the number specified thereon, such vote shall be void. The Balloting Papers shall be scrutinized on the day of election by at least two Scrutineers appointed by the Council, who shall report the result at the General Meeting held on the evening of that day. The Treasurer shall furnish the Scrutineers with a List of the Fellows and Members whose Subscriptions have been paid up to the day preceding the Election, and who are consequently qualified to vote at such Election. Those Candidates who obtain the greatest number of votes shall be declared elected, subject to the provisions of Rule 17, provided that, when there appears an equality of votes for two or more Candidates, the Candidate whose name is longest on the books of the Society, shall be declared elected. The President shall be elected for a term of three years, and the same person shall not be elected for two consecutive periods. The four senior or longest elected VicePresidents, one in each province, shall retire each year by rotation, and shall not be eligible for re-election at the General Meeting at which they retire. The Council may submit to the Annual General Meeting the name of a Fellow, Hon. Fellow, or Member, who will act as Hon. President, and the Meeting may adopt the name submitted, or may elect another by a majority of votes, such Hon. President to hold office for one year, and shall not be elected for two consecutive periods.

17. The management of the business of the Society shall be entrusted to a Council of Twelve, eight of whom at least must be Fellows (exclusive of the President, VicePresidents, Honorary General Secretary, and Treasurer, who shall be ex-officio Members of the Council). The Council shall meet on the last Tuesday of each month, or on such other days as they may deem necessary. Four Members of Council shall form a quorum. The three senior or longest elected Members of the Council shall retire each year by rotation, and shall not be eligible for re-election at the Annual General Meeting at which they retire. In case of a vacancy occurring for a Member of Council during the year, the Council shall at its next Meeting co-opt a Fellow or Member, to retire by rotation. A Member of Council who has failed to attend onethird of the ordinary Meetings of the Council during the year shall forfeit his seat at the next Annual General Meeting. The vacancies caused by the retirement by rotation of Members of Council shall be filled up in the manner prescribed for the election of President and Vice-Presidents in Rule 16.

18. The Council may appoint Honorary Provincial Secretaries for each Province, and Honorary Local Secretaries throughout the country, whose duties shall be defined by the Council, and they shall report to the Honorary General Secretary, at least once a year, on all Antiquarian Remains discovered in their districts, investigate Local History and Tradition, and give notice of all injury inflicted, or likely to be inflicted, on Monuments of Antiquity or Ancient Memorials of the Dead, in order that the influence of the Society may be exerted to restore or preserve them.

19. The Council may appoint Committees to take charge of particular departments of business, and shall report to the Annual General Meeting the state of the Society's Funds, and other matters which may have come before them during the preceding year. They may appoint an Hon. Curator of the Museum, and draw up such rules for its management as they may think fit. The Hon. General Secretary may, with the approval of the Council, appoint a paid Assistant Secretary; the salary to be determined by the Council.

20. The Treasurer's Accounts shall be audited by two Auditors, to be elected at the Annual General Meeting in each year, who shall present their Report at a subsequent General Meeting of the Society.

21. All property of the Society shall be vested in the Council, and shall be disposed of as they shall direct. The Museum of Antiquities cannot be disposed of without the sanction of the Society being first obtained.

D

22. For the purpose of carrying out the arrangements in regard to the Meetings and Excursions to be held in the respective Provinces, the Honorary Provincial Secretaries may be summoned to attend the Meetings of Council ex-officio. Honorary Secretaries of the County or Counties in which such Meetings are held shall be similarly summoned.

MEETINGS OF THE SOCIETY.

23. The Society shall meet four times in each year on such days as the Council shall ascertain to be the most convenient, when Fellows and Members shall be elected, Papers on Historical and Archæological Subjects shall be read and discussed, and Objects of Antiquarian Interest exhibited. Excursions may be arranged where practicable.

24. The Annual General Meeting shall be held in Dublin in the month of January; one Meeting in the year shall be held in Kilkenny; the other Meetings to be help in such places as the Council may recommend. Notice of such General Meetings shall be forwarded to each Fellow and Member. Evening Meetings for reading and discussing Papers, and making exhibits, may be held at such times as shall be arranged by the Council.

PUBLICATIONS.

25. No Paper shall be read to the Society without the permission of the Council having previously been obtained. The Council shall determine the order in which Papers shall be read, and the time to be allowed for each. All Papers listed or Communications received shall be the property of the Society. The Council shall determine whether, and to what extent any Paper or Communication shall be published

26. All matter concerning existing religious and political differences shall be excluded from the Papers to be read and the discussions held at the Meetings of the Society.

27. The Proceedings and Papers read at the several Meetings, and where approved of by the Council, shall be printed in the form of a Journal, and supplied to all Fellows and Members not in arrear. If the funds of the Society permit, extra publications may be printed and supplied to all Fellows free, and to such Members as may subscribe specially for them.

GENERAL.

28. These Rules shall not be altered or amended except at an Annual General Meeting of the Society, and after notice given at the previous General Meeting. All By-laws and Regulations dealing with the General Rules formerly made are hereby repealed.

29. The enactment of any new Rule, or the alteration or repeal of any existing one, must be in the first instance submitted to the Council; the proposal to be signed by seven Fellows or Members, and forwarded to the Hon. Secretary. Such proposal being made, the Council shall lay same before a General Meeting, with its opinion thereon; and such proposal shall not be ratified unless passed by a majority of the Fellows and Members present at such General Meeting subject to the provisions of Rule 14.

ROBERT COCHRANE, I.S.O., F.S.A., M.R.I.A.,
Honorary General Secretary.

ST. STEPHEN'S-GREEN, DUBLIN.

31st December, 1904.

PAPERS AND PROCEEDINGS-PART I., VOL. XXXIV.

Papers.

SOME NOTES ON THE JUDGES OF IRELAND IN THE YEAR

1739.

BY FRANCIS ELRINGTON BALL, M.R.I.A., VICE-PREsident.

[Read APRIL 28, 1903.]

IN N the brief Paper which Mr. R. J. Kelly contributes to the Journal of the Society, many judges now forgotten, but in their day well known in our country, are mentioned; and I hope some further information about them may prove not without interest. As perhaps has been at times apparent in my Papers on the topography of the County Dublin, the biography of the members of the judicial bench in Ireland. has for me a great attraction. It seems somewhat presumptuous, however, in one like myself, who belongs to neither branch of the legal profession, to attempt to write about its worthies; and I have only been induced to do so from a consideration of the valuable material their lives afford for the illustration of social history.

The year 1739, to which Mr. Kelly's Paper refers, found Ireland under the complete control of England; and, as Mr. Lecky has said,1 the Irish nation was then as passive as clay in the hands of the potter.

1.66 History of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," by the Right Hon. W. E. H. Lecky (London, 1892), vol. i., p. 241.

Vol. XIV.,

Fifth Series.

Jour. R.S.A.I.Vol. XXXIV., Consec. Ser.

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[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]

It was not considered safe for England that a native-a term which included everyone who had been born or educated in Ireland-should have power in the government of his country; and if such a one was admitted to high place, care was generally taken that his voice should be counterbalanced by that of an official freshly arrived from England. The Lord Lieutenant was only resident for about six or eight months, every second year, when the Irish Parliament met; but during his absence the chief government of the country was vested in Lords Justices, whose selection was largely influenced by the reliance which could be placed on them to protect what was called the English interest. The office of Lord Lieutenant was held in 1739 by a member of the noble house of Cavendish. William, third Duke of Devonshire, who had been appointed to that office two years before, and who arrived on his second visit to Ireland in that year. He paid two subsequent visits to this country before he surrendered the sword; and his administration is said, by a contemporary writer,' to have been exceptionally long and useful. In a measure its success is attributed by this writer to the fact that the Duke became allied to the family of Ponsonby, then prominent in Irish political life, but mainly to the confidence which the Duke placed, under the advice of Sir Robert Walpole, in the Primate of Ireland, who was always at the head of the three Lords Justices who administered affairs in the absence of the Viceroy.

The Primate of Ireland at that time was Hugh Boulter, an episcopal statesman, who was unconnected in any way with Ireland previous to his promotion in 1724 from the Bishopric of Bristol, and Deanery of Christ Church, Oxford, to the Archbishopric of Armagh. He had but one thought in the government of this country-how it could be best used for the advantage of England. A few months after his arrival we find him writing that the only way to keep things quiet here, and make them easy to the English ministry, was by filling the great places with natives of England; and although his advice was not always followed, he continued to advocate that policy throughout his life. At the same time, owing, to a great extent, to his diplomatic disposal of smaller patronage, support was obtained in the Irish House of Commons. for the Government measures; and so long as he lived, not one of those proposed during the viceroyalty of the Duke of Devonshire was lost. As was only to be expected under a system which threw upon him so much responsibility in civil affairs, Primate Boulter became almost completely absorbed in politics, and his other duties are seldom mentioned in his correspondence. It is stated, however, that he was a man of piety as well as of extraordinary charity; and the reply which he made when complimented on the latter quality-that he would die shamefully rich-indicates that he was a man of estimable character. His liberality has seldom been exceeded; and during two periods of great

"Letters written by Hugh Boulter, D.D." (Dublin, 1770), vol. ii., p. 168, note.

distress that occurred while he held the see of Armagh, in the years 1729 and 1740, it was exercised in so remarkable a way, that the House of Commons passed a special vote of thanks to him. The Primate's colleagues as Lords Justices were the Lord Chancellor and the Speaker of the House of Commons.1

The Lord Chancellor at the beginning of 1739 was Thomas Wyndham, who had been created a peer under the title of Baron Wyndham of Finglas. Like Primate Boulter, Wyndham was unknown in Ireland until promoted to its judicial bench in 1724-the year in which Primate Boulter arrived-as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas ; but he had quickly established a high judicial reputation; and, owing to his being more in sympathy with Irish opinion than the Primate, he had obtained considerable popularity. It is of interest that we have now enrolled amongst the Fellows of the Society a descendant of the ancient Wiltshire family to which Wyndham belonged, in the person of the present Chief Secretary for Ireland, the Right Hon. George Wyndham ; but in past ages the family had members equally identified with public life. Several of Lord Wyndham's ancestors had adopted the legal profession. Both his grandfather and one of his granduncles occupied seats on the English judicial bench in the reign of Charles II.; and his grandfather is said to have been only inferior in ability to Sir Matthew Hale, the greatest lawyer of that time. In politics members of his family had also taken a prominent part. Sir William Wyndham, the Jacobite statesman of Queen Anne's reign, from whom the Earls of Egremont were descended, was his cousin; and his own father had sat in two Parliaments as member for Salisbury. In a female line Wyndham was descended from the founder of Wadham College at Oxford; and there, after receiving his early education at the Cathedral School of Salisbury, he matriculated in 1698, when not quite seventeen years of age. A few months previously he had entered Lincoln's Inn as a law student, and from that Inn, seven years later, when in his twenty-fourth year, he was called to the English Bar. In a diary preserved by a secretary who became his train-bearer, and to whom he bequeathed his "Chancellor's velvet robe, trimmed with gold," we catch a few glimpses of Wyndham's early life; we see him suffering under that scourge of our ancestors the smallpox; acting as pall-bearer at the stately funerals of his relations; appointed Recorder of the Close of Sarum, and taking part in the prosecution, at Liverpool, of followers of the Pretender.

To what influence Wyndham owed his appointment in October, 1724, to the Irish bench as Chief Justice of the Common Pleas is not apparent; but amongst those on whose friendship he could rely was the Earl of Pembroke of his time, of whose pocket-borough, Wilton, near Salisbury, he had been in the previous year made a burgess. A month

166

Dictionary of National Biography," vol. v., p. 7; "Letters written by Hugh Boulter, D..," vol. i., p. 224, note.