He was appointed in 1876 librarian of Queen's College, Cork, and in 1882 was made an honorary member of the Royal Academy of History at Madrid.
[2] Caulfield died aged 64 on 3 February 1887 at his residence, the Royal Cork Institution, after a severe attack of bronchitis.
On 4 February, The Protestant Cork Constitution published a short unsigned appreciation which said of him that on more than one occasion he was chosen as arbiter in important historical and theological controversies.
S. O. Madden, Dean of Saint Finbarre's Cathedral, city dignitaries, and lecturers, students and professors from the Queen's College, including the President, William K. Sullivan.
In 1857 he edited for the Camden Society the Diary of Rowland Davies, D.D., Dean of Cork, 1689–90; and in 1859 he published Rotulus Pipæ Clonensis, the Pipe Roll of Cloyne.
In 1860 he discovered at Dunmanway House, Co. Cork, the original manuscript of the autobiographical memoir of Sir Richard Cox, extending from 1702 to 1707; it had been used by Walter Harris in his edition of James Ware's Writers of Ireland, and Caulfield published the fragment.
[2] While at Oxford in 1862 Caulfield discovered in the Bodleian Library the manuscript Life of St. Fin Barre, which he copied and published in 1864.