to have been innocent of rebellion) (ref Robinson P001937754)
  • Books of survey and distribution from the National Archives of Ireland (under ref NAI QRO 1/1/3)
  • Transplantation to Connaught by Robert Simmington and published for the Irish Manuscripts Commission (1970) (under ref IMC 1970/Transplantation)
  • Various manuscripts relating to Ireland at the time such as the Egerton manuscripts held by the British Library (under refs BL Egerton MS 1761 and BL Egerton MS 1762)

I have not yet been able to compare the contents in detail with the TCD web site, but I suspect that the survey maps may be the same and the TCD site easier to use. The NAI copies of the Books of Survey and Distribution are available here for the first time. (A smaller set was previously published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission.) And Simmington's Transplantation to Connaught is available on line for the first time.

Oddly the treasury does not seem to include the ‘Pender Census’ even though this is available free on the Irish Manuscripts Commission web site, or the adventurers' certificates even though a whole volume of the Calendars of State Papers is devoted to these. Nor does it appear to contain the supplement to the Fifteenth Annual Report of the Irish Record Commission dated 1825, which is a document of several hundred pages making information from the court rolls and elsewhere on the Cromwellian settlement available in the most useful form.

To search this gold seam, use this search. First enter a search term in the box, then hit return and finally delete my 'dummy search term. [Note Jan 2024; NB that not all items that should have been associated with the Gold seams have been, so that searches may not yield all the available results. See discussion on the Down Survey maps in the next paragraph.]

Ironically, the most impressive of the items here, the Down Survey Maps, are also the hardest to find. I noted originally that a search for 'Down Survey Maps' would not find them; it finds most of them now, but still not all of them. It should also be possible to find them by searching for items associated with the Cromwellian Survey Gold Seam with format 'catographic'. However, this misses even more maps out. I think that the record treasury has brought maps together from nine different sources - the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the British Library, Ferns Diocesan Archives the National Archives of Ireland, the National Library of Ireland, Dublin City Archives, PRONI, Sligo County Library and a published source. Maps from four of these sources (Ferns, The National Library of Ireland, PRONI and Sligo) are not marked as 'cartographic', maps from six of these sources (Bibliothèque nationale de France [some], Dublin Archives, National A archives of Ireland, National Library of Ireland, PRONI and Sligo) are not associated with the Cromwellian Gold Seam and maps from four of these sources (Bibliothèque nationale de France [some], British Library, National Archives of Ireland [some] and the published source) do not show up in a search for 'Down Survey Maps'. There used to be a 'thematic collection' bringing all the maps together, but these collections (which were not really usable) have been abolished. One way to find most of the maps is to navigate to Public Records Office of Ireland node PROI E 3/2/51/16 - Down Survey books. This node has sub-nodes 1-26 for some of the 32 counties (including the 6 counties but missing some others). Each of those sub-nodes has a link to the maps used to replace the original destroyed material. However at the time of researching this (Dec 2023-Jan 2024) browsing the PROI hierarchy hangs without producing a result about 90% of the time. You can type a URL directly into your browser https://virtualtreasury.ie/item/PROI-E-3-2-51-16-1 for Antrim, https://virtualtreasury.ie/item/PROI-E-3-2-51-16-2 for Armagh etc, but this is not exactly user-friendly. Some of the other maps are linked to a different node 3/5/6/7 Baronial maps (Vallencey’s copies) and Petty's summary atlas is at node https://virtualtreasury.ie/item/BnF-GE-CC-260. This is not a user-friendly system.

A special data item, a 'Cromwellian Survey Link' helps to group different sources for the same geographic area together. For example, if you open this page for the section of the Civil Survey covering the Barony of Forth, Wexford, you will find links to the Books of Survey and Distribution and the Down Survey Maps for the same place.

In summary, there is lots of useful new content here, but other related content is missing. People researching history or genealogy related to the Cromwellian Settlement will probably want to look here as well as in other places, but will still have to check those other places too.

1766 Religious Census

On 5 March 1766, the Irish House of Lords approved a census via bishops and parish priests of ‘the several families in their parishes …, distinguishing which are Protestants and which are Papists, as also a list of the several reputed Popish priests and friars’. Like most other Irish records the originals of this census were destroyed in the Four Courts Fire.

Several pieces of the census remain in different archives as copies or transcripts, and both the National Archives of Ireland and PRONI have information explaining what remains. The largest remaining copy of census records is held by PRONI as part of the Goves Collection (see Goves Collection below). Data from this has long been available to search on PRONI's name search and on Ancestry.com.

The virtual record treasury includes the parts of the census from the Goves collection (ref PRONI T808), other PRONI sources (PRONI T3901 and PRONI T3907), the National Archives of Ireland (refs NAI IHP/1, NAI PRIV/M/147, NAI PRIV/M/2471, NAI PRIV/M/2476, NAI PRIV/M/5036/A), the Representative Church Body Library (Church of Ireland) (RCBL MS 37), various returns salvaged from the aftermath of the fire and probably others. The website claims that by assembling data from these various archives, more than half of the original census returns can be reconstructed in whole or in part.

The treasury also includes some other documents, such as the 1744 protestant householder returns (listed separately on the PRONI name search) and the 1669 hearth money rolls under the heading of the 1766 census.

Because it incorporates additional sources, the results of a search should be more complete than those on PRONI's name search or Ancestry.com. To search the census on the virtual treasury, use this search; first enter your own keyword in the box, hit return and then delete my 'dummy search term'.

Ancestry tells us that the source for its records is the copy of the Goves collection. PRONI has sources other than this, but its name search does not explain which sources are covered. Searching all three for 'Greer' for example, produces 12 names on Ancestry, 40 names on PRONI and 12 documents on the Virtual Record Treasury. PRONI clearly has names that Ancestry does not, eg George, Matthew, Robert, Thomas and Alexander Greer of Donaghmore, Donegal, protestants. Some of these names appear multiple times in the PRONI results and are probably duplicates, although there is no way to check. You have to open all of the virtual treasury documents and search them to find all the Greers included. On doing this, all the Greers retrieved were also present in the PRONI search, except one which was not from the 1766 census at all (rather the 1699 hearth money rolls). Two entries in the PRONI search did not come up in the virtual treasury search although they were present in the underlying document, because handwriting which looked extremely clear to me had been mis-transcribed and a further Greer entry showed the wrong Christian name in the virtual treasury search for the same reason. Interestingly, many of the Greers in the virtual treasury search came from documents sourced to the National Archives of Ireland rather than PRONI, but still showed up in the PRONI name search results.

Searching for 'John Greer' works very well on PRONI (or Ancestry, although it has fewer results), but not so well on the Virtual treasury. This seems to produce documents which include the names 'Greer' (as above) and the name 'John' (ie all of them). The PRONI search also works well by location; you can add a county, a barony, a parish or a townland and it seems to work; for the virtual treasury you need to match the spelling of a name which appears in the index for the record itself.

I eventually found a few records in the virtual treasury which do not show up in the PRONI name search, notably some in NAI PRIV/M/147 and some in NAI PRIV/M/5036/A. Ironically, the first of these records, 1766 Religious census, Public Record Office of Ireland copy of return, parish of Ardcanny, dio. Limerick, giving heads of households and number in each household, certified by James F. Morrissey, has not been included in the 1766 Religious Census Gold Seam and the second, NAI PRIV/M/5036/A, Records of the Diocese of Cloyne, 1766 religious census, registered priests, 1764-5 religious census, can be found in the browse function but does not come up in the search function at all.

In summary, there may be some advantages in viewing the documents in the virtual treasury, but it is not obviously a big advance in making data from the 1766 census available to genealogists. The PRONI name search remains the easiest place to look and has almost as complete coverage as the virtual treasury.

Other content

In this section I have listed some other notable contents of the record treasury with advice on what it contains and how to use it. I expect to add to this as I discover new content. Please send me a private message if there is something you would like to add.

Map and picture collections

The treasury has a map room, although it has been very well hidden.

The treasury now has a field for 'format' available in searches, and one of the valid values is 'cartographic'. This should allow a search for all the maps in the treasury, but as noted in the discussion on Down Survey maps above, the field has not always been populated correctly, so that many maps do not appear in searches using it.

As noted above, under 'Cromwellian Surveys', a large number of Down Survey maps is available in the Treasury, but they are annoyingly difficult to find. See above for details.

This collection also includes an Atlas of Ireland produced by William Petty after the completion of the Down survey as A Book Containing A Generall Map of Ireland with The fower Provinces and Countyes thereof.

Historical maps of Ireland on other sites as well as the Virtual Record Treasury are discussed in Historical Maps and Gazetteers of Ireland.

Leslie Brown collection

A significant collection of Irish maps and pictures from the L (Leslie) Brown collection (collectively under ref LBC) including

  • An atlas of Ireland dated 1728 including the road network (under ref LBC Atlas 1)
  • Maps of the bog commission by Richard Griffiths (under ref LBC Bog)
  • Select Views of Dublin (under ref LBC Brocas)
  • Early maps of Ireland (under ref LBC EM)
  • Grand Jury map collection (under ref LBC Gj)
  • First geological survey of Ireland (under ref LBC GS)
  • Album of scenes of Dublin by James Malton (under ref LBC Malton)
  • Maps made for the Municipal Boundaries Commission in 1837 to determine the boundaries and ward divisions of boroughs electing members of parliament (under ref LBC MBC)
  • Ordnance Survey of Ireland, topographical series at a scale on one inch to one statute mile (1862) (under ref LBC OS1)
  • Hachured and coloured edition of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland's one inch to one mile series (under ref LBC OS2)
  • First series OS six inch to one mile maps (under ref LBC OS 6)
  • John Roque's maps of Dublin 1756-1762 (under ref LBC Roque)
  • Index maps for the townlands of Ireland made for the Boundary Survey at a scale of 1 Inch to 1 Mile (1:63,360). Maps show townland, parish and District Electoral Division boundaries with the outline of the corresponding six inch to one mile sheet (under ref LBC TLand)
  • Set of 32 index maps to the townland survey of Ireland showing the county boundary with the county subdivided into its constituent six inch to one mile sheets (under ref LBC TLand2)

They are really worth looking at. The easiest way to see them is to go to the browse function and navigate to the L Brown collection. Some of the reference codes above appear not to come up in the search function; some of the links above take you to the top of a hierarchy and you may not be able to view all the contents from there. Using the browse function as recommended above is most reliable.

Other maps in the treasury

This section is work in progress. The following list is not exhaustive.

Work in progress.

Miscellaneous topics

Court Rolls and other by John Lodge

Most formal records of the English and Irish Court were maintained in the form of court rolls (see Medieval Exchequer above). Some of the contents of these rolls were published in the form of 'calendars' for example by the Irish Records Commission. These calendars, are, however, incomplete. For example, one volume of rolls from the reign of Charles I (1st to 8th regnal year) was published, but the other rolls from his reign were not. This project includes (for the first time as far as I am aware) the unpublished draft of the second volume (ref TNA T 1/6535B James Morrin's draft Calendar of the Patent and Close Rolls, Chancery, Ireland of the Reign of King Charles I, vol. II). This is a valuable addition.

The record treasury also has (under ref RCBL MS 104) three extracts from patent rolls held by the Church of Ireland. The first two are extracts from the rolls of Charles I, mainly concerning church property; the third is more varied.

See also this page on Irish patent and close rolls and fiants.

John Lodge (1692-1774), Deputy Clerk and Keeper of the Rolls, Dublin, made abstracts of all the entries in the court rolls relating to land. They are described here. His abstracts have long been available on FamilySearch, but the images there have not been indexed, so you have to use Mr Lodge's own indexes, browsing through the different pages to find what you want.

The record treasury makes these same abstracts (held by the National Archives of Ireland) available under reference code NAI Lodge. The images are much better than on FamilySearch and the whole has been transcribed and is as a result, searchable. You can see what is available by browsing the hierarchy and expanding the node for the National Archives of Ireland. You will see that some volumes are listed as final nodes and others sub-divided to individual entries. This may affect what comes up in a search. To search for entries in a single volume enter that volume's code as reference code in a search. To search the whole thing, use this search adding a relevant key word. For example, adding the key words 'Abraham Morris' shows a series of results about Abraham Morris (abt.1653-bef.1722).

The search function on these records needs some proper checking, but it is possible that this represents a major improvement for those researching land transactions in the 16th and 17th centuries.

As well as covering his extracts from the court rolls relating to land transactions, the treasury has several of his other manuscript volumes

  • Convert book (NAI LODGE/16)
  • Wardships, liveries, pardons and licences of alienation (NAI LODGE/18)
  • Pardons and licences of alienation, ancient wardships (vol ii) (NAI LODGE/19)
  • Parliamentary register (NAI LODGE/20)
  • Miscellaneous inrollments (NAI LODGE/21)
  • Patent roll of King Henry VIII; King's letters (NAI LODGE/22)
  • List of the members of the Society of King's Inns, Dublin (NAI LODGE/22)
  • Acta Regia Hibernica Henry VIII (vol I) (NAI LODGE/23)
  • Acta Regia Hibernica James I (vol II) (NAI LODGE/24)

Some of these are best read elsewhere; for example the Kings' Inns Admission Papers were published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission and are explained here.

However the Parliamentary register is probably the best source for members of the Irish Parliament and the Wardships, Liveries etc are very useful on feudal succession in Ireland, best read in conjunction with Irish inquisitions post-mortem and on attainder

Registry of Deeds

The register of Memorials of Deeds is described here. It is also available on FamilySearch and much aided (as described in the linked text) by the Registry of Deeds Index Project, which, although fantastically helpful, is also incomplete.

The record treasury makes a number of these memorials (held by the Property Registration Authority) available under reference code ROD. The images are much better than on FamilySearch and the books available appear searchable. You can see what is available by browsing the hierarchy and expanding the node for the Registry of Deeds. Unfortunately, it appears that only three books (out of many hundreds) have been included.

This search for record code ROD and keyword Strangman, shows four results. While this might be helpful, a search on the Index project for surname Strangman yields far more results, even though only a small minority of deeds has been indexed.

The treasury also includes (under Irish Manuscripts Commission, code IMC 1954/RoD) volumes 1 and 2 (of 3) abstracts of wills from memorials of deeds. All three volumes are available free from the IMC website. See here for a description.

Wills

The treasury seems to have made a few small improvements in the availability of Irish Wills, but to have left much of what should have been possible undone. Records available include

  • The abstracts of wills from memorials of deeds mentioned above (1st two of the 3 volumes only). Search here adding a keyword for the will abstract you are looking for,
  • Copies of Prerogative wills of Irish physicians held by the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland under code RCPI TPCK 5/3/1. Search here to see all 136 results or add a keyword to narrow your search.
  • Thirteen newly recovered prerogative wills from the original records treasury under codes NAI PRCT 1/14 to NAI PRCT 1/26. Search here.
  • A couple of wills from Longford County Library and Archives. browse to Longford to find them.
  • Pointers from the UK National Archives to its holdings of wills proved in the Canterbury Court for testators resident in Ireland, under code TNA PROB 11. Search here to see all 4152 results and add a relevant keyword to find pointers to individual wills. You can then find the will itself on The National Archives Discovery or on Ancestry.com.

There may be more that I have not yet found. Unfortunately, many of the sources of wills and abstracts of wills that might have been included (Betham, Thrift, Crossle, Welply, O'Callaghan, Groves) appear not to have been included.

Grand Juries

According to the web site, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Grand Jury was ‘most important local body in rural Ireland’. This page links to a booklet explaining them. The record treasury brings together collections of grand jury records and maps held by various local archives.

Hearth Money Rolls, Subsidy Rolls and Poll tax

Hearth money taxes were introduced in the England and Ireland after the restoration and remained in force until 1793. As suggested, they were a tax on fireplaces. The hearth money rolls contained the name of head of household the number of hearths and the tax levied. The Subsidy Rolls detailed a different tax initiated in 1662 on more affluent members of society. The Poll Tax was levied on all individuals aged 12 or over, between 1660 and 1689. Odd parts of these records have been available on line in an assortment of different places for some time. PRONI holds the largest set of records but they were not available on line. A limited number of records from PRONI and elsewhere appear to have been made available on line for the first time here. These searches return Poll tax, Subsidy Rolls and Hearth Money Rolls.

Unfortunately, some records do not show up in these searches, for example

Inquisitions post mortem and on attainder

These were inquiries by the courts of chancery or exchequer following the death or attainder of a landlord. Inquisitions post attainder occur in large numbers after the various rebellions and are therefore important to the study of the widespread disqualifications of Catholic lands.

In the 1820s, the Irish Records Commission prepared calendars of the Inquisitions for each of the four provinces. Those for Leinster and Ulster were published and are available on line. Those for Munster and Connaught were not. They have now been made available in manuscript form, calling on the archives held in the Royal Irish Academy under ref under ref RIA OS EI. Browse to that node in the hierarchy or search here. The printed and manuscript volumes are all in Latin. Even so, this appears to be a major new publication of a valuable resource.

See more about the inquisitions here.

Parish records

The record treasury holds a few parish records held by the National Archives of Ireland (mostly under ref NAI PRIV/M - miscellaneous private acquisitions - but there are numerous other topics under this reference too.

You should be able to find them all under 'linked sources' here.

Town charters

The treasury as a large collection of town charters from the archives of the Royal Irish Academy (under ref RIA 24 Q).

It also holds several charters granted to the City of Dublin (under ref DCLA Royal Charters).

Also (under ref Huntington mssHM 78039) a series of manuscripts in Latin containing Copies of charters, grants and treaties relating to Ireland (1173 - 1320).

Parliamentary papers on Ireland

One of the nodes in the archive hierarchy has code EPPI and is entitled Enhanced Parliamentary Papers Ireland. It is incredibly slow to load because it is vast, and all the records form a single layer of the hierarchy. There is no explanation of this on the web site as far as I can see.

This search on the virtual treasury for items with the EPPI reference yields 14046 results. However, if you choose either of the filters 'has images' or 'has transcription', then the number of results reduces to 63. Plainly hardly any of the data has been loaded.

The full set of documents and an explanation appear to be available on the dippam website (DIPPAM = Documenting Ireland, Parliament People and Migration). This explains 'EPPI is a large database of 15,000 official publications relating to all aspects of Irish affairs during the period of the Union [1801-1922], including, bills, reports, commissions of enquiry and the published census returns. It is a rich source for the social history of Ireland as well as for statistics relating to population, emigration and other subjects.' It was previously hosted by the University of Southampton. The University of Southampton's Ford Collection, including the EPPI, is also available on Archive.org.

The 63 documents in the virtual treasury include reports on some of the 19th century Irish censuses.

The treasury also holds three volumes on the Irish House of Lords 1771-1800 (under ref IMC 2008/Lords) published by the Irish Manuscripts Commission.

And from the Library of Congress, two of five volumes of Irish Parliament - House of Commons Debates - 1776-1789 (under refs LOC MS 27292/5 and LOC MS 27292/7).

From the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, The Acts of Parliament granted in the Yeare of our Lord God one thousand and seven hundred and three (under ref HSPenn AM 885).

Also produced by John Lodge, his Parliamentary Register (under ref NAI Lodge/20).

Published by the Public Records Office of Ireland before the fire, Statutes of the Irish Parliament King John–Henry V, King Henry the Sixth, King Edward the Fourth, Edward IV cont. and Richard III - Henry VIII

Copies of Analecta Hibernica

Analecta Hibernica is the journal of the Irish Manuscripts Commission and has been published since 1930. Copies are available from the Irish Manuscripts Commission and all but the most recent issues are also available on JSTOR. Some 50-60 articles from Analecta Hibernica are now available in the virtual record treasury under ref IMC AH. You can view them all by expanding this node on the hierarchy browse function or by repeatedly clicking on the 'next' button from the link above. Unfortunately, several of them appear not to feature in search results for some inexplicable reason. Some other articles that would have been relevant such as one on the Tituladoes in the 'Pender Census' and a list of outlaws in the 1641 rebellion are listed but not available.

The criteria used to decide which articles to make available here are not clear; some relate to medieval exchequer payments.

Documents on various professions

The virtual record treasury has placeholders for a fairly large number of documents on guilds, trades and profession, suggesting that this an intended focus. At present, most of these placeholders are empty, but some are not.

  • Charters and documents of the Guild of Tailors, Dublin, 1296 to 1753 (under ref DCLA MS 80)
  • List of members of the Society of the King's Inns, Dublin (under ref NAI Lodge/23)

Landed estates court rentals

The treasury holds five volumes of Landed Estates Court Rentals (1850-1913) from the library of King's Inn. These are printed sale catalogues of estates being sold by the Encumbered/Landed Estates Courts. To search these records on the Treasury, use this search and add a search term.

For more information on the Landed Estates Court see Irish Quaker sources and resources.

It is unclear what proportion of the total the volumes held in the treasury represent, but a few comparatives searches there and on FindmyPast generated many times more results on FMP than in the Treasury.

Chancery decrees

The treasury hierarchy holds placeholders for twelve volumes of Chancery Decrees, being judgements in the Court of Chancery (under ref NAI RC 6) and has digital content for three of them (under refs NAI RC 6/1 -6/3) . These appear to be important douments which have not been published anywhere before now.

There is hardly any explanation of the source or contents of the volumes. The reference NAI RC indicates documents of the Commissioners of Public records now held by the National Archives of Ireland. The three volumes whose contents are available are entitled 'Repertories' and appear consistent with documents published by the commissioners, but they are in manuscript, indicating that they have never been published. The rubric 'scope and content' of each manuscripts states This volume contains a repertory of chancery decree rolls and enrolled decrees, giving parties' names, dates of original bills, supplemental bills and bills of revivor.

The three volumes with contents are

  • NAI RC 6/1 covering the dates 1536-1624. Search this volume here adding an appropriate keyword.
  • NAI RC 6/2 covering the dates 1624-1685. Search this volume here adding an appropriate keyword.
  • NAI RC 6/3 covering the dates 1685-1732. Search this volume here adding an appropriate keyword.

Search over all three volumes here adding an appropriate keyword. The index only goes down to the level of each volume, so if your search has positive result you will have to open the 'digital content' and use its search facility to find the page or pages that you are interested in.

For more information on Irish legal sources see Irish Quaker sources and resources#Legal_records.

For more information on publications of the Irish Records Commissioners see Reports on public records of Ireland

Notable periods in Irish history

Early Plantations of Ireland

Mary started the first (unsuccessful) plantations of counties Offaly (King's) and Laois (Queen's). Elizabeth I initiated a plantation of Munster following the rebellion of the Earl of Desmond, and James I/VI initiated the plantation of Ulster after the end of the nine years war and the flight of the earls and later tried to extend this to Leinster. These important episodes in Irish history do not feature in any of the gold seams or thematic collections but there are still some documents in the treasury pertinent to them, some available elsewhere, some possibly not. This list below is work in progress and certainly not exhaustive.

Plantations under Mary

Plantation of Munster

  • The Desmond survey of 1683 was commissioned by Elizabeth I in 1683 to detail lands confiscated from the Earl of Desmond which formed the basis of the plantation of Munster. A transcript was previously published, but this manuscript copy appears to be available for the first time.
  • Peyton's Survey of forfeited land in co Limerick 1586 (under ref NAI PRIV/M/5039)

Plantation of Ulster

Plantation of Leinster (and Connaught)

Work in progress

Jacobite/Williamite wars and confiscations

This period is not covered by any of the gold seams or thematic collections, but there are a number of interesting items relating to them in the treasury. The list below should be regarded as work in progress and not exhaustive.

  • From the Library of Congress, two of five volumes of Irish Parliament - House of Commons Debates - 1776-1789 (under refs LOC MS 27292/5 and LOC MS 27292/7).
  • William's Irish Army William of Orange, newly installed in a joint monarchy with his wife Mary, led an army to Ireland in 1688 to fight James II who had fled there after being deposed in the Glorious Revolution. A series of papers from the University of Kansas mostly concern William's army, although other subjects are also covered. They appear under code KAN MS. Search here.
  • Trustees of forfeited estates 1688 There were two sets of confiscations at this time, lands confiscated by James in his Irish Parliament, which came to nothing as he lost the war, and lands confiscated by the English Parliament from James's supporters. These documents, newly available from PRONI under ref PRONI D1854/2 appear to relate to the latter. Search here.
  • From the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, The Acts of Parliament granted in the Yeare of our Lord God one thousand and seven hundred and three (under ref HSPenn AM 885), mainly concerning estates forfeited from named supporters of James II.
  • Orders from Schomberg at Legacorry to troops at Armagh, Markethill, and Monaghan to march to Benburb (14 May 1690) (ref PRONI D/429/15) shown here.
  • The King's proclamation for suppressing disorder in the North (23 October 1690) (ref PRONI D/429/25) available here.
  • Map of the siege of Londonerry in 1689 under ref PRONI 651/1 here.
  • Peter Guerin: Irish Estate Maps held by the University of Cambridge (here under ref CUL MS Add.4358) is A series of maps of the estates in Ireland bestowed by King William III in 1700 on Henri de Massue de Ruvigny, Earl of Galway, compiled by Peter Guerin, Deputy Surveyor General, 18 folios.

See also the McCance papers.

Rebellion of 1798

This section should be regarded as work in progress. The list below is certainly not exhaustive.

Work in progress See also the McCance papers and the Castlereagh papers

Economics during the Napoleonic Wars and the Corn Laws

This section is work in progress and the list is not exhaustive.

The famine and the encumbered estates

This section is work in progress and the list is not exhaustive.

  • Two extracts from PRONI's Donegall papers (under ref PRONI T956) being 1) a petition from the Marquess of Donegall to the Landed Estates Court showing how his estate had become encumbered at the time of the famine and 2) the order of the court. The treasury has an interesting write up by the first item.

Work in progress

Estate papers and collections of manuscripts

See also Irish estate papers.

Groves Collection

Tenison Groves, a genealogist and archivist who worked for many years for the Public Records Office of Ireland in Dublin, collected a huge set of documents copied or summarised from the public records. PRONI holds a many of his papers under ref T808. These have long been available in the Mormons' Family History Centres, but are have not been available on line until now. Parts of the collection appear to have been included because they are essential to one or more of the 'Gold Seams' or collections like those for Grand Juries. Other parts of the collection, like abstracts of wills and deeds, have unfortunately not been included. Useful volumes included here for the first time include

Philadelphia papers

One of the thematic collections covers the Philadelphia papers. This collection comprises eight volumes of the papers themselves and the section describing them in Wood's guide to the Public Record Office. This explains that the Library Company of Philadelphia made a collection of Irish papers and manuscripts and returned them to London, from where they were sent to Dublin where they were presumably destroyed with everything else. It seems that a copy or transcript was retained in London. It is now held by the UK National Archives and available here.

Wood describes three categories of papers in five volumes. The three categories were i) Original correspondence of the Irish Government 1592-1615, ii) letters from King James I 1603-1615 and iii) the Diary of the Marquis of Clanrickard 1641-3. Wood states that the contents of all three had been printed elsewhere. On a very quick inspection, the eight volumes here appear to be the five described by Wood, plus Instructions of King James I to Sir A Chichester, 1614, a document relating to the donation of the other papers and another copy of the same or a similar document.

Castlereagh papers

PRONI's e catalogue begins its description of these papers as follows

The Castlereagh Papers consist of c.7,450 documents and c.40 volumes, 1798-1822 (including some earlier and some later documents), deriving from Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, later 2nd Marquess of Londonderry, including some papers of his wife, Emily, his half-brother and successor, the 3rd Marquess, and the 3rd Marquess's wife, Frances Anne.
Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, was born in Dublin on 18 June 1769. He was the only surviving child of his father's first marriage, to Sarah Frances, daughter of the 1st Marquess of Hertford; and grandson of Alexander Stewart of Ballylawn, Co. Donegal, and Mary (née Cowan) half-sister and heir of Sir Robert Cowan, Governor of Bombay. Castlereagh's father was created in 1789 Baron Londonderry, and advanced to the viscountcy of Castlereagh in 1795, to the earldom of Londonderry in the following year, and finally to the marquessate of Londonderry in 1816.

They appear to have been published for the first time in the virtual record treasury (under ref PRONI D3030). For some reason, they do not appear in the highlights from PRONI thematic collection. They appear in the virtual treasury with no introduction or explanation.

McCance papers

PRONI's e catalogue explains

c.150 documents, 1689-1799, comprising the records of the McCance family, donated to the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland by Capt. S. McCance, London in June 1928

They contain papers and transcripts

Papers This body of original documents and transcripts has strong military associations with the originals relating mostly to the 1798 period in Ulster. It includes a remarkable register called 'The Black Book of the North of Ireland' which contains some 200 names of local leaders of the United Irish Party, often with particulars of their appearances and their careers in the Society. Many notable names appear in this collection ...
Transcripts The transcripts in the collection are copies made in the Public Record Office of Ireland from the military records of the years 1689 to 1719 with special references to Brigadier Richard Ingoldsby, Colonel Herbert and the regimes associated with those officers as well as the Purcell and Sabine regiments. The most remarkable feature of this period is a very long set of lists of persons having claims on regiments such as Herbert's for goods supplied or for accommodation ...

They appear to have been published for the first time in the virtual record treasury (under ref PRONI D272). For some reason, they do not appear in the highlights from PRONI thematic collection. They appear in the virtual treasury with no introduction or explanation.

Pembroke deeds

Part of a collection held by the National Archives of Ireland (under ref NAI PRIV 2011/1 and described by the NAI here. This part of the collection was apparently previously published as Calendar of Ancient Deeds and Muniments preserved in the Pembroke Estate Office, Dublin (Dublin 1891). According the the NAI's description, they cover the period c. 1240–1728. They are available in the treasury here.

MacCartney Papers

PRONI has a in introduction to this collection and its principal character (on the e Catalogue under ref D752). This begins George Macartney, Earl Macartney (1737-1806) was one of the foremost British diplomats and proconsuls of his day. His distinguished career took him to Russia, the West Indies, India, China, Italy and South Africa - and even back to his native Ireland and continues PRONI's holdings documenting Macartney's Co. Antrim estate affairs and of his period of office as Chief Secretary for Ireland, 1769-1772, are almost complete and are certainly fuller than those of any other individual or institution.

The treasury only includes part 1 (of 17) from this collection. PRONI describes this D572/1 (1768-1804) contains the letters written by Lord Townshend as Lord Lieutenant to Macartney as Chief Secretary. Their main topic is the struggle between Townshend and the undertakers, Lord Shannon, John Ponsonby, etc. To combat their influence Townshend undertook tours in the south, which he describes, in order to win supporters for the government. He attributes some of the weakness of government to the fact that the poor salaries of the judges made 'young lawyers of ability attach themselves to parties in parliament instead of looking directly to the Crown'. In one of his last letters he amusingly likens himself to 'a wreck on the coast which is supposed to have some kegs of Brandy on board - assailed every moment & trampled on by a most rapacious Crew'. Included in this volume is an adverse report made by Colonel Charles Vallancey on the construction of the Grand Canal, alleging incompetence on the part of the engineer and that in some places the Canal had been diverted for the purpose of draining the lands of interested individuals. It is available in the treasury here where it has only a short introduction.

Shannon papers

PRONI has a collection of some 4,500 documents relating to the Viscounts Shannon and Earls of Shannon and other members of the Boyle family of Castlemartyr, Co. Cork. (See the e catalogue under ref D2707.) The first part of these (under ref PRONO D2727/A/1) are the private correspondence of Henry Boyle, 1st Earl of Shannon (1684-1764), who was the second son and heir of the Hon. Colonel Henry Boyle, son of Roger, Earl of Orrery, and grandson of Richard, 1st Earl of Cork.

Two small subsets of this collection are included in the treasury being the letter book of Henry Boyle for May 1734 - September 1735 (under ref PRONI D2707/A/1/7/1 - it has a long write up on the PRONI e catalogue highlighting correspondence about French agents recruiting Irish Catholics for military service) and his letter book for June 1736 - August 1737 (under ref PRONI D2707/A/1/8/1 - also with a long write up.)

Papers of Arthur Capel Earl of Essex

Arthur Capel (1631-1683) was Earl of Essex and (from 1672 to 1677) Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. The virtual treasury's hierarchy lists five volumes of letters written when Arthur Capel as Lord Lieutentant, but only includes three of them (under ref Bodleian MS. Add.).

A volume of Capel's letters was published in the 1770s and is available on line. The text in the treasury say that these cover only the year of 1675.

Charles Vallancey's 'Rerum Hibernicarum, Scripti et impressi'

Described by the project here. Charles Vallancey was a military engineer who published a seven volume work on the origins of the Irish language and people, claiming to prove that they were not Celtic. The current volume (under ref Houghton MS Eng 662) is described by the project Rerum Hibernicarum, Scripti et Impressi is an alphabetical list of material relating to Irish history divided into two sections; a list of manuscripts held in multiple archives and a supplementary list of printed works. The volume is undated, but as the most recent printed cited work is from 1777 the compilation was probably made shortly after this time.





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Categories: Ireland Genealogy Resources