EDITION: 1st

First printing, first edition of the Old Testament in the Irish language. Formal title is “The Books of the Old Testament Translated into Irish by the Care and Diligence of Doctor William Bedel, Late Bishop of Kilmore in Ireland and for the Publick Good of that Nation. This copy with presentation inscription on verso title page: ‘D.H. Kelly, Castle Kelly, from W. Cartor (?), July 1845.’ followed by handwritten description of this copy. The first edition of the New Testament in Irish was published in 1602 from the original Greek, and is attributed to William Daniell (or Huilliam O’Domhnuill, d. 1628). It was conceived and paid for by Elizabeth I; however, it was not until the end of her reign and the accession of James I to the throne of England that it appeared. William Bedel’s translation of the Old Testament was first published in 1685. This translation made by Bedel (1571-1642), Bishop of Kilmore, with the assistance of Murtagh King and Dennis O’Sheridan, was not published until some 40 years after Bedel’s death, and 83 years after the first edition of the New Testament in Irish (Dublin, 1602). In 1571 an Irish alphabet and catechism, both printed by John O’Kearney, were published. The Irish characters used for these were also used to print the 1602 edition of the New Testament. The types were used from time to time until the mid-seventeenth century, however in August 1680 the Bishop of Meath, Henry Jones, wrote to Robert Boyle, saying that he had the manuscript of Bedel’s translation of the Old Testament, but lamenting that the ‘Irish letters stamped for the first printing here [in Ireland] of the common prayer and new testament’ had disappeared. It was for this reason that Moxon in London was commissioned to cut a new Irish type (small pica). The second printing of the New Testament (1681) and Bedell’s 1685 edition of the Old Testament (revised by Andrew Sall and Narcissus Marsh) were published using the Moxon type.[PROVENANCE] The Kelly’s were settled at Castlekelly, Ballygar, barony of Killian, county Galway, from the late 17th century. Colonel Charles O’Kelly supported the Jacobite cause and a clause in the Treaty of Limerick allowed for the restoration of his estate at Aghrane, where he wrote an account of the Williamite Wars. John Kelly of Clonlyon inherited Aghrane from his cousin Denis Kelly of Dublin in 1734.The family became Protestants in the 1740s. Their estate straddled the county border so that parts of the Kelly estate were in the parishes of Athleague and Killeroran, barony of Killian, county Galway and in the parishes of Athleague and Tisrara, barony of Athlone, county Roscommon. In 1828 Denis Kelly of Castle Kelly was a member of the Grand Panel of county Roscommon. In May 1863 Denis Henry Kelly advertised for sale his 13,154-acre estate of Castle Kelly in the barony of Killian, county Galway and his 1,709-acre estate in the barony of Athlone, county Roscommon.