done to make it clear that the rationalist position-for such in truth it is-lies no less open to attack on its historical than on its literary side. And yet, surely, the onus probandi, the duty of justifying their attitude, lies in reality, not with us, but rather with those who depart from an age-long tradition, in denying unity and truth to a work that obviously claims it.

Indeed, as regards the truth of the matter, it appears safe to say that recent discoveries, such as those of Hammurabi's code, of the Tel-el-Amarna tablets, and of the Elephantine papyri, have in various ways strengthened the argument for the historical character of the Priestly Code. The rationalist position finds its raison d'être, not in historical evidence, but in an a priori evolutionary philosophy. However, it has been the object of this essay to examine, not into the trustworthiness of P, taken on its own merits, but into the need of separating it and constituting it an independent source, and that, again, in such a way as to discuss in detail only one particular instance or proof, though perhaps the most important.

CUTHBERT LATTEY, S.J.

THE JOURNALS OF THE IRISH

PARLIAMENT

BY MICHAEL MACDONAGH

WERE it not for the happy decision of the Lords and Commons of Ireland to print their Journals, which in the case of the Commons was come to not only tardily but perilously near to the end of their existence, an intimate appreciation of the life and character of the old Irish Parliament would, it is not too much to say, have been impossible in the twentieth century. The Lords Journals are in eight thick folio volumes, exhaustively indexed. The Commons Journals are in nineteen volumes of the same size and bulk. Each volume of the Commons Journals has two parts. The first part is the record of the proceedings; and the second contains the financial returns, and other official papers, laid before the House, with a fine index of the entire volume. Accordingly, the Commons Journals really run to thirty-eight volumes. Of all the material things of the Irish Parliament which have survived, the most valuable and precious-in the judgment of the historical writer, at least-are these fortysix printed volumes of the Journals of both Houses in which are set out the Acts passed and the resolutions come to by the Lords and Commons of Ireland.

The Journals of the House of Commons begin on May 18, 1613, when the first Irish Parliament of James the First assembled in Dublin. The papers of the earlier Parliaments appear to have been destroyed or lost in the changes and commotions attending the Reformation, or, rather, the vain attempt to make Ireland Protestant. But in the year 1613 Elizabeth's work of political and social conquest was supposed to be completed. The native Irish were subdued. Their chiefs of the north, Tyrone and Tyrconnell, were driven into exile. The Plantation of Ulster with settlers from England and Scotland was being carried out. No more trouble was apprehended in Ireland. It was at this time, also, that Dublin became the permanent home of

the Parliament. Hitherto the Parliament had a perambulatory existence in the provinces, meeting in such towns as Kilkenny, Drogheda, and Trim, which had an abbey or monastery with a great hall or refectory, capable of accommodating the two Houses. The fixing of Dublin as the Parliament's place of meeting tended to the preservation of the records. As regards the Lords, the printed series of their Journals are of a later date still than those of the Commons. They do not begin until 1634, and start with the first Irish Parliament of Charles the First, when Lord Wentworth, better known as Strafford, was Lord Lieutenant. The Journals of both Houses continue till the Union in 1800.

The Lords were the first to decide to print their Journals. That was in 1779. It was not until 1795 that the Commons -five years only before their extinction-came to the same resolution. Fortunately, however, the work was well advanced at the time of the Union. One of the last things done by the Commons was to vote £1,525 for the printing of the concluding volume-the eighth-of the Lord's Journals. At the same time the Commons appointed a Committee to arrange for the completion of the printing of their own records. The Committee reported to the House that £39,661 14s. had already been spent on the printing and binding of their Journals and the payment of gratuities to the compilers; and that a further sum of £15,201 11s. 11d. was required to finish the work. The money was voted. Sets of 610 copies of each volume of both Journals were printed, 300 for the Lords and 310 for the Commons. Twelve additional sets were printed on superfine paper and bound in the most complete and perfect manner,' for presentation, among others, to the King, the Speaker of the House of Commons, at Westminster, for his private library, and the Universities of Dublin, Oxford, and Cambridge. The sets of the Journals which I have had the pleasure of reading are those in the library of George the Third, which was presented to the British Museum in 1823 by George the Fourth. The covers are in red leather, with a gold border. At each of the four corners there is an additional decoration, also in gold, of crossed maces surmounted by a crown.

There are some interruptions in the continuous run of the Irish Journals, as in the English Journals. These blanks are due, in each case, to parts of the manuscript

documents having been lost, mislaid, or misappropriated. In the case of the English Parliament, Cardinal Wolsey tore out several leaves of the manuscript Journals of the House of Lords, which contained entries that were disagreeable to him; and Charles the First, in a similarly high-handed way, destroyed the official account of his unconstitutional visit to the House of Commons to arrest the five members. No such sensational episodes are associated with the history of the earlier Irish Journals. Where the loss of the missing parts is not accounted for by religious and civil commotions, or by the long periods of time that separated the Parliaments, it can be traced to the rather common practice of statesmen in those days to seize and retain for their own use and security papers rightly belonging to the State. As we shall see later, statesmen were also not above tampering with the records with a view to their future personal advantage.

Some of the records thus appropriated have been discovered in private collections of papers since the printing of the Journals. Among them is the earliest fragment of the original official Journals now extant-the Journal of the House of Lords in what is known as 'Perrott's Parliament.' This Parliament was the third and last Irish Parliament of Queen Elizabeth. It assembled in Dublin on the summons of Sir John Perrot, the Lord Deputy, and lasted from April 26, 1585, to May 13, 1586. The Journal was found among the Carte manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. These are the immense mass of documents, running to 109 volumes, which were collected by Thomas Carte, the historian-who lived in the first half of the eighteenth century-for his Life of James Duke of Ormond, and other works relating to Ireland in the reign of Charles the First. The Journal forms the first nine of the 529 leaves in the sixty-first volume of the collection. It is written in the ordinary Elizabethan court hand, on paper older and quite distinct from the rest of the volume, which consists for the most part of the official papers of Sir Arthur Chichester, Lord Deputy, and Sir John Davies, AttorneyGeneral, at the time of the first Irish Parliament of James the First in 1613, with which, as I have said, the printed Journals of the House of Commons begin. It is published in full, with notes by Mr. F. J. Routledge, in the English Historical Review, for January, 1914.

The opening leaf of the Journal is missing; and as the

first entry is dated May 3, 1585, there are, consequently, six days of the sittings of the House of Lords of which there is no record. The Bills passed were an Act of Attainder of James Eustace, Viscount Baltinglas, and his four brothers, all of whom had been prominent in the rising of the Earl of Desmond against Elizabeth, and an Act restoring to his rights of blood and lineage Lawrence Delahide, whose father had been attainted of high treason in 1536. The first entry in the Journal is as follows: Th' act for th' attayndor of James Eustace and others was ones red, which was the third reading thereof, and being put to voices it past as an acte with the consent of the whole house.' The ceremony of bringing the first session to an end is thus described :

Tuysdate the XXVth of May, 1585. The right honorable Sir John Perrot, knight, lord deputie generall of Ireland and the rest of the lords spirituall and temporall, and the Comens assembled in the parliament house; and the said lord deputie gave the royall assent upon th' act of attayndor of James Eustace and others and upon th' acte for restoring Lawrence Delahide to his blod, and the same daye did adjorne and prorogue the parliament to Thurisday the next following, being the XXVIIth of the saide monethe of May 1585 to be holden in the same place.

The last entry in the Journal deals with the meeting of the two Houses for the dissolution on May 14, 1586, at the end of the second session. The Lord Deputy gave the Royal Assent to the Acts passed, which included th' act against witchcraft and sorcery and the 'acte against fordging, etc., of evidences and writings, etc.' Then the final words: 'And the same daye his lordship did end and dissolve the Parliament.'

How did the Journal of 1585-6 come to be included in the official papers of Chichester and Davies? Davies was appointed Speaker in the Parliament of 1613, and it is probable that he borrowed this Journal of the last preceding Parliament that had been held in Ireland to consult it as an authority on forms and procedure, and neglected to return it afterwards to its official custodians. I find in the printed Commons Journals for May, 1764, an entry which describes a somewhat similar instance of the misappropriation of parliamentary records. One Michael Dugan sent a petition to the House stating that he was in possession of an old manuscript of the Journals of the House from November, 1641, to March 29, 1647, relating to the second Irish Parliament of Charles the First. He stated