.. Vll
TO THE READER.
Abstracts from the depositions of Cromwelrs Adherents ; these I have compile~. from the onginals preserVed amongst the Carte MSS. in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 3rdly~ The records of the Corporation contain, a~ present~ no account of their· officers before 1609, when Sheriffs wed3 substituted for. High Balliffs, and it is not known where Smith got his list ; but another list has been found ·in a MS. volume ·of miscellaneous matters, collected by Aidn. Pembroke, who was Mayor in 1733, and which is more perfect than Smith's, which does not comprise the Bailiffs. Smith designates the first five chief magistrates, which he mentions by the :title of Provosts ; but this seems to be an error, for in Pembroke's list they l}Ppear as Mayors, and the secondary officers associated with the earliest Mayor are there called by the name of " Propositors," that is Provosts, which really seems to mean ·Bailiffs. However, the regular series of Bailiffs does not commence till long after. Smith mentions the discon- tinuance of the Corporation in the time of the Civil Wars, and its resto- ration as a Protestant body, in 1655, when John Hodder was appointed Mayor; but in his list this appointment is assigned to the year 1656. How this discrepancy arose prese~ts a difficulty, for the first leaf of th_e Register of the Court of D'Oyer Hundred has been removed, so that the exact date of the appointment of John Hodder) in 1655, cannot be known. He might have been appointed at the regular time, but by a study of what follows, it seems probable that he was elected for only the remnant of the ·tegal year of office> and when the proper time for a new election in 1656 arrived, he was re-elected for a full year> with the same Sheriffs who had served with him before. New Year's day, at that time, was the 25th day of March, and the time· for swearing the Mayor and Sheriffs into office was the Monday next after Mich 8 • day (the 29th of Sepr.). For the_loan of this MS. I am indebted to Abraham Foster. J.P.• of Garrettstown. County Cork, where it is preserved.
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