Created on 5 March 2013 at 16.29 hours page iii RODERICKO’FLAHERTY’S LETTERS TOWILLIAMMOLYNEUX, EDWARDLHWYD, ANDSAMUELMOLYNEUX, 1696 –1709 edited with notes and an introduction by RICHARDSHARPE DUBLIN 2013 Created on 5 March 2013 at 16.29 hours page v CONTENTS Preface vii Réamhfhocal le Nollaig Ó Muraíle xi Rhagair gan Brynley F. Roberts xiii Illustrations of O’Flaherty’s Hand xiv Family Trees xvi Abbreviations xvii I Roderick O’Flaherty’s Life The Writings of Roderick O’Flaherty Letters in Roderick O’Flaherty’s Time Correspondence with William Molyneux Correspondence with Edward Lhwyd Lhwyd’s Archaeologia Britannica Nicolson’s Scottish Historical Library O’Flaherty’s Ogygia Vindicated Correspondence with Samuel Molyneux The Fate of O’Flaherty’s Manuscripts Note on the Text as Presented Letters to William Molyneux – Letters to Edward Lhwyd – Samuel Molyneux Correspondence – A O’Flaherty’s Revised Latin Poem for Lhwyd Books Cited or Used by O’Flaherty Copies of Ogygia Manuscripts from the Southwell Papers I L C O D v Created on 5 March 2013 at 16.29 hours page vi B Manuscripts in O’Flaherty’s Hand Works Printed No Later than Works Printed since G I vi Created on 5 March 2013 at 16.39 hours page 1 INTRODUCTION S seven miles westward from Galway is the townland of Park, between Furbogh and Spiddal; here for many years lived Roderick O’Flaherty, author of Ogygia; seu, Rerum Hibernicarum chronologia. The remains of his house were visited in by John O’Donovan, who had been working closely and respectfully with another of O’Flaherty’s books, The Territory of West Connaught or Hiar Con- naught, and he was much moved by this visit. This book was seen into print for the first time in by James Hardiman, the historian of Galway, who did more than anyone else to document the career of the writer. O’Donovan lodged with Hardiman during the months of his work in this district, and we shall see that the two colleagues shared their interest and their transcripts. O’Flaherty’s Ogygia is a challenging work. Printed in London and available from booksellers in both London and Dublin, it offered a learned presentation of a traditional view of Ireland’s remote past, arguing that Irish antiquity could be traced far into the era before Christianity from written records as old as the Bible and the Clas- sics. Written in Latin it was potentially accessible to an international audience. It is also an odd book, neither contemporary scholarship nor pure tradition. O’Flaherty was perhaps not as deeply immersed in Irish manuscripts as Geoffrey Keating nor as straightforwardly at home as Sir James Ware in methods of inquiry that would be easily understood by an international audience. Students of Irish manu- scripts know little of O’Flaherty. Yet he was the first writer to cite texts from medieval Irish manuscripts in a modern way by folio and O’Flaherty published under the Latin name Rodericus O Flaherty, and he usu- ally signed himself simply R O Flaherty; on one occasion he signed himself in Irish as Ruaidhrí Ua Flaithbheartaigh (letter ). For the English spelling of his name, he tells Edward Lhwyd, ‘Have care to have my name in the MS Roderick’ (letter ). O’Flaherty was concerned only to avoid the equation with Roger—a linguistic habit he used in his youth but later came to deplore in general (see letter and n. )— but I have adopted his spelling in preference to Roderic, used by Charles O’Conor in , James Hely in , John O’Donovan in , James Hardiman in , and a number of name-authorities since then. Hardiman, p. viii, thanks O’Donovan for ‘several judicious observations, together with the map’, suggesting perhaps that he was himself more the provider than recipi- ent of information from manuscripts relating to O’Flaherty (Introduction, –). Created on 5 March 2013 at 16.39 hours page 2 column, sometimes comparing different copies of a text, sometimes noting the transmission of passages from one source to another. The trail of his reading in the Book of Lecan and other important manu- scripts can still be followed. From time to time he quoted his sources in Irish—his printer had a recently made Irish fount—and he trans- lated extracts into Latin verse. Had he been able to print Irish texts in extenso, his long-term influence might have been greater. Instead, he presented a precise and continuous series of Irish kings through the pagan period, always based on the evidence of texts. He was too ready to treat his sources as an authentic record, but he used the authentic sources of Irish pseudo-history. Neither O’Flaherty nor his contem- poraries understood how to interpret such sources in relation to their authors’ aims and milieux. Instead they protested the objective truth of rival pseudo-histories. Ogygia stands up well when judged by its methods, but it has perhaps always been too difficult to be widely ap- preciated. Even when it was not looked down upon for credulity, the influence of Ogygia was limited, and little else of O’Flaherty’s writing was published in his lifetime. My aim is to open up the background to Ogygia by building a por- trait of the scholar at work. The letters printed here show, as no other evidence does, the personality of O’Flaherty in his dealings with other scholars. The three correspondents through whom his letters have reached us are William Molyneux (–), natural philosopher, lawyer, and parliamentarian in Dublin; Edward Lhwyd (/– ), Welsh polymath and keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Ox- ford; and Samuel Molyneux (–), son of William Molyneux and nephew of Lhwyd’s friend Dr Thomas Molyneux of Dublin. The letters we have belong to the time between December and June . There is very little overlap between the periods in which these men corresponded with O’Flaherty, and the letters are therefore presented as three distinct chapters. This introduction will provide background on O’Flaherty’s life and writings and also on the major topics of the extant correspon- dence. It is worth highlighting at the start, however, some factors Thomas Harrison in a letter to Edward Lhwyd, dated at Dublin, January / (Bodl. MS Ashm. , fol. ), writes the name ‘William Mullinex’, suggest- ing a contemporary pronunciation /mulineks/. On June Samuel Molyneux is referred to as ‘young Molinex’ (HMC Portland Manuscripts (London, –), ix. ). I have it on the authority of the late William O’Sullivan, keeper of manuscripts at Trinity College, that the surname was traditionally pronounced /molinyuks/. In the nineteenth century Dr William Wilde wrote the plural Molyneuxes, which works for either of these but not for the modern silent x; this contrasts with the habit of Sir Capel Molyneux in the same period, who wrote Molyneuxs. Created on 5 March 2013 at 16.39 hours page 3 that should be kept in mind when reading the letters. We have only a glimpse of the correspondence between O’Flaherty and William Molyneux, and that glimpse suggests no great personal friendship. Molyneux, the younger man, was a scientist with modern interests who recognized O’Flaherty’s learning in antiquarian subjects and encouraged him to communicate it; he remained uncertain as to its value. The difference in their situations and, especially, in wealth meant that Molyneux was always the patron. The connexion with Lhwyd was very different. O’Flaherty was seventy when he first met Lhwyd, thirty years his junior, in Galway in . Lhwyd was widely recognized as someone undertaking important studies, and this gave him good connexions. In Ireland a particularly rele- vant connexion was Molyneux’s brother Dr Thomas Molyneux. At this date Lhwyd lived on the patronage of the Welsh gentry, but O’Flaherty none the less looked on him as someone who might serve him as a patron, as Molyneux had done, through his connexions. We know, but O’Flaherty did not, that Lhwyd was becoming seri- ously indebted as he printed his Archaeologia Britannica. We read only one side of their exchanges, for almost nothing has survived from papers in O’Flaherty’s keeping; and it can be demanding to make sense of the points made by O’Flaherty, usually about books, with which he expected Lhwyd to be as familiar as he was himself. In notes on the letters, I have attempted to infer some of what is now unspoken in these exchanges. The two-sided correspondence with Samuel Molyneux makes for much easier reading. Samuel was not even twenty years old when he first wrote to O’Flaherty, then approaching eighty, but this contact was welcome to the old man. Warm feelings towards the young son of a warmly remembered pat- ron no doubt played a genuine part, but young Molyneux was also rich and well connected; for O’Flaherty this relationship brought the hope of renewed patronage. The real differences in their social positions were considerable, but Samuel is respectful and O’Flaherty receptive. After they met, however, in April , Samuel appears to drop his correspondence with O’Flaherty entirely and begins instead one with Lhwyd, soon terminated by Lhwyd’s death. The whole series ends with an unanswered letter from O’Flaherty to Samuel. Querulous though he can be, O’Flaherty none the less comes across as a sympathetic personality. There is much in all his extant correspondence that must have been a source of frustration for him, but he appears always to have had the strength to carry on regardless. In reading these letters, we see a world very different from the usual Created on 5 March 2013 at 16.39 hours page 4 run of scholarly correspondence in the period, but it is not manifestly a world of Gaelic chiefs and guardians of tradition.