¹ I am grateful to the following for assistance : the staff of the Irish Registry of Deed, Henrietta St, Dublin; Mr G. N. Snowden of the East Riding registry, Beverley; and Mr B. Trainor, Mr W. H. Crawford and Miss E. Carlisle of the P.R.O.N.I. Professor J. L. McCracken, Dr D. McCourt and Mr Crawford have kindly read and commented on earlier drafts of the article. I alone carry responsibility for this final version.

² Weir, S., ‘The Registry of Deeds, Ireland’ in I.C.H.S. Bull., no. 26 (Apr. 1943), p. 2.Google Scholar

³ I.M.C., Registry of Deeds, Dublin, abstracts of wills: vol. i, 1708–45; vol. ii, 1746–85, ed. P. B. Eustace (1956, 1954). A third volume covering the period 1786–1827 is in preparation.

⁴ Falley, M.D., Irish and Scotch-Irish ancestral research (privately printed, Evanston, Illinois, U.S.A., 1962), 1, 51–106 (hereafter cited as Falley, Ancestral research).Google Scholar

⁵ Phair, P.B., ‘Guide to the Registry of Deeds’ in Anal. Hib., no. 23 (1966), pp 259–76.Google Scholar

⁶ Falley, , Ancestral research, 1, 90–106 Google Scholar; Mullin, T.H., Families of Bally-rashane (Belfast, 1969)Google Scholar; Cole, R.G., “James Boswell’s Irish Cousins’ in The Genealogists’ Magazine, 16, no. 3 (Sept. 1969), pp 81–8.Google Scholar

⁷ For example, Crawford, W.H., ‘The origins of the linen industry in north Armagh and the Lagan valley’ in Ulster Folklife, 17 (1971), p. 46,Google Scholar where entries in the registers of deeds are used to disclose the manner in which Ulster linen manufacturers raised capital for investment.

⁸ Irish act: 6 Anne, c. 2; English acts: 2 & 3 Anne, c. 4, 6 Anne, c/s. 20, 62; 7 Anne, c. 20; 8 George II, c. 6.

⁹ Cal S.P. dorn., 1700–2, p. 590.

¹⁰ 6 Anne, c. 62, sect. I.

¹¹ 2 & 3 Anne, c. 4, sect, ι.

¹² Wall, M., The penal laws, 1691–1790, Irish Historical Association Pamphlets, no. 1 (Dundalk, 1961), p. 13.Google Scholar

¹³ Simms, J.G., Jacobite Ireland (London, 1969), p. 1.Google Scholar

¹⁴ 6 Anne, c. 2, sect. 1.

¹⁵ Simms, , Williamite confiscation, pp 158–61.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Wall, M., Penal laws, p. 12.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Simms, , Williamite confiscation, p. 161.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Leases not exceeding twenty-one years ‘where the actual possession goes along with the said lease’ were excluded from registration. This indicates the penal nature of the legislation, for such leases were the highest interest in land that catholics were allowed to possess (6 Anne, c. 2, sect. 14; Simms, , Williamite confiscation, p. 158 Google Scholar; Maguire, J., The law and practice relating to the registration of deeds, wills and judgement mortgages (2nd ed., Dublin, 1912, hereafter cited as Maguire, Registration of deeds), p. 14).Google Scholar

¹⁹ An act of 1714 provided for the registration of non-jurors’ estates at quarter sessions; these registers give details not only of land held, but also of its annual value ( Estcourt, E.E. and Pagne, J O. (ed.), The English catholic non-jurors of 1715 (London, 1885))Google Scholar

²⁰ Maguire, , Registration of deeds, p. 2.Google Scholar

²¹ For a list of these see ibid., pp 3–4.

²² Ibid., p. I.

²³ Falley, Ancestral research, p. 52.

²⁴ However, the number and type of leases registered were restricted by the exclusion from registration of leases with possession not exceeding twenty-one years.

²⁵ For an illustration of this distinction see the two memorials, one from an English registry and the other from the Irish Registry, transcribed in the appendix to this article.

²⁶ Plumb, J.H., The growth of political stability in England 1675–1725 (London, 1967), passim.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁷ Simms, , Williamite confiscation, pp 9–10.Google Scholar

²⁸ According to an unsigned memorandum for internal circulation among the Yorkshire registries in 1846, ‘the contents of a memorial are sufficiently full to identify the deed to which it refers, yet so precise and contracted as not to expose the transactions of anyone to the gaze of mere prying curiosity… no one is required to disclose more of his deed than will identify it ’ (MS in the possession of the Registrar, East Riding Registry of Deeds, Beverley, Yorkshire).

²⁹ Writing in the early nineteenth century, one authority condemned a tendency on the part of those registering deeds in Middlesex ‘to insert in memorials a much more general description of the nature and effect of deeds and wills than the statute requires ’. He argued that the English registration system had not been extended beyond two counties because of the 4 great anxiety and tenderness … evinced by the legislature, on all occasions, to guard against unnecessary exposure of the affairs and arrangements of the property of individuals …and the same feeling appears, by the limited disclosure required, to have influenced the legislature when the statutes … were passed ’ ( Wilson, J., A practical treatise on the statutes for registering deeds and other instruments in the counties of Middlesex and York, with precedents of memorials (London, 1819), P. 39).Google Scholar

³⁰ Maguire, , Registration of deeds, pp 133–4.Google Scholar

³¹ Livingstone, M., A guide to the public records of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1905), pp. 92–5Google Scholar; Thomson, J. Maitland, The public records of Scotland (Glasgow, 1922), pp 38–9.Google Scholar

³² J. Maitland Thomson, op. cit., p. 41.

³³ Hamilton-Edwards, G., ‘Family history material in registers of deeds’ in The Genealogists3 Magazine, 26, no. 8 (Dec. 1970), p. 389.Google Scholar

³⁴ Ibid.

³⁵ 6 Anne, c. 2, sect. 7.

³⁶ Falley, Ancestral research, pp 53, 64-70; Ρ B. Phair, ’ Guide to the registry of deeds’ in Anal. Hib., no. 23 (1966), pp 265-7, 269. Both the National Library of Ireland in Dublin and the Genealogical Society Library in Salt Lake City, U.S.A., hold a set of 405 microfilms of these indexes covering the period 1708–1904.

³⁷ From 15,000 in the first decade of the registry’s existence, and 40,000 in the 1750s, to more than 70,000 in the 1790s (P. B. Phair, op. cit., p. 269).

³⁸ Madden, D.H., A practical treatise on the registration of deeds, wills, and judgment mortgages (Dublin, 1901), pp 7, 31—7Google Scholar

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ Ibid., pp 40–1; Barker, H., A manual of the registration of deeds and other assurances in Yorkshire under the Yorkshire Registries Act, 1884 (London, 1884), p. 4.Google Scholar

⁴¹ As with all records of this type, the work of the researcher is made more difficult by the laziness or incompetence of the scribe. However, some of these difficulties can be overcome through consultation of the original memorials from which the entries in the registers were compiled, and which remain extant in the registry.

⁴² In this connection see Cullen, L.M., ‘Problems in the interpretation and revision of eighteenth-century Irish economic history’ in R. Hist. Soc. Trails., 3rd series, 17 (1967), pp 1–22 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Butterfield, H., ‘Eighteenth-century Ireland, 1702–1800’ in Moody, T.W. (ed.), Irish historiography 1936–70 (I.C.H.S., 1971), pp 58–60.Google Scholar