276 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



of which Kilmainham was the administrative centre ; and lastly, a 

 consideration of the part played by the Priors of Kilmainham in 

 the history of Ireland and its capital. It will be found, I think, 

 that the role sustained by those important personages was not 

 unworthy of the famous Order to which they belonged, that militant 

 brotherhood which, from its institution in the twelfth century to 

 its suppression at the close of the eighteenth, bore so brilliant a part 

 on many a mediaeval battlefield, and exercised through its leading 

 members no mean influence on the evolution of modern Europe. 



Of all three branches of the subject much is to be found in works 

 dealing with the ecclesiastical antiquities and local history of the 

 country, more particularly in Archdall's " Monasticon Hibernicum 

 and D' Alton's " History of the County Dublin." But the progress of 

 antiquarian research, and the publication of documentary materials 

 of every sort, formerly accessible only with difficulty to the most 

 industrious student, have so substantially enlarged the sources of 

 information available that not a little can now be added to what was 

 known on the subject thirty or forty years ago. Careful exploration 

 of the State Paper Calendars and other official publications, as well as 

 of some manuscript sources not hitherto utilised, has enabled me to 

 add some facts of interest and importance to the story of Kilmainham, 

 and perhaps to form a clearer conception of what has already been 

 ascertained. For even writers as authoritative as those I have named 

 seem to have entertained some very erroneous impressions regard- 

 ing Kilmainham and its owners. Of these a striking example is 

 a:fforded by the mistake which is common to every existing account 

 of the antiquities of Kilmainham, and, I am inclined to think, 

 to every writer who has hitherto treated of the subject, with the 

 exception of the elder Ware. I mean the frequent error, which, by a 

 natural but not quite excusable confusion of one great military Order 

 with another, has ascribed the first ownership of the Priory of 

 Kilmainham to the Knights of the Temple rather than to those of St. 

 John. Even in such works as Archdall's ''Monasticon Hibernicum," 

 and D'Alton's " History of the County of Dublin," the mistake is 

 continually made; and Harris, in his edition of Ware, actually 

 states that it was not until the suppression of the Knights Templars 

 under Edward II that the rival Order was established in 

 Kilmainham. Harris, if no one else, should have known better. 

 Eor the true origin of the Priory cannot be better or more succinctly 

 stated than in the language of Sir James Ware, who, in his " Antiqui- 

 ties of Ireland," tells us that it was "founded for Knights of the 



