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LIFE OF CHARLES HALIDAY. XXV11
at a salary of 800 a year to establish them in Ireland. The
evidence to support them lay, if anywhere, in the ancient
records of the Common Pleas and the Exchequer, and Mr.
Cooke knowing little of anything but of shooting and fishing,
in 1821 brought over young Ferguson, a connexion of his
by marriage, to do this work.
From the opening of the office doors in the morning till
their shutting, Ferguson was at work on the Kingsland
claims. After the failure of this business (for there was
onlv recovered the poor living of Garristown near the Naul,
in the county of Dublin), he became assistant to William
Lynch, sub-commissioner of the Records, author of Feudal
Dignities in Ireland, and afterwards Record Agent for
Peerage Claims in London, and was invaluable to him for
his zeal and for his knowledge of Irish records.
Mr. Ferguson, who was gifted with intellectual qualities Ferguson's
of a high order and had a refined literary taste, was a con- fo Inquirers!
tributor to the historical literature of his country, although
generally unknown, for with characteristic unobtrusiveness
his name was generally withheld from the public. In him
every archaeological inquirer found a ready friend and
earnest, self-denying assistant.
The only inquiries he had a distaste for were genealogical
ones, and yet he would labour gratuitously over his records
with such inquirers as if he liked it and were paid for it.
Often have I seen him closing the door after one of them,
gently raise his hands as if he was glad " to be shutt of him,"
saying mildly, " How I hate a pedigree hunter."
The records placed under his charge were his only care His journey to
and object; they were to him instead of companions, family, Me.Tsburg >&
and friends, and to them and those who esteemed them and Germa y-
valued them as he did, he devoted his entire life. One
instance that I was myself conversant of will give some
notion of his love of records. In the month of April, 1 853,
Mr. R. L. Pearsall, then resident at the Chateau de Wartenau
on the southern or Swiss side of the Lake of Constance
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