Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/789

This page needs to be proofread.

Ingram: Critical Examination of Irish History 779 In most instances the exact date is of little consequence, but regard- ing the beginning of Barrowe's imprisonment a more important problem arises. In the account of his examination immediately consequent upon his arrest written by Barrowe, and published soon after his death, he, or his printer, gave the date of the beginning of his imprisonment as No- vember 19, 1586, and further described it as " this 19th being the Lord's day." That date Dr. Powicke, like Dr. Dexter, accepts. Now, Bar- rowe's arrest took place on a visit to his imprisoned friend. Greenwood ; and though Dr. Dexter, moved by Barrowe's apparent definiteness of date, gave a guarded assent to Dr. Waddington's opinion that Green- wood's arrest took place in the autumn of 1586, the testimony of the State Papers points much more to October 1587 as its true epoch. Bar- rowe, or his printer, probably made an error in designating the year ; and a decided confirmation of this conclusion is to be found in the fact that November 19 fell on Sunday in 1587, not in 1586, a fact which Dr. Dexter and Dr. Powicke have overlooked. If Barrowe's imprisonment really began in November 1587, it makes readily comprehensible his statement, in the spring of 1590, that he had " been two years and well- nigh a half kept by the bishops in close prison," without resorting to conjecture, as Dr. Powicke does, as to a possible mitigation of his im- prisonment in 1587. It seems supported also by Barrowe's statement in the letter written immediately before his death, in April 1593, affirming that he had sustained "well neer six yeres imprisonment." Barrowe would have said "more than," had his incarceration begun in 1586. The careful reader will query, probably, why Dr. Powicke, in his bib- liography of Barrowe's writings, omits to give the full title Qi A Collec- tion of Certain Letters and Conferences, on the ground that the title-page was damaged in the copy that he consulted. It is recorded under No. 170, in Dr. Dexter's bibliography of Congregational literature. One wonders, also, why he should have chosen to give the title and reprint the text of the True Description . . . of the Visible Church from the modified edition of 1641, rather than from the original of 1589. Dr. Powicke is so familiar with the original that he collates its readings on the margin of his text of 164 1. The natural proceeding would have been to have printed the original in the place of honor. But these are not very serious blemishes on a conscientious and painstaking work. WiLLisTON Walker. A Critical Examination of Irish History, being a Replacement of the False by the True, from the Elizabethan Conquest to the Legis- lative Union of 1800. By T. Dunbar Ingram, LL.D. (Lon- don, New York and Bombay: Longmans, Green and Co.; Dublin : Hodges, Figgis and Co. 1900. Two vols., pp. vi, 354, 350-) Dr. Ingram has produced not a history but a controversial pamphlet in two volumes, whose purpose is to prove the theses that England has