Ware, James, Sir (1594 -1666)

James Ware was the eldest son of Sir James Ware, of Castle Street, Dublin, and his wife, Mary Briden. His father went to Ireland as secretary to Sir William FitzWilliam, the Lord Deputy in 1588, and rose to become Auditor General. He was educated at Trinity College Dublin, which he entered in 1610, receiving his M.A. in 1616. With the encouragement of James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, he early developed a taste for manuscripts of Irish interest, and published, in 1626, Archiepiscoporum Casseliensium et Tuamensium vitae, and in 1628, De Praesulibus Lageniae. He married Mary, daughter of John Newman of Dublin, and was knighted in 1629 by the Lord Justices. In 1632 his father died, and he became Auditor General in Ireland, and was elected Member of Parliament for the University of Dublin 1634, 1637 and 1661. In 1639 he published De Scriptoribus Hiberniae. A member of the Privy Council for Ireland, he was created a D.C.L. on a visit to the King at Oxford in 1644, and was imprisoned in the Tower of London during the Commonwealth as one of the hostages for Ireland. Having returned to Dublin, he was expelled by the Parliamentary Governor in 1649, and spent a year and a half in France, and afterwards lived in London until the Restoration. During this time he published De Hiberniae et antiquitatibus ejus disquisitiones, 1654 and S. Patricio adscripta opuscula, 1646. At the Restoration he returned to Dublin and received back his post of Auditor General, but devoted most of his time to the pursuit of Irish antiquities. After his death his manuscripts were bought by Lord Clarendon, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1686. Some of them are in the British Library among the Clarendon MSS and some in the Bodleian Library, Oxford among the Rawlinson MSS. A catalogue was published in Dublin in 1688 and another in London