PREFACE.
The design of this Volume is to supply such information in this neglected portion of Irish History as will enable the profession, and the historical and antiquarian student, to ascertain with correctness the names of the Great Law Officers of Ireland, and the times in which they flourished. Whilst reference in Ecclesiastical History and in the Peerage, has been rendered easy and familiar by the numerous memoirs and statistical works which illustrate those departments it is, to say the least, singular, that no list of the Irish Judges has been published, and it certainly cannot be accounted for, on the ground that the power and influence exercised by them, and attached to their stations, were less felt and acknowledged by the various classes of society, or that the individuals who filled those offices and successively presided in the Irish Courts of Law, played no less important part in the general history of the country; although an attempt is made in the present work to remedy the deficiency, and give cor-
