‘The Song of Dermot and the Earl ’ is the title invented Mr. Goddard Orpen for the old Anglo-French poem which he edited, in 1892, from the sole manuscript in which it survives, among the Carew papers in the archiepiscopal library Lambeth Palace. As the Song is regarded generally as an important source for the history of the Anglo-Norman invasion Ireland, and as I have reached conclusions on that point serious different from those of the editor, I wish to submit my conclusions for examination.

The history of financial administration in both Great Britain and Ireland is such a neglected subject that it is not surprising to find the years 1641–9, which form a period of special difficulty and confusion, receiving scarcely any attention from serious historical scholars. During this time the responsible authorities in Ireland, England, and Scotland, devoted much time and thought to raising money for the British forces in Ireland. The problems with which they were confronted, and the methods by which they attempted to solve these problems, have an important bearing on the course of the rebellion in Ireland and on its ultimate result.

Under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, which forms, with some slight amendments, the written constitution of Northern Ireland, power was given to the province to set up a separate record office for itself. When the transfer of services to Northern Ireland took place, no steps were at first taken to establish such an office, although circumstances would soon have necessitated the consideration of such a course. Local departments and minor courts contained an accumulation of documents which were aged over twenty years from the date of making, and therefore, according to a statutory provision, fit for transfer to the central repository. Partly from the disturbance of customary routine due to war conditions, partly from motives of prudence owing to the disturbed state of the country, which rendered transport unsafe, these documents had for some time not been transferred to Dublin. The destruction of the Four Courts in June 1922—which involved the loss of the Irish records and the specially equipped building in which they had been preserved—entailed the consequence that there was no longer in existence a repository suitable for the receipt of Northern Ireland records, even supposing that such would be sent out of the province in the altered situation. By an act of 1923, the northern government set up its own record office.

An example of an inaccuracy that has been reproduced by successive historians is furnished by the date of birth of Hugh O'Neill, second earl of Tyrone. Cox, Leland, Plowden and Bagwell omit to mention a date. Mitchel implies that O'Neill was born in 1542 or 1543, Meehan in 1539 or 1540, probably on the authority of Peter Lombard, papal archbishop of Armagh in the first quarter of the sixteenm century. Dunlop gives the date as ‘ about 1540 ’ Yet references in the state papers prove conclusively that his birth could not have taken place until about ten years later. In a letter from Cecil to Challoner, written after the death in 1562 of Brian O'Neill, Hugh's elder brother, it is stated that ‘ there is still another brother alive, not yet twelve years old and so a candidate to the Earldom of Tyrone still exists ’. In a letter to Queen Elizabeth, written in 1587, Hugh O'Neill refers to himself as having been ‘ a child of tender years ’ in 1562, when his brother was murdered. In the same year Sir Henry Sidney wrote to Walsingham in the following terms: ‘ I had with me the young Baron of Dungannon, Shane's eldest brother's son, whom I had bred in my home from a little boy, then very poor of goods and full feebly friended ’. As Hugh O'Neill crossed to England in 1562, and lived in Sidney's house after that date, the year 1540 is obviously inaccurate. Cecil's evidence shows him to have been about twelve in 1562, which would make the year of his birth 1550, and, as this is supported by the other evidence referred to, we must place his birth a decade later than the year usually given.