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XXVI SOME NOTICE OF THE
extreme west of the Four Courts building and nearest the
Quay, and were taking them to the Benchers' Buildings in
the rere of the Four Courts.
in-:, rv f Following these guides and mounting a temporary wooden
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rcase I found myself in the presence of a solitary figure,
sole master of a suite of empty rooms, engaged in sorting
vast masses of parchments, books, and papers. These and
a couple of chairs their only furniture. He seemed about
fifty, and was of good stature. His hair very dark, his
complexion sallow, with full dark lustrous eyes. His mien
was mild, modest and retiring, and rather marked with
melancholy. This was James Frederic Ferguson. He was
then engaged under the authority of the Lords of the
Treasury in sorting and cataloguing the Exchequer Records
preparatory to the division to be made of them between
the Chancery and Exchequer on the abolition of the Equity
Jurisdiction of the Court of Exchequer. He was born at
Charleston in South Carolina in 1806, where his father, a
native of France but of Scottish descent, was a professor in
the College. This gentleman's grandfather left Scotland
because of his joining the Pretender in 1745 and settled in
Sweden. In 1814 young Ferguson came from Charleston to
England and remained in London until 1821 when he came
to Ireland, with Mr. Samuel Cooke, of Sunderland, in the
county of Durham, formerly a banker, then employed about
the recovering of certain advow sons supposed to belong to
the heir of the Lords Barnewall of Turvey, Viscounts
Kingsland.
Samuel Cooke The heir to this ancient title was Mathew Barnewall who,
of Sutulorland,
ad the Kings- from being a butcher's basket-boy at Castle Market, and
afterwards a waiter at a tavern in Dawson-street, recovered
the title as told in Sir Bernard Burke's " Vicissitudes of
Families." Length of time had barred all claim to the lands,
but as no lapse of time then barred the claims of the Church,
this low-born peer found speculators in London to risk10,000
on his visionary rights, and in 1817 to employ Mr. Cooke