and Administration of the Sacraments, and other the rites and ceremonies of the Church according to the use of the Church of England, together with the Psalter or Psalms of David, pointed as they are to be sung or said in Churches, and the form and manner of making, ordaining, or consecrating of Bishops, Priests and Deacons, which was recommended unto both houses of Convocation here assembled in Ireland to consider whether the same Form of Public Worship might not be profitably received as the Public Form of Divine Service in this your Majesty's Kingdom of Ireland.' And the next clause goes on to say the same, from which it appears that our Convocation was determined to accept the exact same form as that in England.

"So far as I could hear, I was the first person in modern times who saw that Exemplar. I informed Archbishop Magee of it, who never had heard of it, and he got it and had an edition of our Irish Prayer Book corrected by it.

"I compared my edition of the Prayer Book with the MS. found in the Rolls Office, which is the original attached to the Act of Uniformity in Ireland, and is the only original in existence, the MS. which was attached to the English Act of Uniformity having been long since lost. The English Prayer Books have been taken from what were called Sealed Books,' that is, certified copies of the original. But in those Sealed Books were several mistakes, as appears by our original. Perhaps, also, our original was more correct than the English, having been submitted to our Convocation some years after the English had been

h

in use, during which time mistakes might have been discovered and corrected.

"My last edition I consider the most correct that has been published in Ireland.* It has hitherto been very difficult to get Irish printers to print accurately. I corrected the last edition four or five times, and went over it a dozen times. Yet some mistakes were made afterwards in punctuation and spelling.

"I compared every word and every letter of it with the last splendid folio Cambridge edition, in which are several mistakes; and as I advanced, I found that that edition had been manifestly corrected by several different hands I therefore gave up my previous intention of getting assistance, and corrected the whole of it myself.

"Several questions having been of late hotly debated about the Prayer Book, it may not be amiss to determine how much of our present Prayer Book is to be considered as law. The Preface, however good, is not part of the Prayer Book, as sanctioned by Convocation and the Legislature in Ireland, neither that part immediately following the Preface, Concerning the Service of the Church,' nor yet 'Of Ceremonies, why some be abolished and some retained.' These all give excellent information and advice,

* The Book of Common Prayer, and administration of the Sacraments, and other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, according to the use of the United Church of England and Ireland: together with the Psalter or Psalms of David, pointed as they are to be sung or said in Churches; and the form and manner of making, ordaining, and consecrating of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. Dublin: Printed by George and John Grierson, Printers to the Queen's most Excellent

but are not to be quoted as law. The Prayer Book begins with the two Orders, viz., The Order how the Psalter,' &c., and The Order how the rest of Holy Scripture,' &c.

"The original calendar was very much altered, by the English Act of Parliament, for the change of style. The new calendar is given in that Act, with which I have carefully compared the calendar for my last editions.

"And it is a curious fact, that the change of style was for 30 years erroneously supposed to be in force here, and every date of every document in those 30 years was wrong. The English Act extended it to all His Majesty's dominions, but it was found, in 1782, that that could not bind Ireland, and then the English Act was adopted here, but no cure was applied for the wrong dates of 30 years. This struck me with surprise, when examining those acts, for I never have seen the circumstance men

tioned by any one.

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It may not be amiss here to explain an omission made in the part of the MS. preceding 'The Order for Morning Prayer', the last page of which, as it now stands, ends with the catch-wordDays,' and no other page follows answerable thereto. The subsequent pages must have contained the old Tables for finding Easter and the fasts and feasts depending thereon according to the old Kalendar; but when the new Kalendar was established in England, (and supposed to be established in Ireland,) in the year 1752, and the old Kalendar and Tables repealed, some officious person cut out the old tables from the MS. Book, and along with them the Rubric for 'Days of Fasting and Abstinence,' which happened to be on the same page with those tables,

and also the Rubric for Morning Prayer, which was at the end of said tables upon the same page.

6

"In our Act of Uniformity 2 Eliz. The Ornaments of the Church and Ministers thereof shall be retained and be in use, which were in the Church of England by the authority of Parliament in the 2nd year of the Reign of King Edward the sixth Until other Order shall be therein taken by the Authority of the Queen's Majesty with the advice of her Commissioners appointed and authorized under the great Seal of England or of this Realm for Causes Ecclesiastical, or by the Authority of the Lord Deputy, or other Governor or Governors of this Realm (Ireland) for the time being, with the advice of the Council of this Realm, under the great Seal of this Realm.' I quote this for the sake of the last sentence.

I cannot say that any such order ever was made by our Lord Lieutenant and Privy Council; neither can I say that no such order was made, for all the records of our Privy Council were burned by a fire in the Castle about the year 1712. But it is clear that we have still the power of making such order. But I do not perceive much uneasiness in the Privy Council upon the subject. Several are Roman Catholics; and I was told by a very eminent Roman Catholic member, the late Mr. Blake, who had been Chief Remembrancer, that on one occasion of swearing in Lord Justices, all the other members were Roman Catholics, and Judge Ball, a Roman Catholic, had to administer the Oath of Supremacy and the Declaration against Transubstantiation!

"The Canons in general have not the sanction of

statute law; but the 30th English Canon is in force here, and has the sanction of statute law, both here and in England; and consequently, I introduced it for the first time in my last edition (see Rubric in Baptism).

"The Table of Kindred and Affinity,' which has been stated by the late Commissioners upon the laws of Marriage with several lawyers and ecclesiastical civilians in said Commission, to be attached to the Prayer Book,' is no further attached to it, than by being bound up with it. I admitted it here, as I did the Canons, Preface, &c. It is statute law in England, but not in Ireland. It depends here merely on its adoption by a Canon.

"I do not think the Canons of 1634 are Laud's Canons; they are rather Ussher's, who would not adopt the English Canons. Laud's Canons of 1640 were disused in the time of Charles II.

"The last Act of Uniformity would certainly set aside anything in our Canons inconsistent with it, and makes both them and the Act of Elizabeth to bear upon the last Prayer Book instead of those to which they referred at the time of their enactment. In every other respect our Canons are in force here, and the English Canons are in force in England, but not here, except as adopted by the Church Rates and Church Temporalities Acts, as rules for necessaries for Church service.

"The Act of Union does not relate to the Canons. The 5th Article was merely a security for the Church of England against Presbyterians and Dissenters. It is curious that that part of the Act of Union was enacted nearly a century before. It made part of the Act of Union