In face of such facts can anyone imagine that the Inquisition was appointed to help Hamilton to waters which the Deputy had appropriated to himself? Had Judge Ross been afforded assistance in deciphering the Commission the true effect of the Inquisition would have been understood, and failure would have befallen any attempt to wrest that record to purposes repugnant to what it imported. Once the objects of the Commission are made clear, not even the most partisan could suggest that it or the Inquisition control the title to the Bann or Lough Neagh, or provide “office” for their transmission to or ownership by the Crown. Grim would have been the chuckling of the Deputy in 1605 had some seer foretold to him that in the twentieth century three Courts would decide that he signed the Antrim Commission to enable his rival and enemy to claim the fisheries which he had taken over for himself the year before! In Claneboy there were attached to some of its fifteen religious houses near Lough Neagh riparian fishings. All monasteries had vested in the Crown since the Acts of Henry VIII., but these Acts had not previously been enforceable in Ulster, which was unconquered ground. So, after fixing the bounds of Sir Con’s estate, the Commissioners set down what the monks owned in order that their property might be the more readily placed at the disposal of James I. One of the “findings” inserted in the portion of the verdict relating to the monasteries declared that Queen Elizabeth was seized of various religious houses in Claneboy and of fishings in Lough Neagh “towards Claneboy,” of eel-weirs near Toome, and of another fishery on the Bann in Claneboy, and that these vested in the King. Whether this “finding” was really pronounced need not be discussed. Parsons may have “spatch-cocked” it into the parchment which his scribes prepared after his return to Dublin when he learnt that the Deputy had joined hands with Hamilton in a conspiracy to utilise Thomas Irelande’s Letter to manufacture Patents and divert the property to himself. That theory, however, is now immaterial; although Chichester elsewhere speaks of “false inquisitions returned of latter times.” Taking it to be the genuine “finding” of the local jury, what bearing could it have on the ownership of the largest lake and richest river in the kingdom? Its terms are set out in the Appendix.