Kingdom been destroy'd but for the enormity of their sins Whereof whoever pleases may see proofs at large in Fitz-Herberts Policy and Religion Part 1. chap. 21. 22. 23 c. yea Jesus the son of Syrach for he may be more easily consulted in every Bible at hand may give to a sober man assurance enough where he says First cap. 10. 8. that the Kingdom is translated from Nation to Nation because of unjust dealings injuries calumnies and various deceits Secondly c. 40. 10. that death and bloodshed strife and the sword oppression famine contrition and scourges were all of them created for the wicked and for them the deluge was made Nay if we consult the Books of Kings read the Prophets run over the Books of Josuah Judges Deuteronomy Chronicles and the rest of the old Testament examine all the Histories of Christendom we shall not find any whole Kingdom or Nation destroy'd but for grievous and horrible sins either of the Rulers or People or Priests or all together Yea we shall commonly find the very quality and species of those transgressions mentioned that brought the vengeance on them However and notwithstanding that further yet we know that bloodshed is one of those four sins that cry to Heaven Gen. X. 11. for vengeance the Voice of thy brothers blood cries to me from the earth said God himself to Cain and that the very second of the Gen. IX 6. Laws he gave to Noe was that whosoever did shed the blood of man his also should be shed after all I dare not affirm positively that either those very Feuds of the Irish how unparallel'd soever in blood or those other transgressions in specie be they what you please were the sins that moved God to pronounce this final doom against them but only in general That their great sins compell'd him to it And how should I indeed For who was the Counsellor Esay XL. 13. Rom. XI 39. of God or who knows any thing of the secrets of his Providence except only those to whom himself was pleased to reveal them Nevertheless I dare acquaint the Reader that although I give but little credit generally and sometimes none at all to the Relations of Cambrensis where he seems rather to vent his passion and write a Satyr against that People than regard either Modesty or Truth yet I will not call in question what he relates l. 2. de Expug Hib. c. 33. of the Prophetical predictions made so many Ages before by the four Prophetical Saints of that Nation Moling Brachan Patrick and Columb-Cille and written by themselves says he in their own Irish Books extant yet in Ireland concerning the final Fate of their Countreymen the old Milesian Race viz. That the people of Great Brittain shall not only invade them but for many Ages continue a sharp cruel and yet doubtful War upon them at home in Ireland sometimes the one and sometimes the other side prevailing That although those Invaders shall be often disturb'd worsted weakned especially and according to the prophecy of Brachan by a certain King that shall come from the desert Mountains of Patrick and on a Sunday-night seize a Castle in the Woody parts of Ibh Faohlain and besides force them almost all away out of Ireland yet they shall continually maintain the Eastern Sea-Coast in their possession That in fine it will be no sooner than a little before the day of judgment and then it will be when they shall be throughly and universally victorious over all Ireland erect Castles every where among the Irish and reduce the whole Island from Sea to Sea under the English Yoak And verily those Prophetical predictions five hundred years since delivered us by Cambrensis as he received 'em from the Irish themselves are the more observable That by consulting the History of after-Ages from Henry II. of England to the last of Queen Elizabeth and first of King James we may see them to a tittle accomplish'd Unless peradventure some will unreasonably boggle at the circumstance of time express'd in these words Paulò ante diem Judicii a little before the day of Judgment Which yet no man has reason to do Because we know not how near this great day which shall end the World may be to us at this very present As for that King foretold as coming from the desâ—rt Mountains of Patric there may be occasion and place enough to speak of him again that is hereafter in the Second Part of this Treatise But whether from this Irish Prophesie either had as for the substance not the exact words of it from Cambrensis for he pretends not to give to us the exact words or had perhaps at least for some part of it from the Irish themselves resorting to Rome in those days the famous Italian Prophet of Calabria Joachimus Abbot of Flore did foretell in his time the utter destruction and eternal desolation that Joachimus Ab. post Tract super cap. X. Isaiae Part 1. de Oneribus sexti Temporis was to come upon the Irish Nation I cannot say This I know 1. That in all his predictions all along in his several Commentaries on Jeremy Esay the Apocalyps c. he pretends to divine Revelation 2. That he lived several years after the Writings of Cambrensis on Ireland had been publick For Cambrensis dedicated one part of them to Henry II. himself who died in the Year of Christ 1189. and the rest to his Son Richard when yet but Earl of Poicton And Joachim was in Sicily with Richard now King of England and Philip Polydore Virgil. in Ricardo primo King of France both wintring there with their Fleets An. 1190. in their way to the Invasion of the holy Land Nay I have my self read his submission of his Works to the See Apostolick dated by himself ten years after which was the Year 1200. of our Saviours Incarnation 3. That being ask'd what the success of this great expedition to the holy Land against Saladine should be his Answer was it should prove unsuccessful and that the time of recovering Hierusalem was not yet come 4. That this prediction of his was punctually true as appear'd ere long 5. That his Prophecy of the old Irish Nation is in these genuin words you read in the Margin * Ex rigoribus horribilis hyemis glacialis flatibus Aquilonis parit Hibernia Incolas furibundos Sed si sequentium temporum terrores praenoscerent internos impetus cogitarene à facie spiritus Domini ferreum pectus averterent se à sempiternis opprobriis liberarent Sed ex quo invicem vertitur furor aspideus involvit tam Clerum quam populum par insultus non video quod superna Clementia ulterius differat quin in â—os exactissimum judicium acuat in stuporem perpetuae desolationis impellat Omnes istos populos Cathedra Dubliniensis astringit Sed Darensium enormis iniquit as totum defaedat ordinem charitatis Et ideo
publick view 3. That notwithstanding I had on this emergent occasion thought my self eas'd of any further study on a Subject I had no liking to it prov'd much otherwise For his Lordship nevertheless continued his desires that I should prosecute and finish what I had begun and to oblige me to it without hopes of any change in him gave notice in his Preface to the Reader of his Memoir's how the Appendix he had first intended and promis'd of the State of Ireland was grown to such a Bulk as would require its coming out in a Book by its self And therefore I found my self more deeply engag'd 4. That however seeing I was now at more liberty as for Time so for Matter and for Title both I resolv'd to change my first design of so few sheets and write under the Title of a Prospect c. about threescore sheets in all but in the same method and Stile I had already begun with as more agreeable to my purpose of giving though not a strict much less a full History yet the choicest Collections and freest observations too I could derive from or in my way i. e. in several easie plain Discourses make upon the History of Ireland Thirty sheets representing in short the state of that Kingdom from the first Plantation of it after the Flood till the English Conquest and the other thirty what follow'd since for the last five hundred years 5. That because I considered the Form as Printers call it which I had also begun with already and therefore must have continued the same would be too narrow and little for a Volume of sixty sheets not rendred unproportinoably thick I give them divided as in two Parts which I call the Former and Later so in two Volums each apart So much for the Occasion Title Method Form Division of this Treatise As for those matters of Irish Antiquity so strangely far out of our ken discours'd in this Former Part I doubt not some at least or peradventure many of 'em will be excepted against by Criticks in this censorious Age. And that where nothing else can be objected Varro's Three Differences of Time must serve the turn We shall be told How the First having been That which extended from the Creation to the Flood is call'd Obscure and uncertain because we are wholly ignorant of all things happen'd in it The Second which was That from the Flood to the first Olympiad is termed Fabulous by reason of a world of Fables reported thereof But the Third extending frem the said Olympiad to our days is called Historical because the Acts of it are delivered in Histories that are true And indeed I must confess that so said Varro the most learned of the Romans 1700 years ago following herein the Greeks and after him of late our English Cambden who lays so much stress upon this observation of Varro that page 17. Hol. Translat he makes it his only argument to ruin the credit of Geoffrey of Monmouth's new History of Brute But withal I do profess that for my own part I see nothing in it that stresses My reasons are 1. The sayings of Varro how learned soever he was are no Oracles 2. The Histories of the Jewish Nation at least the Books of Moses and several more of the Old Testament Record a great variety of Matters hapned some before the Flood many more after it both the one and the other with all certainty and truth imaginable and yet all of 'em before the First Olympiad which according to Cambden himself was no earlier than the year of the World 3189. though others make it earlier by fifteen years 3. And to wave all kind of advantages from those holy Books which both Jews and Christians repute infallible as being the Oracles of God Josephus in his first Book against Appion a Book written by him 1600. years ago assures us that even the Histories of the Phenicians Egyptians and Chaldeans have recorded likewise with great truth and certainty the Reigns of their own Kings and other memorable things happen'd in their Countreys many hundred years before the first Olympiad yea not a few of them happen'd even long before either Moses or Abraham himself was born 4. There have been several Books written for true History of matters that as the Authors would make us believe happen'd since the first Olympiad nay written partly of some things reported in them to have happen'd fourteen hundred years after that Olympiad which yet we know to be most faculous Witness among so many other the foresaid Geoffrey of Monmouth's seven Books of History to say nothing at all of Annius Viterbiensis But to return back to Josephus it is also remarkable how in the same Book against Appion he wonders not a little at those who as to matters of Antiquity suppose the truth ought only to be gather'd from the Greeks Whereas indeed says he whatever is written by the Greeks is new and of late memory and has been done in the World in a manner but yesterday And this he proves in the same place at large Besides he shews that albeit their knowledg or practice not only of other Arts and Sciences but of any kind of Letters had been very late yet the latest of all among 'em was that of History That herein even after they had given themselves industriously to it they were notwithstanding very imperfect uncertain short their chiefest Authors contradicting one another in what they wrote as knowing there were no ancient Records not even in Athens it self to check their falsity nor Laws to curb their Liberty of writing what they pleas'd at random and what they wrote being so little as to other Countreys of the World that of Rome it self though very powerful within Italy in those times and so near home they seem'd for some Ages wholly ignorant That even their most curious Writers and among 'em Ephorus by name were so ignorant of the Gauls and Spaniards as to have thought the later a People denominated of one only City and related the manners both of the one and the other to be such as neither are nor at any time were among either Finally that their knowledg of other Nations was a long time so extream little as to have extended only to the bordering Thracians and the Inhabitants of the Sea Coasts lying Easterly and Westerly not far from Greece all other Inland or untraffiquing nay and all trassiquing too so they were far remote Countreys being utterly unknown to them Moreover and more nearly to our present purpose it is observable how so excellent so unbyass'd a Writer as Josephus undoubtedly is not only has in the same Book this very expression That he presumes not for matter of Antiquity to compare his own Jewish Nation with the Chaldeans Egyptians or Phaenicians but for certainty and truth highly celebrates in particular the Phenician Historian Dius and the Chaldean Berosus And yet we know from him that as well the one as the other
Christ 498. the time of Fergus Mor as they call him son to Ercho Nephew to Eochadh Muinreamhar and of his five Brothers with him invading the North of Brittain And Tigernacus who commonly delivers in Latin what was done abroad as what was done at home in Irish has of the present subject this following passage Fergus Mor mhac Ercha id est Fergusius Magnus Erci filius cum Gente Dalrieta partem Britanniae tenuit ibi mortuâ—s est c. That is Fergus Mor the son of Erch with his people of Dal-Riada possess'd himself of part of Brittain and died there about the first year of the Popedom of Symmachus Which was the year of Christ 498. as Primat Vsher has rightly observed Besides the old Irish Book containing the Synchronism or if I may so speak the contemporariness not only of the Monarchs and Provincial Kings of Ireland but of the Kings in Albania too expresly relates how it was in the twentieth year after the Batâ—â—l of Ocha that the six sons of Ercho viz. the two Enguses the two Loarns some Copies have Coarns and the two Ferguses whereof one was this Fergus the Great pass'd over into Albania I say nothing how Nennius translated into Irish among O Duncgans Miscellanies says it was in the sixth Age of the World 〈…〉 〈…〉 the Dal-Riadans had conquer'd part of the Countrey of the Picts and the Saxons enter'd on other parts of Great Brittain Nor do I insist on O Duucgan himself though he most minutely prosecutes this Adventure of Ercho's Children telling the Families issued from them in Scotland which he calls Albain what Lordships or Lands each of them was possess'd of there and what Forces by Land or Sea they usually raised But what I am particularly to observe is that of all hands among the Irish Annalists and Historians it is without any contradiction admitted That this Fergus the Great son to Ercho is the same with Fergusius I. King of the Scots though in Boethius Major Buchanan c. called in Latin the son of Ferchardus That the foresaid Battel of Ocha wherein the Irish Monarch Oillioll Molt perish'd was fought in the year of Christ 478. And that from this year to the year 498. there is no man but sees the just interval must be those twenty years on expiration whereof the foresaid Book of Syncâ—ronisin relates the passing of Fergus Mor to Brittain And the issue of all must be that certainly as to this particular either all the ancient Irish Annals and Monuments besides the late Histories of Keting and Lucius are extraordinary false or Buchanan and Hector Boethius and all other Scottish Authors follow'd by them are extreamly out Even so far out as to have at least inverted the whole succâ—ssion descent line and genealogie of their Kings by giving us a Catalogue with the Lives and Reigns of two or three and forty Kings as descended Lineally from Fergusius I. before he had been existent on Earth For Congallus is the Xliiii King in Buchanan c. and yet the eighteenth year of this very Congallus according to Buchanans computation must have been the year of our Lord 498. in which all the Irish Records place the landing of Fergus Mor in Scotland tho the very first of the Catalogue in him and other Historians follow'd by him Moreover and which yet is no less considerable than any of the former Arguments we may take notice that Buchanan and his Authors make Reuda the sixth King of those in his Catalogue descended from Fergus Then which nothing can be more plain against all the Irish Antiquities To say nothing of V. Bede in his Eccles Hist l. 1. cap. 1. whom you may consult at leasure But for the Irish Chronicles I am sure they tell us particularly that the Monarch of Ireland Conaire mhac Mogha Lauae had three sons call'd the Three Carbry's viz. Cairbre Muisck from whom the Tract of Musckry and Cairbre Baisckin from whom the Land of Corca bhaiskin both in Mounster has denomination and Cairbre Riada alias Riadhfada That this last of the Three was the first Irish Conqueror of the Countrey in Albania which bore his name being called in Irish Dal-Riada in English the Part of Riada and by Latin Writers Dal-rieta Dal-Reuda and the Inhabitants Dal-Reudini as Bede calls ' em And that his foresaid Father the Irish Monarch Conaire mhac Mogha Lauae having reign'd in Ireland eight years was kill'd in the year of the World 5364. being the year of Christ 165. Whence it must follow that his said son Cairbre surnamed Riada in Irish though by V. Bede and others called Reuda must have invaded the Picts and possess'd himself of that part of their Countrey named from him at least three hundred years before the time of Pergus the Great who as we have seen before invaded not Albania till the year of Christ 498. So wide in this very particular of Reuda is the Irish account and History from the Scottish in Buchanan How to reconcile the difference in either particular being it is so great and concerns so great a succession of Kings and Ages too for at least 819 years I leave to such as shall please to concern themselves in it more than my purpose in this place requires I should my self But let them withal take these further Animadversions to thought 1. That the Father of this Fergusius the Great however you call him Erck Ercho Ercha or either as Buchanan has it Ferchardus or any other name whatsoever was never King of Ireland as no more was Fergus Mâ—â— himself notwithstanding Buchanan's intimation to the contrary but only a Brother to Muirchiortach the Irish Monarch that reign'd over all Ireland from the year of Christ 503 to the year 527. wherein he was murder'd 2. That Joannes Major himself though a Scotchman has in his little History of Great Brittain cap. X. reflected on that Vulgar Errour in the Annals of Scotland where they place Fergusius I. before Reuda's time 3. That Hollingshed in his English Translation of Hector Boethius professes himself to be of Opinion That very many of those Kings related by the Scottish Histories to have reigned successively one after another in Scotland were such as neither successively nor in Scotland but together at the same time reigned part of them in Ireland and part in other adjacent lesser Islands 4. That Gratianus Lucius in his Camb. Evers page 93. adds moreover Himself to think not improbably that the Scottish Authors borrowed a great number of their Kings from those indeed that were Pictish Kings Where to ground this Opinion of his he produces an old Irish Translation of Ninnius I mean as to the Catalogue of Pictish Kings in that ancient Author and fixes in particular on eighteen of them by name among which is one Gregory albeit Gregory be the Lxxiii King of Scots in Buchanan's Catalogue and that King too in whom Buchanan glories so much as to record him to posterity by the