WALSH, Peter A Prospect of The State of Ireland from The Year of the World 1756 to The Year of Christ 1652. Written by P.W.

London: Printed for Johanna Broom at the Gun in St. Pauls Church-Yard, 1682. 16mo. pp. [lxviii], 504, [6]. Modern half brown morocco on marbled boards, titled in gilt. Ex lib with neat stamps. Early signature crossed out on front blank. Inscribed on A3 ‘Hugh Smithson / His Book’. Ex lib with library label on front pastedown. A very good copy.
ESTC R34713. Wing W640. Sweeney 5523.
Peter Walsh, D.D. was born near Naas, County Kildare c.1618. He was educated at the Irish College at Louvain. Joined the Franciscan Order and was later Professor of Divinity at Louvain. He returned to Ireland in 1646, the following year he attacked in nine consecutive sermons the ‘Disputatio Apologetica’ of Cornelius Mahony, in which the rights of the kings of England to Ireland was denied. As a consequence of his conduct Walsh was deprived of the lectureship in divinity to which he had been appointed at Kilkenny. He was driven from the house, and even forbidden to enter any town which possessed a library. Rinuccini accused him of having affected the nobility of Ireland and destroyed the cause. He also afterwards described him as “turned out of his convent for disobedience to superiors, a sacrilegious profaner of the pulpit in Kilkenny cathedral, who vomitted forth in one hour more filth (sordes) and blasphemy than Luther and Calvin together in three years”.
Walsh sided with Ormond and wrote against the Papal Nuncio, which led to his excommunication. For his loyal services to Ormond he received a pension from the Government. He died in 1687 and is buried in St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West, London. The Bishop of Salisbury said of him that ““He was the honestest and learnedest man among them (Catholics), and was indeed in all points of controversy almost wholly a Protestant”. In the dedication to Charles II, Walsh declares himself an “unrepentant sinner”, determined to die as he had lived, the King’s “most loyal, most obedient, and most humble servant”.
‘A Prospect of the State of Ireland (1682) was undertaken at the earl of Castlehaven’s suggestion and is an account of Irish history and pre-history based on ‘Foras Feasa ar Éirinn’ by Geoffrey Keating, a work that Walsh had read in his youth; it is important as the first history of Ireland in English to be based on native sources.

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