This was a hopelessly mistaken deliverance. The Inquisition was an “Antrim Inquisition,” but the Commission for it extended to Down as well. It first sat at Ardwhin (recté Ardquin), where no reference to the fisheries was made. Moreover, the Antrim Inquisition does not find that “Queen Elizabeth was entitled to one-half of Lough Neagh.” The translation by the “archivist” was:— “All that moiety of the pool of Lough Neagh which lies towards the east parcel of Claneboy aforesaid in the county aforesaid.” This was merely a finding as to the half of a “pool” lying in the district to which the jurors were confined, and not one for half Lough Neagh. The Record Office translation published years before the litigation, the work of a brilliant scholar, does not even employ the word “one-half.” Whatever be the meaning of “medietas,” it is in this “return” confined to something in Claneboy. Dr. Smith’s Latin dictionary gives for its equivalent “the mean,” and states it is “a word doubtfully coined by Cicero from the Greek.” In enlarging the scope of the Antrim Inquisition beyond Claneboy Lord Macnaghten displayed much intrepidity. His conjecture that “Probably there were other inquisitions dealing with the rest of the lough” is still more rash. No trace of them exists, and none ever existed. The confiscators took the utmost care to preserve all writings which could warrant their possession. Chichester ordered the Antrim inquisition, not to help Hamilton, but to block him. They were then rivals, if not enemies. When they became allies soon afterwards no Crown title existed to justify Hamilton’s Patent for Lough Neagh and the Bann. Every stretch of the river was in legitimate private ownership under English law, save the monastery reaches. The Lough lay in no man’s private wallet—as was then notorious. Never before was “fancy” History invented to decide the fate of real property in the House of Lords. Preferable, indeed, is the title invented by the ex-monk, Miler Magrath, who, when converted into a Protestant Archbishop of Cashel, was got to visit London in Elizabeth’s reign, and in a “book set down in writing by her Majesty’s express commandment” declared in 1592:—“It is holden for an opinion in Ireland that her Majesty hath special right and interest in all principal rivers, loughs, lakes and great waters, in all islands and commodities contained upon them.” Miler, however, added a doubt:—“If this opinion be true ... I am not sure of it.” From that day to the present no one else has been able to invent a better title for the Crown to grant away Lough Neagh. Lord Macnaghten was deeply impressed by the litigation in the Irish House of Lords. He quoted Lord Clare’s account of his going to Armagh when Attorney-General to dispute Lord Donegall’s title (omitting his error as to the Act of Settlement) and declared:—