Series 1 > Tours in Scotland 1747, 1750, 1760

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
xlix
purple and gold—and placed over it the painting of a ‘ glory,’
which he brought from Italy. The latter is still preserved in
the chapter-room.
The Bishop caused all the old monuments in St. Canice’s
Cathedral to be repaired and arranged, though not all in their
original position, and employed John O’Phelan, ‘a learned and
ingenious man,’ who kept a school in Kilkenny, to copy all the
existing inscriptions. This ms. was afterwards printed by Dr.
Peter Shee, entitled Inscriptions on the Tombs in St. Canice's.
It is illustrated by plates, which were drawn by a self-taught
Kilkenny artist named Coffey, and etched by William Maxton,
a private soldier belonging to a regiment then quartered in
Kilkenny. The original ms. was recently in the possession of
that learned antiquary, the late Rev. James Graves, A.M.,
Rector of Inisnaig, diocese of Ossory.
During the three or four years following his settlement in
Kilkenny Bishop Pococke found much to occupy his attention
in his diocese, with intervals for the study of Irish antiquities
and ecclesiastical remains.1 Thus in 1757 he communicated
‘An Account of some Antiquities found in Ireland’ to the
London Society of Antiquaries, and after his death it was
published in the second volume of The Archceologia, 1773,
together with plates of twelve gold ornaments. In that paper
the Bishop alludes to a communication on Irish golden antiqui¬
ties made in 1747 by Mr. Simon 2 of Dublin. The ms. of the
latter paper was found in the archives of the Society, and was
communicated to the Royal Irish Academy on Feb. 10, 1862,
by Mr. W. R. Wilde, V.P.
All the literature relating to Scotland which he could com¬
mand had been carefully digested—Bede, Anglo-Saxon Chro¬
nicles, Camden, Buchanan; Sacheverell’s Isle of Man and Iona ;
Dean Munro’s and Martin’s Western Isles; Gordon’s Itinerarium
Septentrionale; De Foe’s and Mackay’s Journeys; Richard of
Cirencester’s Itinerary, etc. He now felt himself fully informed
1 Communicated by Dr. W. Frazer, Dublin. 2 P. xlvii.