Catalogue description HENRY VIII. to SIR ANTHONY SENTLEGER.

We have received sundry letters from you and the Council, whereby we perceive the quietness and stay in which our land there is. Like as we wrote that we would prepare a convenient sum of money to be conveyed to you, so have we sent to you at this present 2,000l. in harp groats. "You write to us for an aid of money towards the reedifying and building of certain towers, piles, and fortresses upon the straights and passages of the Irishmen, as well upon the frontiers of O'Chonor as also in the fastness of the Tooles;" but considering that the season of the year serves not for building, so that the delay of sending to you any aid of money shall nothing hinder the same, we have thought good to signify to you our pleasure, that in the mean season you shall cause plots to be made of such fortifications, and send them to us with an estimate of the charges, "and what aid, besides the fines which ye write of, ye will require of us toward the same." Being informed that some of you are of opinion that we may diminish and abate fifty of our number of footmen in the lieu of those charges, we will that you do advertise us jointly of your opinions whether we may so do conveniently or no.

Touching our Parliament to be holden there, as it is thought most convenient to us and our Council that the same shall be kept in the Lent season, we have sent you our licence under our Great Seal for the summoning of the same, to begin in crastino Purificationis next. "As to the articles engrossed to be set forth and passed as acts in our said Parliament which ye have sent unto us, we have forborne to remit and send them again to you, as well because ye have not sent us the whole contents of such acts as ye intend to set forth in our said Parliament, as for that we have not received from you the transumpt of such acts as were passed in our last Parliament there, which are very necessary to be conferred and perused by our Council here." You shall send us both the said transumpt and the residue of your acts now to be set forth, and also therewith our serjeant, our attorney, or our solicitor there, or some other person learned, "being riped and sufficiently instructed, to answer to all such points as in the same shall appear to us or our Council here to be doubtful or ambiguous."

"Touching the Prior of Kylmaynam, like as we have already answered you in that part by our last letters, so we are still resolved thereupon, and also are content that he shall have his pension of 500 marks allotted and yearly paid unto him within that our land; for the assurance whereof, albeit as we perceive ye have devised an Act to be passed by Parliament within that our land, yet, considering that it is already sufficiently provided for in our last Parliament here, we have therefore thought it rather convenient to make him further assurance thereof our letters patents under our Great Seal of Ireland; for warrant whereof, and also his creation and advancement to the state and dignity of Viscount Clontorfe, with the annuity of 10l. annexed to the same, as we wrote in our last letters to you our Deputy, if ye shall send unto us two several bills conceived in due form for the same purpose, we shall remit the same unto you signed with our hands accordingly."

We understand that Osborne Itchingham at his own charges has kept 12 men in his retinue, for the better executing of his office of Provost Marshal, without any allowance for the same. "Ye shall not only allow him his 12 men in wages from the time of his entry into the said office hitherto, and so from henceforth during our pleasure, but also that ye shall in lieu thereof defalke and diminish so many of some other captain's number at your discretions, so that we [be] no further charged than appertaineth."

We also understand that although we have granted to John Travers, Master of our Ordnance there, the farm of the site of the house of St. Mary's Abbey, by Dublin, with the demesnes and farms lately in the hands of the Abbot there, "both for the maintenance of hospitality, and also for that it is a place very propious and meet to lay in our ordnance and artillery," yet he is deferred from the possession of the same because you have no warrant from us. Our pleasure is that indelayedly you put our said servant in possession of the same, "to enjoy it at such reasonable rent as it is or shall be surveyed at, for the time of his abode in Ireland in our service, and no longer, with a convenient regard to the maintenance of the necessary edifices thereof."

We are informed that our servant Matthew Kynge, since his entry into our service there, has had no certain allowance either for himself or his retinue, for the better executing of his office of clerk of check of our army there, "saving only a prest upon a reckoning." For the time he has been and shall be in the said office, you shall make him allowance and payment of his wages after the rate of 12d. by the day for himself, and the wages of ten horsemen after the rate now appointed.

Copy. Headed: "Hen. VIII. -- Ireland. -- The minute of the King's letter to Ireland, Sir Anthony St. Ledger then L. Deputy."

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 152.