1 On the nature of tithes in early-modern Ireland, and their long-term significance as a source of social and political tension, see Maurice Bric, ‘The tithe system in eighteenth-century Ireland’ in Proc. R.I.A., sect. c, lxxxvi (1986), pp 271–88.

2 On the native retreat from the Church of Ireland from the early 1590s, see Ford, Alan, The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 1590–1641 (Dublin, 1997), pp 36–40 Google Scholar .

3 On the beneficiaries of the suppression of the monasteries in Ireland, see Bradshaw, Brendan, The dissolution of the religious orders in Ireland under Henry VIII (Cambridge, 1974), pp 181–205 Google Scholar ; for the pervasiveness of lay appropriation of church resources in early seventeenth-century Ireland, see Ford, The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 1590–1641, p. 68. In Meath diocese in 1576, for example, more than half the churches were impropriate, mostly controlled by recusants; see Steven Ellis, ‘Economic problems of the church: why the Reformation failed in Ireland’ in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, xli, no. 2 (Apr. 1990), p. 255.

4 On the lack of adequate resources to support university-trained preachers in the Church of Ireland ministry down to the 1630s, see Ford, The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 1590–1641, pp 68–72; for the mid-sixteenth century, see Ellis, ‘Economic problems of the church’, pp 239–65; on the futile effort to implement the Reformation in Dublin in the 1570s and 1580s, see Murray, James, Enforcing the English Reformation in Ireland: clerical resistance and political conflict in the diocese of Dublin, 1534–1590 (Cambridge, 2009), pp 261–316 CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

5 The general point regarding this use of tithes is made in Lennon, Colm and Diamond, Ciaran, ‘The ministry of the Church of Ireland, 1536–1636’ in T. C. Barnard and W. G. Neely (eds), The clergy of the Church of Ireland, 1000–2000 (Dublin, 2006), pp 55–56 Google Scholar .

6 On the materials found at the time of Lalor’s arrest, see ‘The case of Hillary, 4 Jacobi … the conviction and attainder of Robert Lalor priest …’ in Sir John Davies, A report of cases and matters in law … now first translated into English (Dublin, 1762), p. 270.

7 Dispensation granted on 9 Nov. 1635 to Richard Nugent, earl of Westmeath and his successors to retain three monasteries and their profits; the dispensation included the decree of Propaganda Fide, dated 30 July 1635 (Archivum Segretum Vaticanum, Secretaria brevium, Regista, vol. 828, ff 47r–50r); on the Nugent family’s appropriations in Kilmore diocese, see Colm Lennon, ‘The Nugent family and the diocese of Kilmore in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries’ in Breifne, ix, no. 37 (2001), pp 360–74.

8 The contrasting views of the clericalist party and their opponents within the Confederation are articulated in Tadhg Ó hAnnracháin, Catholic Reformation in Ireland: the mission of Rinuccini, 1645–1649 (Oxford, 2002); on the question of restoring to the church the monastic properties (including parishes) impropriated to lay owners in the wake of the Reformation, see ibid., pp 228–9; in Oct. 1642, the General Assembly declared that Catholic laity who held former church properties and tithes before 1641 would retain possession until the issue was decided in a future Irish parliament: ‘No 21 Ut possessiones Ecclesiasticae et decimae possessoribus Catholicis ante has commotiones appropriatae ipsis modo huic faederi subscripserint cuique suae, donec res in Parlamento dirempta fuerit, permittantur, illis interea pro redditum rata (ut fit) ad belli impensas contribuentibus’ (Richard O’Ferrall and Robert O’Connell, Commentarius Rinuccinianus, de sedis apostolicae legatione ad foederatos Hiberniae Catholicos per annos 1645–9, ed. Stanislaus Kavanagh (6 vols, Dublin, 1932–49), i, 349).

9 For New Ross in the sixteenth century, see P. H. Hore, History of the town and county of Wexford: Old and New Ross (London, 1900), pp 234–83; in a list of customs revenue, by ports, 1620–21, New Ross was lower than Kinsale, Waterford, or Wexford, see Victor Treadwell, The Irish Commission of 1622 (Dublin, 2006), p. 391.

10 In contemporary documents the place name was variously spelt ‘Bayleyayn’, ‘Ballyan’, ‘Baylayan’, and ‘Ballyean’.

11 Tobyn was noted as ‘an arrant papisticall fellow’. See: Visitation 1591, Ossory diocese, ‘Visitations and returns of several dioceses [1586–1615]’ (T.C.D., MS 566, ff 113r, 114v); ‘Sententiae deprivationis [1591]’, Ossory diocese (T.C.D., MS 566, f. 195r). In 1900, Rosbercon parish was amalgamated with New Ross in Ferns diocese; details for Rosbercon summarised in Leslie, James, Ossory clergy and parishes (Enniskillen, 1933), pp 341–342 Google Scholar .

12 In 1568–9, Anthony Colclough of Tintern Abbey acquired a lease of the rectory of Whitechurch, County Wexford, and in 1575 Sir Henry Radeclif had the tithes of the same rectory; these had passed by 1587 to Sir Henry Harington (Fiants Ire., Eliz. I, no. 1259 [1568–9], no. 2697 [1575], no. 5080 [1587]).

13 In materials arising from a visitation in July 1610 which included Ferns and Ossory dioceses, no Whites were listed as holding impropriations in the parishes under consideration (T.C.D., MS 566, ff 41r–59v); by the 1615 visitation Ballyan rectory was impropriate to the earl of Ormond (B.L., Add. MS 19,836, f. 30v), and he still held the impropriation in 1626 (N.L.I., MS D 3687–8).

14 In 1280–81, there is a reference to one Robert le Whyte, and in 1313 David le White was provost of Ross and New Ross (Hore, History of the town and county of Wexford: Old and New Ross, pp 11, 178); William White and James White were merchants in New Ross in the 1580s and 1590s (ibid., pp 267, 279); in 1616, Simon White was sovereign and Martin White was one of the bailiffs (ibid., p. 293).

15 On women as promoters of Catholic reform in the Pale and the towns by about 1600, see hAnnracháin, Tadhg Ó, ‘Theory in the absence of fact: Irish women and the Catholic Reformation’ in Christine Meek and Catherine Lawless (eds), Studies on medieval and early modern women: pawns or players? (Dublin, 2003), pp 141–143 Google Scholar ; on recusancy in Irish provincial cities by the 1590s, see Bradshaw, Brendan, ‘The Reformation in the cities: Cork, Limerick, and Galway, 1534–1603’ in John Bradley (ed.), Settlement and society in medieval Ireland (Kilkenny, 1988), pp 463–468 Google Scholar .

16 Lord deputy to Burghley, 30 Apr. 1590 (T.N.A., SP 63/151/93; Cal. S.P. Ire., 1588–92, p. 335).

17 Nicholls, Kenneth, ‘Irishwomen and property in the sixteenth century’ in Margaret MacCurtain and Mary O’Dowd (eds), Women in early modern Ireland (Dublin, 1991), p. 27 Google Scholar ; on women as property-holders in late sixteenth century Ireland, see also Mary O’Dowd, ‘Women and the Irish chancery court in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries’ in I.H.S., xxxi, no. 124 (Nov. 1999), pp 470–87.

18 Sir John Davies to Salisbury, 12 Nov. 1606 (T.N.A., SP 63/219/132; Cal. S.P. Ire., 1606–8, p. 15).

19 Ibid. On the emergence of recusancy in County Wexford from the 1570s, see Corish, Patrick, ‘Two centuries of Catholicism in County Wexford’ in Kevin Whelan (ed.), Wexford: history and society (Dublin, 1987), pp 222–225 Google Scholar . On tensions in the towns of the south-east at the accession of James I, see A. J. Sheehan, ‘The recusancy revolt of 1603: a reinterpretation’ in Archiv. Hib., xxxviii (1983), pp 3–13.

20 For the increasing impact of the Catholic mission in the early 1590s, see Jefferies, Henry, The Irish church and the Tudor Reformations (Dublin, 2010), pp 247–258 Google Scholar .

21 On Protestant clergy viewed as servants of the devil in popular culture in the 1570s and 1580s, see two poems by the Franciscan Eoghan Ó Dubhthaigh (d.1590), Cuthbert Mhag Craith (ed.), Dán na mBráthar Mionúr [Franciscan poems] (Baile Átha Cliath, 1967), pp 127–53; the association of Luther with the devil features in a series of early seventeenth-century devotional works in Irish (Nicholas Canny, ‘The formation of the Irish mind: religion, politics and Gaelic Irish literature 1580–1750’ in Past & Present, no. 95 (1982), p. 98).

22 Brendan Jennings (ed.), ‘Brussels MS 3947: Donatus Moneyus, De provincia Hiberniae S. Francisci’ in Anal. Hib., no. 6 (1934), pp 29–32.

23 [Dermot McGrath] to Pope Clement VIII, Apr. 1600 (John Hagan (ed.), ‘Some papers relating to the Nine Years War’ in Archiv. Hib., ii (1913), pp 287–8; for McGrath’s ecclesiastical faculties, see brief of Sixtus V to ‘Dermond McCraghe’, bishop of Cork, 8 July 1589 (Cal. Carew MSS, 1589–1600, p. 9).

24 Dermot McGrath (also noted as ‘Creagh’ in contemporary correspondence), provided as bishop of Cork and Cloyne on 12 October 1580. In Ferns diocese there was no bishop or vicar-apostolic in the years 1587–1607, while in Ossory diocese Bishop Thomas Strong (bishop 1582–1602) lived in Spain, and his vicar-general, George Power, died in prison in 1599 (T. W. Moody, F. X. Martin and F. J. Byrne (eds), A new history of Ireland, ix: Maps, genealogies, lists: a companion to Irish history, part ii (Oxford, 1989), pp 372, 377–8). On Creagh’s role as bishop in the 1590s, see Jefferies, The Irish church and the Tudor reformations, pp 260–70; he appears to have died by May 1603 (Terry Clavin, ‘McGrath (Creagh, McCragh), Dermot (d. 1603?)’, in D.I.B.).

25 Davies, A report of cases and matters of law, p. 234.

26 Christopher Hollywood S.J. to Jesuit general, 10 June 1598; James Archer S.J. granted dispensations, in which a contribution towards the recently-established Irish College in Salamanca was levied, Archer to Jesuit general, 10 Aug. 1598 (both letters listed in Vera Moynes (ed.), The Jesuit Irish mission: a calendar of correspondence, 1566–1752 (Rome, 2017), p. 376). For a similar ecclesiastical faculty exercised by Jesuits in England in the 1590s, see Henry Foley (ed.), Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus (8 vols, London, 1877–83), vi, 26, 34–5.

27 Decree of general congregation of the Inquisition to bishop of Cork, or his vicar, 31 May 1589 (T.N.A., SP 63/144/52, f. 169r–v); brief of Pope Sixtus V to bishop of Cork, or his vicar, 8 July 1589 (T.N.A., SP 63/145/30, f. 81r–v).

28 For other materials in this collection see Brian Mac Cuarta (ed.), ‘Irish government lists of Catholic personnel, c.1613’ in Archiv. Hib., lxviii (2015), pp 63–102.

29 On government action against recusancy in Munster about 1600, see A. J. Sheehan (ed.), ‘Attitudes to religious and temporal authority in Cork in 1600: a document from Laud MS 612’ in Anal. Hib., no. 31 (1984), pp 61–8.

30 f. 61v is blank.

31 ‘Whyte’ interlined.

32 Hole in paper.

33 ‘in’ interlined.

34 Letter missing – margin is worn.

35 There is a mark, where the seal, now missing, was originally attached.