Life
1594-1666; antiquarian; b. Castle St., Dublin; collected Irish manuscripts
and commissioned Dubhaltach Mac Firbisigh to translate many of them; knighted,
1629; appt. auditor-gen. of Ireland, 1632-49 and 1660-66; issued The
Historie of Ireland (1633), compiling works of Meredith Hanmer, Edmund
Campion, and Edmund Spenser (A View), using the manuscript copy
in the possession of Archbishop Ussher, and censuring some of Spenser’s
more extreme pronouncements and appealing to the ‘good effects of
the last thirty years’; MP Dublin University, 1634-37, and 1661;
[viz., Cashel and Tuam]; Archiepiscoporum Casseliensium et Tuamensium
vitae (1636); De praesulibus Lageniae (1638); and De
Scriptores Hiberniae (1639), otherwise History of the Writers of
Ireland (Latin edn., 1639; English 1764), listing native and settlers
in separate volumes; Privy Councillor in 1639; auditor-general in Ireland;
sent on mission to Charles I at Oxford, 1644; hon. DCL, Oxon.; imprisoned
in tower of London, 1644-45; hostage in England, 1647; banished from Dublin
by Michael Jones, 1649; lived in London, 1651-60; issued De Hibernia
et Antiquitatibus eius Disquisitiones (1654); De Hibernia et Antiquitatibus
eius (London 1658), in which he speaks of the Irish diet as ‘meagre
- milk, butter and herbs for the most part - meadow trefoil, water cress,
common sorrel ad cochlearia’; edition includes an illustration of
Lough Derg and St Patrick’s Purgatory; returned to Dublin as auditor-general
at the Restoration, 1660; issued Rerum Hibernicarum Annales 1484-1558
(1664); Rerum praesulibus Hiberniae (1665); collated the manuscript
Book of Armagh it for his edition of the Confession as S. Patricio
adscripta Opuscula (1656); d. Dec. 1666; bur. St. Werbergh St.; The
Annals of the Affairs of Ireland (1705) with a Brief Chronology from
1602 to the present date, probably issued by his son Robert; the entire
works translated by Walter Harris, who married his grand-dg., as The
Whole Works of Sir James Ware (1739-64). RR DNB DIW DIB CAB JMC
FDA OCIL
[ top ]
Works
De Praesulibus Hageniae, sive Provinciae Dublin[i]ensis
(Dublin 1628); Vitae archipiscorum Casseliensum et Tumansium (Dublin
1628); ed., Ancient Irish Histories, the Works of Spenser, Campion,
Hanmer, and Marleburrough (Dublin 1633; rep. 2 vols. Dublin 1809);
De Scriptoribus Hiberniae Libri Duo [2 vols.] (Dublin 1639; facs.
edn. Farnborough Hants 1966); Librorum manuscriptorum bibliotheca Jacobi
Waraei, equitus catalogus (Dublin 1648); De Hibernia et Antiquitatibus
ejus ... Disquisitiones ... (London 1654), with engraving by W. Hollar
[var. 1658]; St Patricii qui Hibernos ad fidem Christi convertit adscripta
Opuscula; Opera et studio, J. Waraei, Eq. Aur. (London 1656); Rerum
Hibernicarum annales ... 1485-1558 (Dublin 1664); The Antiquities
and History of Ireland: The Life of Sir James Ware Prefixed translated
and edited by Robert Ware (Dublin 1705); Walter Harris, ed., The
Whole Works of Sir James Ware concerning Ireland, revised and improved
(Dublin 1739-64), and Do. [rep.] (Amsterdam: Da Capo Press 1971).
Sir James Ware, ed., The Historie of Ireland, collected by three learned authors, viz., M[eredith] Hanmer, E[dmund] Campion, and E[dmund] Spenser [published by Ware in 3 fol. vols.] (Dublin: by the Societie of Stationers 1633), rep. as Ancient Irish Histories (Dublin 1809); also Histories of Ireland [sic] in Walter Harris, ed., Works of Sir James Ware (Dublin 1739-46 [recte 1764]) [Cited in ‘Authorities’, Bradshaw Cat., 1916]; Irish Writers and writers in Ireland to 1600 (1639); The Whole Works of Sir James Ware concerning Ireland, Vol. I. Containing, The history of the bishops ... [3 vols.] (Dublin: for the author by E. Jones 1739) [folio copy presented to Marsh’s Library by the editor, Walter Harris].
De Scriporibus Hibernia (1639); as History of the Writers of Ireland (1764), 2 vols.; Vol I: Such Writers Who Were Born in the Kingdom; Vol. II: such who, though Foreigners, enjoyed Perferments or Offices there, or had their Education in it ...’. [see Alspach, 1959, p.46]
[ top ]
Criticism
Kathleen Hughes, ‘A Manuscript of James Ware, British Museum, Additional
4788’, Proc. RIA ser. C., 55 (1952-53), pp.111-16; also NHI, III.
Russell K. Alspach, Irish Poetry from the English Invasion to 1798 (Phil: Pennsylvania UP 1959), p.46 & .95f.
Michael Herity, ‘Rathmulcah, Ware and Macfirbisigh’, in Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 33 (1970), pp.49-53 [contrasting antiquarian traditions represented by these].
Maurice Craig, in Dublin 1660-1860; cites his History and speaks of Harris as being ‘unjustifiably’ regarded as first Dublin historian.
Robert E. Ward, et al., eds, Letters of Charles O’Conor of Belanagare (Cath. Univ. of America Press 1988), p.xxiv.
Joseph Leerssen, Mere Irish & Fíor Ghael (Amsterdam 1986), pp. 61-62.
Sir John T. Gilbert, History of Dublin, Vol. 1 (1854), p.5.
Norman Vance, Irish Literature, A Social History (Basil Blackwell 1990), p.26.
George A. Little, Dublin Before the Vikings (1957), pp. 19, 96, 97, 171, 208.
Thomas King Moylan, ‘Vagabonds and Sturdy Beggars’, in Dublin Historical Record (March 1938), p.11-18.
[ top ]
Notes
Dictionary of National Biography, calls him an
Irish historian, MA TCD, 1616; collected Irish MSS and studied Irish history
and antiquities; knighted 1629; auditor gen. of Ireland, 1632-49?; mission
to Charles I at Oxford, 1644; hon. DCL Oxon., prisoner in Tower, 1644-5;
hostage in England, 1647; banished from Dublin by Michael Jones, 1649;
resided in London, 1651-60; returned to Dublin, 1660; published important
contributions to Irish history and biography, 1626-65. See also Richard
Ryan, Biographia Hibernica, Irish Worthies (1821), Vol. II, pp.622-36.
DIW compares him with Micheál O’Cleirigh [chief of the Four
Masters].
Charles Read, A Cabinet of Irish Literature (3 vols., 1876-78), narrates that he was imprisoned in Tower of London on his way to Ireland in 1684; exchanged, and captured again at surrender of Dublin in 1647; 2 years in London prison; lived 2 more years in France after 1649. ‘The Camden of Ireland’; his Antiquitatibus began to appear with his Lives of the Bishops in 1626 (London); bur. St. Werburgh’s St.; CAB selects passage on ‘Surnames of the Ancient Irish,’ ‘The Origin of the Irish’ ("the posterity of Japhet"), and ‘A Life of St. Patrick’ (which begins by remarking that the biographer’s pen has so far unhappily "fallen into weak and injudicious hands."); all in Harris’s translation. NOTE that Justin McCarthy, Irish Literatre (1904), excerpts same essays.
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; 1984), notes that British Museum Add. ms 481 f. 157v-8r is Robert Ware’s trans. of his father Sir James Ware’s Latin account of the teaching of a ‘newe grammar’ by Richard Owde at St Patrick’s Grammar School in Dublin in 1587, and the ensuing controversy, arbitrated in favour of the older grammar of Lily (1540) by Archbishop Loftus since ‘diversities of grammars would be destructive of learning’. [21]
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1 selects De Hibernia et Antiquitatibus Ejus ... Disquisitiones, trans. Robert Ware, 264-65 [the passage deals chiefly with Cormac, son of Culinan, who was both king and bishop, and his death at the battle of Moy-albe, XVI Aug. 908; his authorship of Psalter-Cashel ‘which is yet extant, and in great esteem’; version in Ware’s possession, manuscript (antient parchment’ called Psalter Narran [Saltair na Rann]; Ware makes reference to reading ‘in a certain MS of Cotton’s library’ a version of the death of Cormac’; also Irish Annals; discusses Irish tonsures, but resigns the topic to Ussher in his Antiquities of the British Churches, and Prosperus Stellartius in his book on crowns and tonsures]; notes at 175 [Ware’s heavily edited version and truncated version of Spenser’s View, 1933; for comm. see Rudolf Gottfriend, ed., Spenser’s Prose Works, Vol. IX and variorum ed. of Spenser’s works (Johns Hopkins UP 1949); Ware’s ed. held sway until replaced by Renwick’s 1934]; 236 [Ware collected MSS and used native scholars Mac Firbisigh and Tadhg Ó Rodaigh; his MSS descended to his son, a less tolerant author who nevertheless translated his works in 1705]; 867n., 880, 978n, 1015n.; Note also that he is cited in connection with the ‘Book of Rosse or Waterford’ [1608], known to him as the source of the Entrenchment of Rosse, in Norman French [FDA1 150]. BIOG., 273, James Ussher his uncle. WORKS & CRIT [as supra].
British Library holds J. Wariae equitis aurati de Hibernia et antiquitibus eius disquisitiones, editio seconda &c. (?186), containing Spenser’s View of the Present State of Ireland; Historie of Ireland by three learned authors, Hanmer, Campion, and Spenser, with Marrleborrough’s Chronicle of Ireland (Soc. of Stationers, Dublin 1633); Ancient Irish Histories, Hanmer, Campion and Spenser (Hibernia Press, Dublin 1809, reprinted from 1633 ed.; MOR 4 DA 905.W26). Also De Scriptores Hiberniae, 2 vols. (Dublinii 1639); and Collected Works, inc. ‘Writers of Ireland’ (Dublin 1739, 1746, 1764); Antiquities and History of Ireland ... with His 2 books of the Writers of Ireland ... added ... that rare and admirable discourse of Sir John Davis [sic] (London 1704-05; [OS 4 DA940.W26 [Dobson, Dublin 1705]). Some other works incl. Archiepisc. Casseliensis ... quibis adjicitur Historia Coenobiorium Cisterciensum Hiberniae (Dublin 1626); De Praesulibus Hiberniae (Dublin 1665), and De Praesulibus Lageneniae sive Provinciae Dublinensis (Dublin 1628); Hunting the Roman Fox ... a specimen of popery and separation, writings of Sir James Ware collected by R[ichard] Ware (Dublin 1683). A library catalogue was issued in 1648.
Hyland Books (Cat. 224; Dec 1996), lists The Antiquities and History of Ireland, Containing 1: His Inquiries ...; 2: Annals of Ireland ... 3: The Prelates ...; 4 Writers ...; 5: Historical Relations by Sir John Davies (Dublin 1705/4), 4 pls., incl. pl. of Hibernia; preliminaries and ‘Encouragement’ [single vol.]. Also, The Works of Sir James Ware Concerning Ireland, Revised & Improved; Vol. 1, Containing the ... Bishops ... (Dublin: E. Jones 173), 1-660pp. [Bradshaw 1473]; Vol. II, Containing 1. Antiquities ..; 2. The Writers (Dublin: S. Powerll 1750), (8)+1-384+(4)pp., port. & 20 pls. [Bradshaw 450]; [Vol. III], The Writers (Dublin: A. Reilly 1746), (2)+354++(5)pp., with index [Bradshaw 1460], this copy formerly the property of Anthony Dopping. Also, The Works of Sir James Ware, Concerning Irlnad, revised and improved; Vol II: The Hisotry & Antiquities of Ireland ... The Writers of Ireland (Dublin 1764) [Bradshaw 460], ports. and 21 pls.; list of plates; large paper copy; Writers bearing a title-page imprint of 1746 [£200].
Ulster Libraries: UNIV. OF ULSTER LIBRARY (Morris Collection) holds Ancient Irish Histories, the Works of Spencer, Campion, Hamnerr and Marlburrough [sic] (Hibernia Press 1908). BELFAST CENTRAL LIBRARY holds Antiquities and History of Ireland (1705); Ancient Irish Histories, Sir James Ware’s collection of Hamner, Spenser, and Campion (1633, 1809). BELFAST LINENHALL LIBRARY holds Antiquities of Ireland, 1764 (Works, v. ii).
[ top ]
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)