REEVES, Rev. William. Ecclesiastical Antiquities of Down, Connor and Dromore, consisting of a Taxation of those Dioceses, compiled in the year MCCCVI; with notes and illustrations.

Dublin: Hodges & Hodges, 1847. Crown quarto. pp. xxiv, 436. Original publisher’s blind-stamped cloth, title in gilt on professionally rebacked spine. A very good copy.
William Reeves (1815-1892) antiquarian and Church of Ireland Bishop of Down, Connor & Dromore from 1886 until his death, was the last private keeper of the Book of Armagh and at the time of his death was President of the Royal Irish Academy. Born at Charleville, County Cork, Reeves was the eldest child of Boles D’Arcy Reeves, an attorney, whose wife Mary was a daughter of Captain Jonathan Bruce Roberts, land agent to the 8th Earl of Cork. This grandfather had fought at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill, and Reeves was born at his house in Charleville.
By 1845, Reeves was corresponding with the Irish scholar John O’Donovan, and an archive of their letters between 1845 and 1860 is preserved at U.C.D. Reeves’s career was furthered by this learned work. He was a friend of Margaret Stokes and with his colleague Todd is credited with inspiring her interest in Irish antiquities. At the time of his death, he was working on a diplomatic edition of the Book of Armagh, by then in the Trinity College Library. The work was completed by Dr John Gwynn and published in 1913.

[Cat 160]