Ware possessed an enormous collection of manuscripts. The vast majority of these are housed in the National Library of Ireland, Trinity College, Dublin, the British Library and the Bodleian Library in Oxford. It is not hard to understand what Ussher meant when he praised his friend for being ‘an industrious searcher of ye antiquities of his countrye’. In TCD MS 664, for example, Ware transcribed 48 sources in Latin and English between 2 February 1651 and 16 February 1652 while he was residing in London, a total of 209 folios, recto and verso. Among the items he recorded, notably, were episcopal registers for the province of Armagh, charters of Irish abbeys, and also chronicles and annals of English and Irish interest.
