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LIFE OF CHARLES HALIDAY. XXV
appears that having ransacked all printed
sources of
knowledge he next applied to the Corporation of Dublin
for access to their ancient records, the Corporation of
Dublin being the sole owners and managers of the port and
river in early times. He now eagerly embarked in the
study of the ancient muniments of the Corporation of
Dublin consisting of the Assembly Rolls, the Chain Book,
and the White Book of the City. How zealously he noted
be seen
all that was to be found in these curious records may
from the four volumes in quarto in his handwriting now in
the Royal Irish Academy containing all that is to be found
in the Assembly Rolls concerning the River and Harbour
of Dublin, besides many other matters he observed in them
either curious or instructive.
Mr. Haliday naturally found it hard not merely to master
the mediaeval characters and contractions used by the
scribes of early times, but also to decipher some of the
earlier Corporation Rolls as they were much defaced by age,
and still more by the marks of nut galls made use of for
reviving the faded writing by (I believe) the Record Commissioners
of 1810 in their examination of them.
In the ancient records of the Court of Exchequer too James Frederic
there was also a vast amount of materials to be found
illustrative of the history of the port of Dublin. These
being in the care of James Frederic Ferguson, with whom I
had some short time before formed a close friendship, I had
the pleasure
of making him known to Mr. Haliday. t
A curious accident led to my acquaintanceship with Mr.
Ferguson. When leaving the Four Courts one afternoon,
early in the year 1850, by the western quadrangle, I observed
two labourers carrying each a load on his shoulder of what
seemed to be Cumberland flagstones, but a further inspection
showed them parchments covered with dust. They were
Bills and Answers of the Equity side of the Court of
Exchequer. They told me they were removing them from
the Exchequer Offices then kept in the buildings on the