Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/89

 copies of them for the office of Surveyor-General of Crown Lands in Ireland. The Irish Record Commissioners fell into the same error, and it has been recently reiterated in the Preface to a "Calendar of the Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth," compiled by Mr. James Morrin, and published under the directions of the Master of the Rolls in Ireland, with the further additional statement, "that the Down Survey records were carried to France by King James II., and that they still remain there." I personally examined the Parisian set of barony maps many years ago, and after a very careful comparison of them with an original volume, belonging to the Surveyor-General's set, brought with me for the purpose, can authoritatively pronounce the Parisian maps to be but copies of the Down Survey barony maps, enlarged in their text by introducing into their parochial subdivisions the outlines and names of the townlands; and this enlargement was made by Petty from the Surveyor-General's set of Down Survey parish maps. The difference between the Down Survey and Parisian set of barony maps is so striking, that I am surprised that any official examiner should have concluded the Parisian set to be originals. The history of the Parisian maps is this. A French privateer, cruising in the Channel in the year 1710, captured a ship having on board these maps in transit from Dublin to the son and heir of Sir William Petty, at Lothbury, London, when they were immediately carried to Paris and deposited in La Bibliothèque du Roi, where they have remained ever since. Were this set of barony maps restored by the French Government, they would be of no more value than the copies made of them by Vallancey. They were compiled, as described, from the Down Survey barony and parish maps, between the years 1660 and 1678, while Vallancey' s copies of these were made in 1790 and 1791, but neither set would be received as evidence, except by consent, in any court of justice in these kingdoms.' The error as to these maps noticed by Mr. Hardinge is repeated in Edward's 'History of Libraries,' ii. 259.

During the Lord Lieutenancy of the Earl of Essex, who succeeded the Duke of Ormonde, copies of the barony maps were by his direction made by Mr. Thomas Taylor, in sixteen volumes, imperial folio. These found their way into the Ashburnham collection of manuscripts, and without their aid no complete idea can be formed of the distribution of the forfeited lands.