"We shall have little here to do but barely to transcribe the several forms used by the citizens in riding their franchises at different periods, as the same has been transmitted to posterity either by authentic records or ancient manuscripts, whose evidence is not to be controverted at this day; more especially as the reader will readily perceive, by comparing each form, how little variance there has been therein from the beginning to the present times, except in the names of places, which yet are but few. It would indeed be a difficult task for the citizens to have at any time stretched their rights beyond the just limits within the city or suburbs, as they were surrounded on most parts by vigilant neighbours, namely, the ecclesiastics of St. Mary's Abbey, Kilmainham, Thomas-court, and St. Sepulchre's, or the liberties of the Archbishop of Dublin, who were upon all occasions ready to procure papal anathemas and censures against those who offended them in less momentous matters than the loss of their lands. Several of the instruments we shall have occasion to cite are written in Latin; but to show our fidelity, we shall transcribe them verbatim, and for the sake of the English reader, translate them literally into our own language. "The earliest instrument that occurs is one of John Earl of Morton, and Lord of Ireland, dated at London, the 14th day of May, in the third year of the reign of his brother, King Richard I. (A. D. 1192,) which refers to a former charter of local franchises, granted by King Henry II., now lost. The charter of King John is to be seen in the black book of the Archbishops of Dublin, called "_Alan's Register_," being collected by Archbishop Alan, in the reign of Henry VIII., and as it containeth other liberties besides their metes and bounds, we shall here give only so much thereof as is pertinent to the subject before the reader:-- "'CHARTA JOHANNIS, "'Domini Hiberniæ, de metis et franchesiis civitatis Dublin, et de libertatibus concessis. "'Johannes dominus Hiberniæ, Comes Morton, omnibus hominibus et amicis suis, Francis et Anglis, Hiberniensibus et Wallensibis, præsentibus et futuris salutem.