Hamilton manuscripts

INTRODUCTION.
" The following MSS. are without name or date, but contain internal evidence of having been written
" by a member of the Hamilton Family, about the latter end of the 17th century, and certainly prior to
" the year 1703, in which the death of one of the family occurred, who is mentioned in them as being
" alive at the time they were written. They were, therefore, composed almost contemporaneously
"with the celebrated Montgomery MSS. (written between the years 1698 -and 1704), and with
" which the narrative contained in them is intimately connected. The originals are in the possession
" of the family of the late well-known Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Esq., of Killyleagh Castle,
" County of Down, who entrusted them to their present Editor, in the year 1834, f° r publication
" at some future time, with a request that he would illustrate them with any observations he might
" consider necessary. The mass of valuable facts and documents which the Editor has since collected
" for this purpose, and which, in the few leisure intervals of a busy professional life, he has been able
" to connect with the MS., in the form of Notes, will best prove the manner in which he has fulfilled
" the trust. We have great satisfaction in being made the medium of first communicating these
"curious papers to the public in the pages of our Journal." — Ed. Ulst. Journ. of Archceology.
Such was the notice with which the first three chapters of the following Manuscripts, which
appeared in the third and fifth volumes of the Ulster Journal of Archceology, were introduced by its
Editor ; and now that, in consequence of the discontinuance of that valuable periodical, the print-
ing of the entire of the MSS. in one volume has been rendered necessary, it seems only proper
that some further account should be given of the circumstances under which their publication was
undertaken by their present Editor, which he considers cannot be better done than by publishing