Catalogue description WILLIAM SAYNTLOO to CROMWELL.

By your means the King appointed me for life seneschal of the liberty of Wexford and of all his lands. You have been informed that I have received the revenues of the liberty and lands "otherwise than at the keeping of the King's Grace's courts of the four manors for bloodsheds, lederwikes, and such like perquisites," as appears by the verdict of the "said" inquest. If you do not wish me to take such petty things, I will never intermeddle with them. "I never had to have extreme punishment." You have also been informed that I refused to go to the Deputy at his sending for me; but I have always been prompt to do his pleasure. In the journeys on James FitzJohn I have served without wages; and my retinue had but eight marks for a horseman and four marks for a footman. We followed the Council to Dublin, and when we had spent all, we had licence to repair to the county of Wexford. Of the soldiers' wages, due at Michaelmas last, 76l. are unpaid. I have had no wages for the year ending Michaelmas last.

The county of Wexford borders on the Kavenaghes; "this notwithstanding the King hath certain lands named the fasaghe of Banauntrey, parcel of the said liberty, let to farm by the King's commissioners, as Mr. Sentleger and others, to Mr. Richard Butler, where inhabiteth Kavenaghes, McMorghowe's judges, and Irish rymers, victualling daily such enemies as burn, spoil, and destroy the King's poor subjects the inhabitants of his Grace's county of Wexford; and in the said fasaghe they divide the poor men's goods, and I dare not follow the hurts unless I had sufficient power to match the pretensed tenants, as well as his Grace's manifest Irish enemies. There is another sort of Irishmen named termoners or pensioners. These in like manner destroy this liberty by continual spoils; so that if I have spial on the said Irish enemies, and find him and all his followers in his house, and find the goods of the King's subjects there in like manner, being evertofore a grievous offender for his death and followers, I have been complained on to the King's Council. These pensioners of Kavenaghes, when I had power, did bear yearly rents to the King's Majesty and now by tribute of other powers destroy the King's obedient subjects.

Roscarlan,

Addressed: The Lord Privy Seal. Endorsed.

Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts preserved in the Archiepiscopal Library at Lambeth, ed. J. S. Brewer & W. Bullen (6 vols., 1867-73), vol. I, document 97.