Catalogue description INSTRUCTIONS to SIR ANTHONY SENTLEGER, DEPUTY, and the COUNCIL.

Instructions given by the King, with the advice of his Council [in England], to Sir Anthony Sentleger, Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and Deputy of Ireland; Sir Thomas Cusak, Chancellor there; the Archbishop of Dublin; the Bishop of Meath; Sir Gerald Ailmer, Chief Justice of the King's Bench; Sir Thomas Luttrell, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas; Sir Patrick Barnewell, Master of the Rolls; James Bathe, Chief Baron; Sir William Brabazon, Vice-Treasurer; Thomas Hoth, Second Justice of the King's Bench; Sir John Travers, Master of the Ordnance; Sir Ralph Bagnall; Edward Basnet, clerk, late Dean of St. Patrick's; and Thomas Lockwod, clerk, Dean of Christchurch, Dublin; whom his Majesty has appointed to be of his Privy Council in Ireland.

(1.) The Deputy, with the advice of the Council, shall set forth God's service, according to our ordinances, in English, in all places where the inhabitants, or a convenient number of them, understand that tongue. Where the inhabitants do not understand it, the English is to be translated truly into the Irish tongue, till such time as the people may be brought to understand the English.

(2.) To give order that "no sale nor alteration be made of any church goods [or] bells, or chantry or free chapel lands," without our assent. If any alterations have been made, the same to be reformed. Inventories to be made in every parish of such goods, ornaments, jewels, and bells, of chantry or free chapel lands, and of all other lands given to any church, lest some lewd persons might embezzle the same.

(3.) To see our laws uprightly administered, and our lands, rents, woods, escheats, forfeits, and all other profits well surveyed, and the rents and profits truly paid into the receipt of our Exchequer. The Deputy, Chancellor, and Barons of the Exchequer, the Master of the Rolls, the two Chief Justices, and the Auditor, to give acquittances to the Vice-Treasurers and accountants.

(4.) The Deputy to see that the Barons and officers of our Exchequer do their duty, in calling together all customers, searchers, comptrollers, and other officers accountable in that court, and that the surveyor of our lands do his office. The said customers, &c. to give sureties for the true administration of their offices. The allowance for repairs of our castles and manors to be no more than our Deputy, Chancellor, Chief Justice, and Chief Baron shall appoint.

(5.) To charge the surveyor and other head officers of the mines to see that our officers, artificers, and labourers in the same do their service truly, "in gathering together ore, cleansing, perfecting, and also in transporting the same ore so cleansed and perfected to the mint;" and to make declaration once in six weeks. If great profit be found, more workmen to be engaged. "If any lead or other metal rise amongst the same ore, the same to be duly ordered and put in safe keeping to our use.

(6.) To call the Master of our Ordnance to declare the state of his office and the waste made in the same yearly, and to give order for provision to be made yearly by him of "bows, arrows, pikes, javelins, spades, shovels, helfes for bills and mattocks, spades, elm for mounting of ordnance, powder, shot, hakes [axes], harquebursiers," and other necessaries for war. As we are informed that "there is wood enough there for bows and pikes, they shall search what furniture they are able to make there, and to certify it, certifying also yearly what the remaining of their store is, and, in case of need, what that need shall be to be supplied from hence.

(7.) To give order that all the men of war shall be able men and fit for the wars, and also well furnished with armour and all sorts of weapons, and the horsemen well horsed and expert in riding, governed by good and discreet captains. "The men of war not to be of the nation of Ireland above the number of ten in every band of a hundred, but others that be of the country may remain strong of themselves, eschewing black rents and coyne and liveries as much as may be, charging us with no more than shall be necessary; forasmuch as our said Deputy may take of our friends and servants and also galloglasses and kerne as need shall require, employing them, amongst the rest, continually in our service, where it may tend to best purpose for increase of our strength and country, always trayting noblemen as they may be had for our service, when need shall be to call for the same, and so there may be conquest made of the men as well as of the land, with some profit and great strength without charge." To discharge all disobedient captains and soldiers, and replace them with others.

(8.) "To apply all that he may to have the havens and ports into our hands, that the customs and profits coming of them may come to our hands, and that no man land there but such as shall appear to be our friends and subjects." We grant two of our pinnaces, furnished with ordnance and all kinds of munition, and well equipped, for the purpose. Special attention to be given to the ports of Valentimore, Knokfargus, and Strangforde, "foreseeing as well how they and every of them may be best reduced to good obedience, and how they may be after best guarded, victualed, and to what purposes the same and every of them may best serve.

(9.) To give straight order for the punishment of offenders; to favour the obedient; to redress wrongs; to study the commonwealth of the people, "wherein one part consisteth in keeping within the realm all wool and other commodities of the realm, as all things may be good and cheap;" and to make provision beforehand to withstand scarcity, and for the continuance and increase of all good races and breeds of horses;--any licence heretofore granted for the export of wools notwithstanding.

(10.) To "make search for the mines of alum, and cause the same to be tried to perfection, and being found good, then to stay the same as it may be wrought for us, and employed to the best purpose and most profit.

(11.) To call before the Council the surveyor of our lands and others appointed by our special commission, and to let our farms for 21 years, whenever they become void by expiration of former grants, escheat, or otherwise, reserving to us and our heirs the ancient rents, great woods, underwoods, fines, wards, marriages, and other casualties; the timber to be used for our buildings, and the underwoods to be sold amongst the tenants and their neighbours. Decayed rents to be recovered.

(12.) To call in to our order and tuition all our wards and their lands; to give order for their well bringing up, accounting to us for their liveries when they come to full age, and for our widows' fines for licence to marry, or marrying without our licence; and to have power to make sale of our wards being under the degree of a baron.

(13.) "To cause the surveyor of our lands to search where most plenty of timber is nigh the good havens, for making of ships, and thereof to certify us and our Council, and what good shipwright[s] and mariners be in the land, and to what number.

(14.) To practise with the port towns, and such other cities and towns as stand near any havens or creeks, that they "may begin to fortify their said towns now in time of peace;" and to aid those conformable "with their [the Deputy's and Council's] best advice for setting out of bulwarks," &c.

(15.) To practise with such noblemen and others as they think good for the exchange of some parcels of their lands for other lands of like value in England, and to advertise [the King] of what is done in this matter, that further order may be given.

(16.) "Whereas the captains and soldiers there being in our wages be sundry times and for sundry causes vexed and troubled as well in the common law as in the Chancery and other courts there, so as many times they are not able to attend their service," our pleasure is, that they shall not be answerable to any such courts, but only before our Deputy or our Marshal, "so that justice be done to him or them within three months next after the commencement of the plenty, the same being followed with effect, or else the parties to be remitted to the common laws of the realm [according to our commission in this behalf.] [The words in brackets are added in another hand; probably for inclusion in the subsequent commission to Sir James Crofts, in which these words appear.]

(17.) As the countries of Offallye and Lex, lately called O'Conour's country and O'More's country, are now in good towardness to be wholly in our hands and possession, and yet not in perfection," the Deputy and Council to take order for the full and ample possession of the same countries, and also for the surveying thereof, and to let them to farm or otherwise for terms of 21 years, allowing the farmers one or two years rent free.

(18.) In all time of war between us and either the Emperor or the French King, the Deputy may give licences to any of their subjects to import merchandise under our protection, and to export all merchandise not "restrained to be carried out of that realm.

(19.) "Where our manors and castles, as well those of long time in our hands, as others now lately builded and not yet finished, be meet to be maintained and fully builded," our pleasure is, that our Deputy, with the advice of the Chancellor and the Chief Justice, the Vice-Treasurer, and Master of the Rolls, shall take order from time to time for their furnishing and maintenance, and make a book of the charges, which shall be sufficient warrant to the Vice-Treasurer for defraying the same.

(20.) Henry Coley, William Duke, and others who have been charged to make provision for the forts lately commenced to be builded in Lex and Offalley, to be summoned before the Deputy, Chancellor, Barons of the Exchequer, Master of the Rolls, the two Justices, and the Auditor, to give an account of the money committed to them. The Deputy, &c. to take like order with all purveyors hereafter.

(21.) The Deputy and Council shall endeavour especially to reduce to order that part of the land called Leinster, wherein dwell the Cavernaughes, Tooles, and Byrnes.

Endorsed: "Mem. of the instructions given to Sir Anthony Sentleger and the rest of the Council in Ireland, July 1550.

A copy in MS 611, p. 341.

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 193.