With respect to the O’Reilly name and family, I have consulted my distinguished’ friend—­and I am proud to call him so—­John O’Donovan, Esq., LL.D., M.R.I.A., who, with the greatest kindness, placed the summary of the history of that celebrated family at my disposal.  This learned gentleman is an authority beyond all question.  With respect to Ireland—­her language—­her old laws—­her history—­her antiquities—­her archaeology—­her topography, and the genealogy of her families, he is a perfect miracle, as is his distinguished fellow-laborer in the same field, Eugene Curry.  Two such men—­and, including Dr. Petrie, three such men—­Ireland never has produced, and never can again—­for this simple reason, that they will have left nothing after them for their successors to accomplish.  To Eugene Curry I am indebted for the principal fact upon which my novel of the “Tithe Proctor” was written—­the able introduction to which was printed verbatim from a manuscript with which he kindly furnished me.  The following is Dr. O’Donovan’s clear and succinct history of the O’Reilly family from the year 435 until the present time: 

“The ancestors of the family of O’Reilly had been celebrated in Irish history long before the establishment of surnames in Ireland.  In the year 435 their ancestor, Duach Galach, King of Connaught, was baptized by St. Patrick on the banks of Loch Scola, and they had remained Christians of the old Irish Church, which appears to have been peculiar in its mode of tonsure, and of keeping Easter (and, since the twelfth century, firm adherents to the religion of the Pope, till Dowell O’Reilly, Esq., the father of the present head of the name, quarrelling with Father Dowling, of Stradbally, turned Protestant, about the year 1800).

“The ancestor, after whom they took the family name, was Reillagh, who was chief of his sect, and flourished about the year 981.

“From this period they are traced in the Irish Annals through a long line of powerful chieftains of East Breifny (County Cavan), who succeeded each other, according to the law of Tanistry, till the year 1585, when two rival chieftians of the name, Sir John O’Reilly and Edmund O’Reilly, appeared in Dublin, at the parliament summoned by Perrot.  Previously to this, John O’Reilly, finding his party weak, had repaired to England, in 1583, to solicit Queen Elizabeth’s interest, and had been kindly received at Court, and invested with the order of Knighthood, and promised to be made Earl, whereupon he returned home with letters from the Queen to the Lord Deputy and Council of Ireland, instructing them to support him in his claims.  His uncle, Edmund, of Kilnacrott, would have succeeded Hugh Connallagh O’Reilly, the father of Sir John, according to the Irish law of Tanistry, but he was set aside by Elizabeth’s government, and Sir John set up as O’Reilly in his place.  Sir John being settled in the chieftainship of East Breifny, entered into certain articles of agreement with Sir John Perrot,