inscription of the period to which this belongs, I present a facsimile of part of the legend on the tomb of King Henry III. in Westminster Abbey, of exactly the same period, 1275-1291, and which is universally allowed to be the best model in existence of the letters of the thirteenth century :

ENGLEGERE

Facsimile of Inscription on Tomb of Henry III. in Westminster Abbey.

The similarity between the Kilkenny letters, and the punctuation of the inscription, as shown on the Plate (p. 79), with that of Henry's monument is most remarkable. My reading of the Keteller Monument Inscription is as follows:

Ici gist Jose de Keteller ..

Dist tu ki ci vas. . .
trespasa l'an de grace mil et
cc et quatre vins.

Here lies Jose de Keteller

Say thou who here passest (or see'est this).

who died the year of grace one thousand and
two hundred and four twenties (eighty).

"Keteler" is indeed a very ancient and a still more famous Kilkenny family name. I do not know if there is anyone of the name at present here, though some years ago a man named "Kelter," a sawyer, lived on the Dublin-road, which doubtless is the same patronymic. The name, however, brings us back to the first notable and historic event which made Kilkenny famous, viz. to the early part of the fourteenth century (1324), when the celebrated trial of the Kilkenny Witch, Lady Alice Kyteler took place, she being charged with sorcery. In the Patent Roll of Edward I. (1302) there is mention made of a William le Kiteler, who would probably be the brother of the lady sorcerer, and this is the first local acquaintance history has made with the name

till our monument was discovered, which takes us back an age earlier Dame Alice lived, it is believed, in the house in King-street, next the Market Gate. She is a world-famed and historic character. She had four husbands, all of whom she was charged with poisoning, though not put on trial for it. The first husband was William Outlawe, a wealthy banker. He must have died before 1302, as the second, Adam le Blound of Callan, was then living. This fact enables us tolerably well to ascertain the relation between the witch and Jose de Keteller of the monument. In 1302, after burying her first husband, she would probably be 27 or 30 years, as the average period of married life allotted to the other spouses was 10 years. Now Jose de Keteller of the monument died in 1280, so that Alice would be about 10 years of age at the time of his death. Here we have almost an undeniable proof of the historic notability attached to this simple slab unearthed in 1894, viz. that the history related upon it refers to no other person than the father of the celebrated witch, Lady Alice. Friar Clynn, in his famous annals, which he wrote at the Franciscan Abbey, near where the monument is now placed, says her trial took place in 1324. She had then also buried the third husband, Richard de Valle, in 1311, and the fourth husband, John le Poer, in the same year as her trial, 1324.

The story of this cause celebre has been so often related that few readers are unacquainted with the facts.

The original site of the Keteller monument of 1280, discovered under a public-house, I fear must remain for ever a subject of conjecture. No doubt the position is one offering many suggestions. First, was the place ever a grave-yard? Second, did St. Mary's Church graveyard extend so far? Third, was it an ancient Irish graveyard adopted by the Normans after their entry? A strange fact here steps in to set us thinking. Within a few feet of the spot where the monument was found, and in line with it, though in a different house, are two other monuments under the foundation of Messrs. Power & Son's warehouse. A report on the appearance of these two monuments was made to the Kilkenny Archæological Society in 1854, by the late Mr. J. G. A. Prim. He said: "The piers of the old archways were found, and these rested upon ancient tombstones, one bearing a floriated cross in relief, and the other an incised cross." This latter was probably of the same age as the Keteller tomb.

These two tombs could not be disturbed without endangering the house. There is no doubt a graveyard existed here. Quantities of bones have been found in the surrounding grounds by the late Alderman Thomas Power, J.P. A chapel too must have existed on the spot, where Messrs. Power & Son's machine works are situated. this there is considerable testimony.

Of

To begin with, the existence of a chapel most probably gave rise to the passage up to it, called " Chapel-lane," which many centuries later became the passage to what we now call old St. Mary's, which stood at the town rampart between Chapel-lane and James's-street. If a chapel existed on the spot, was it merely a private chapel of the mansion which stood here; or did it take its date from far earlier origin? The latter supposition seems established by all the facts at our disposal. One of the several city mansions built in the sixteenth century in Kilkenny occupied the site of the publichouse, and of Messrs. Power & Son's warehouse. But it was separated from the old building at rere by what was known as Coffee-house-lane, down to a late period, the ecclesiastical remains being still visible in the machine works. In Chapel-lane, upon the gable of this building, there yet appears, through the many changes which the masonry has undergone, the pointed jamb of a window, and inside are two small alcove openings pointed, not splayed, which are plainly ecclesiastical. But there are other strange remains in the same wall which we believe have never yet been noticed by any archeologist, and this even in Kilkenny, where everything has been so well described. There are two pairs of doors and windows in a continuation of the same wall in which the two alcove windows are. The whole length of this building in which these remains are is 80 feet, and breadth 40 feet. As before stated, it was separated from the mansion in front by a laneway which ran out into High-street at right angles to Chapel-lane, where it communicated with this old building, and then passed between the warehouses now occupied by Messrs. Power & Son and Messrs. E. Smithwick & Co. The two pairs of windows and doors, quite close to each other, are in the back or west wall of the machine works. These structures are plainly belong

ing to the twelfth, or beginning of the thirteenth, century; and it becomes an interesting question to divine what brought them here. One of the doors shows a rude attempt to construct an arch from two stones, and the window, in the accompanying illustration, which is 3 feet from it, shows a flat lintel of a single stone on top.

Window in Wall, in Chapel-lane,
Kilkenny.

The other door and window may be of later construction. They are like what we see in thirteenth-century churches. The door has a round-arched top; the window a single stone flat lintel. The two pair of opes are in the same wall with the alcove windows, which runs a distance of 80 feet from end to end.

In 1865 Mr. L. J. Power gave to Mr. J. G. Robertson a carved stone, which Mr. Robertson says in the Transactions was "the apex of a gable barge with the base of a cross at top." We have thus on the spot the doors and windows of an ecclesiastical structure; we have the evidence of large quantities of bones in the soil; and we have also the head-stones; so that a conclusion that a chapel and graveyard existed here, is irresistible.

In 1175 Donald O'Brien marched from Limerick to Kilkenny, and the troops of Strongbow, stationed here in 1170-71, fled before him, after which Donald levelled everything but the round tower of St. Canice's. The Normans immediately returned, and up to the coming of William Marshal in 1191, twenty years elapsed, during which period there was need for church and burial-ground, and there seems to be no reason to doubt that the ancient church of St. Mary's parish was taken possession of here by the Normans, who built a structure suited at that time to their limited requirements. The Marshal, after arriving in 1191, founded the Castle, St. John's Priory, and the New St. Mary's Church, which is but 80 yards from this spot, where no doubt the original St. Mary's stood, the churchyard of whic would be long after used as a burial-place by the descendants of the families who first lay there, amongst them being De Keteller. The New St. Mary's Church, in Mary's-lane, was completed about 1202. In the Deeds of Exchange between Bishop de Rous, and William Marshal, "The Church of the Blessed Mary of Kilkenny," is mentioned so that it must have been completed before 1202, and was doubtless the first church built by the Earl after his arrival.

But after the building of the then new St. Mary's, let us glance at the ancient site upon the other side of High-street. It seems to us from the proximity of the two doors and windows in the one wall that a domestic apartment was attached to the old church, which may have been used by the clergy long after the founding of the new church. And later on the site increased in importance. On the space in front of the old church, and separated from it by the laneway, one of the city mansions was founded. The windows with their drip lintels are still to be seen, and a stone stairway leading down to the cellars is still in existence. This mansion was founded in the end of the sixteenth century by Sir Richard Shee, knight, of Upper Court, who made it his town residence.

This building, like many others of the time, rested on a row of arches in front, like the Rothe House in Parliament-street, and the Langton House at Butter Slip, and the monuments were placed as bases to the pillars, it not being then considered a serious profanation, we suppose, to change their position to such a slight degree as from another portion of the graveyard.

Later still, however, the mansion became more historic. Cromwell did not remain longer here than it took him to level everything to ruins. But he left Governor Axtell behind him, who took up his residence in Sir Richard's mansion, it being a central position from whence he could carry out his barbarities. In a petition of the Marquis of Ormonde to King Charles II., Axtell, who had such a leading hand in the execution of Charles I., is mentioned as follows:

"Yet soe it is that Collonell Daniel Axtell in the year 1653 without any order or direction even according to those tymes, but out of his willfull and imperious disposition and innated quarter-breaking mind and quality, seized, &c."

Axtell shot down and scourged the people as if they were mere brutes. When he was afterwards executed at Tyburn as one of the regicides, the only things which troubled him were his shameful barbarities at Kilkenny.

The site of course subsequently passed to other hands. Mr. Martin Walsh, who formerly held the building adjacent to the machine works, told me he paid rent to the representatives of Sir W. G. Newcomen, and subsequently to Mrs. Kingsmill. Mr. John M'Creery, of Larch Hill, has sent me a note to the effect that "the premises at corner of Chapel-lane were formerly held by Mr. Denis Kehoe, hardware merchant (vide Directory of Kilkenny,' 1788). His daughter Eliza was married to Mr. Basil Gray, who lived in an adjoining house, now in Messrs. Power's possession. Mr. Gray was a wine merchant; he died sixty years ago; his widow died in 1850, aged eighty-seven years. These two houses and premises at rere, and up Chapel-lane, were held by lease under the Kingsmill family by Mr. Kehoe, who left the same to his daughter Mrs. Gray, who demised them to her daughter, wife of Mr. John McCreery, Larch Hill."

Basil Gray, I believe, came here from the Queen's County.

Whatever else may have to be said on this interesting subject we will leave to the future historian, who, aided by the presence of the other monuments now hidden from view, may be able to shed further light upon the story of the De Ketellers. Indeed so attractive is the subject of the trial of Dame Alice, that during the present year I saw a splendid oil painting of the trial in imagination from the pencil of an Italian painter in the hall of the castle at Gurteen le Poer, the proprietor of which is a lineal descendant of the Sir Arnold, Seneschal of Kilkenny, who it may be said died in defence of the cause of Dame Alice, against Bishop de Ledrede, which he had so warmly espoused. The monument of the parent of the Kilkenny world-famed witch is at least an interesting accession to the archæological objects in which the city abounds.