170 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



authorities. The arbitrators awarded that none of the brewers in the city 

 at the particular time brewed sufficient to justify the proportion claimed 

 being exacted. Henceforward the abbey was to have the tolboU of every 

 brew of not less than sixteen bushels (each bushel being sixteen gallons), and 

 of none under twelve bushels. 



King Henry the Second granted this custom to the abbey for a particular 

 charitable pui-pose, wliich purpose is not disclosed in the proceedings ah-eady 

 mentioned, and which had, most probably, passed completely out of memory. 

 Certain documents in a register of St. Thomas's Abbey, now in the Bodleian 

 Library, Oxford (Eawliuson srss., B. 499), to which my attention was recently 

 called, make the King's purpose clear, and afford such an interesting narrative 

 of the circumstances (hitlierto unknown) attemliug his grant of the tolboll, 

 and of subsequent proceedings connected with very early brewers and 

 tavemers in Dublin, that, as original material, unnoticed by any of our civic 

 historians, they seem worthy of lieing brought under the notice of the 

 Academy. One of the extant ancient Registers of St. Thomas's Abbey reposes 

 among the Haliday collection of jjss. withm our walls ; two others are in the 

 Bodleian, one of which was edited by Sii- John Gilbert, the second being that 

 in wliieh tlie docmnents under consideration are to be found. 



At fol. 22 of this Register is an Inspeximus, dated 24th September, 1388, 

 of the record and process of a plea in Chancery, between the King and 

 Brother Tliomas, Abbot of the House of St. Thomas the Martyr, Dublin, in 

 the ninth year of Kling Richard the Second (1385), which suppUes the 

 following details : — 



King Henry the Second granted to the abbey three gallons of ale from 

 every brew for sale in Dublin, so that the institution might find and keep 

 sixty fMXJr people and .scholars, in footl, drink and clothing, in a house called 

 the King's Alms House, for ever; but Brother Thomas had ceased to supply 

 such alni.s. Very little is known of the original buildings of this great abbey, 

 and it is important to find that such an alms-house stood within the earliest 

 precincta. From tlie date of the grant the abbey was pleaded to have con- 

 tinuously foimd support for poor and scholai-s, mitil Easter, 39 Edward the 

 Third (1365), when such was withdrawn. Abbot Thomas admitted that 

 Henry fitz Empress had foimded the house, and that his son John was seised 

 of a right to three gallons of ale, &c., which he granted to the abbey for the 

 use of the canons. He brought into Court the King's Charter,' and it may 

 be noted that the copy of the Charter in St. Thomas's Register contains the 

 names of two more witnesses than the printed copies. They are Roger 



' Priotedin Cliarliu, PriciUfia, &c., p. 4, and in Mi4all«ny, I.A.S., 1886. Vol. i., p. 42. 



