Frazer—On Brass Matrix of an Ancient Seal, §c. 465 
LXV.—Descrirtion oF THE Brass Matrrx of AN AncrENT SEAL BELONG- 
ING TO THE AUGUSTINIAN HERMITS, WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE 
Monastery or THE Hoty Trinity, NEAR Dupin, anp OBSERVA- 
TIONS ON THE SYMBOLISM OF THE Crescent Moon anp Srar. By 
Wiriiam Frazer, F.R.C.S.1., Member of Council of the Royal 
Irish Academy. (Plate XXIV.) 
[Read, February 14, 1887.] 
In the reign of Henry III., a.p. 1259, a colony of Friars of the Order 
of Hermits of St. Augustine arrived from England, and, under the 
alleged patronage of one of the Talbot family, acquired a domicile 
outside the walls of Dublin. They erected a church, monastery, with 
suitable outbuildings and gardens, and had a cemetery: in fact de- 
veloped around them an ecclesiastical foundation of considerable 
importance, which constituted a centre for discipline, and college of 
all the other establishments connected with their Order over Ireland. 
This church and its associated monastic buildings was situated on the 
banks of the Liffey to the east of the Poddle river, which was a 
wide open stream, liable to sudden heavy floodings, from which 
St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the low-lying portions of the city often 
suffered. It was erected in close proximity to, perhaps on the exact: 
site, where the Medical School of the Catholic University now stands. 
The city of Dublin was restricted within narrow limits for three 
or four hundred years after the Norman invasion. The entire out- 
lying district now occupied by Dame-street and College-green, from 
the walls of the Castle of Dublin to the grounds occupied by Trinity 
College, consisted of suburban lands stretching along the side of the 
river, which was a broad estuary about double its present width ; and 
even down to so recent a period as the thirty-cighth year of King 
Henry VIII., when our monastic institutions were suppressed, there 
remained in possession of these monks three orchards and ten gardens, 
situated in the parish of St. Andrew’s, and four acres of meadow, and 
a park of four acres near Hoggin-green, now College-green, together 
with several other properties, such as tenements located within the 
precincts of Dublin and landed possessions scattered over different 
parts of the country. According to another account they held their 
outlying parks and gardens as under-tenants of the ‘‘mayor and 
bayliffs”? of Dublin, at a yearly rent of six shillings and eightpence, 
and were bound to contribute to the Vicars Choral of St. Patrick’s a 
sum of two shillings and sixpence annually, payable out of the profits 
of their cemetery. 
Our city records state that, a.p. 1309, Roger was Prior of the 
Augustinian Hermits, and his name appears as one of the witnesses 
who gave evidence against the Knights Templars. Thomas de Carlow 
