The preservation of these remains, so essential to our history, is very interestingly connected with the subsequent fortunes of the O’Clery family. Towards the close of the fatal troubles of the seventeenth century, the O’Clerys, with many other families of Tirconnell, were forced to seek shelter in the wilds of Erris, in Mayo, under the guidance of their natural leader Roger O’Donnell, the son of Colonel Manus O’Donnell, who was killed at Dungannon in 1646, and ancestor to the present Sir Richard O’Donnell of Newport. Of these O’Clerys, was Cucogry, one of the Four Masters, and senior representative of the name, who, carrying with him his books as his chief treasure, bequeathed them to his two sons Dermot and John. How strong this feeling of pride in his books, and his love of learning, continued in the midst of adversities, and even in death, will appear from the following extract from his autograph will, which was made at Curr-na-heilté, near Newport, and which is preserved in one of his works now in the library of the Academy. It is the first or principal item among his bequests:--“I bequeath the property most dear to me that ever I possessed in this world, namely, my books, to my two sons Dermot and Shane (or John.) Let them extract from them, without injuring them, whatever may be necessary to their purpose, and let them be equally seen and used by the children of my brother Cairbre as by themselves; and let them instruct them according to the (obliterated.) And I request the children of Cairbre to teach and instruct their children. And I command my sons to be loving, friendly, and kind to the children of Cairbre, and to their own children, if they wish that God should befriend them in the other world, or prosper them in this, and give them the inheritance of heaven.” The injunctions thus solemnly laid on his posterity were faithfully fulfilled. His books were carefully preserved and studied by his descendants from generation to generation, till, being brought to Dublin about thirty years since, by John O’Clery, the eldest representative of his line, they got into the possession of the late Edward O’Reilly, at the sale of whose books and Irish MSS. they were purchased for the Royal Irish Academy. This John O’Clery, who still lives, is the fifth in descent from Cucogry, the annalist, who died in 1664; and, like his ancestors, he is a good Irish scribe and scholar. We may also remark, that, though in very humble life, he can boast of a pedigree unbroken through fifty-two generations, from Eochy-Moyvaine, monarch of Ireland in the fourth century, and this on historical evidence that the learned could hardly venture to question.