WARE, JAMES, SIR, 1594-1666.
Ware's Tracts on Popery, [16??]

MANUSCRIPT NUMBER 041

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REPRODUCTION: Item may not be photocopied due to preservation concerns.

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CITATION: Sir James Ware's Tracts on Popery, MSS 041, Archives and Manuscripts Dept., Pitts Theology Library, Emory University. 

Sir James Ware, Irish antiquary and historian, was the eldest son of Sir James Ware and his wife Mary Briden, born in Dublin on November 26, 1594. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1610 and graduated M.A. in 1616. Encouraged by Archbishop James Ussher to pursue his antiquarian and scholarly interests, Ware collected manuscripts and charters and became acquainted with some Irish men of letters, such as Duald MacFirbis. He published several tracts including "Archiepiscoporum Casseliensium et Tuamensium Vitae" (1626), "De Scriptoribus Hibernae" (1639), "De Hibernia et Antiquitatibus ejus Disquisitiones"(1654), and "S. Patricio adscripta Opuscula" (1646). After a turbulent life, Sir James Ware died at his family house in Dublin, on December 1, 1666.

Ware's Tracts on Popery is a small volume of 36 pages which is comprised of four tracts:

1. a discussion of the question put by Catholics to Protestants "what doe you make of all your Ancestors and fathers who both lived and died in the faith of the Church of Rome, are they damned. If they were, o what wretches and uncharitable creatures be yee so to judge them: If they be not damned, wherefore forsooke yee the Church of Rome";

2. "A letter from the Protestants of Bohemia to King Henry the 8th Translated out of Latin into English and remaining with the Choise Papers and Memoires of the Lord Wm Cecill afterwards with James Ussher Primat of Armagh in Ireland...november 10th 1535" (written from Prague);

3. "The History of the Church of Rome ab Anno 315" (11 pages);

4. "Reasons wherefore a consent to abolish ye Paenall Statues agst Papist cannot be given by any who owne ye Present Government in church and state".

 Written about 1650, the subject matter, the spine label and the association of one of the tracts with Archbishop James Ussher suggest that the first three tracts are by Sir James Ware, Irish antiquarian and historian. The fourth tract, by another unknown author, was written about 1686.

This work is in poor condition, the four tracts are bound in a slender volume. Some of the pages of this volume are loose, torn, and stained. About one-half of the pages are calf skin.