Falkiner — The Hospital of SL John of Jerusalem. 277 



Order of St. John Eaptist of Jerusalem, commonly called Knights 

 Hospitallers, by Richard, surnamed Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke, or 

 Strigul, about the year 1174, and Henry II confirmed the endow- 

 ments. It was afterwards mightily enriched by the donations of 

 others, and especially under Edward II, when the revenues of the 

 Templars, then newly suppressed, were granted to this Order, Walter 

 del Ewe being then Prior of the Hospital."^ 



I trust I shall have the pardon of the Academy for the inevitable 

 incompleteness of a paper which contains the results of a sufficiently 

 recondite inquiry. Yet I hope that I shall at least succeed in 

 indicating some of the sources of interest which combine to render the 

 story of the ancient Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem one of the 

 most useful starting-points which could be selected by any writer 

 for an endeavour to realise something of the aspect of life and affairs 

 in Ireland in the dim period of remote Plantagenet history. No 

 foundation in Ireland not strictly ecclesiastical, whose fabric survived 

 to so late a period as the Priory of Kilmainham (which served for many 

 years after the suppression of the monasteries as the Viceregal resi- 

 dence), has a history which can be traced further back than that of the 

 chief house of the Knights Hospitallers in this country. Nor would 

 it be easy, with the exception of Dublin Castle, to name another 

 site in Ireland which (save for a comparatively brief space in 

 the seventeenth century) has been continuously associated with the 

 administrative history of this island from the coming of Strongbow 

 to the present day. In a country, the circumstances of whose 

 chequered history have left it sadly deficient in those intimate and 

 obvious associations with recorded history which are the pride of 

 other European countries, it is a fortunate chance which enables us 

 to find in the lloyal Hospital of Kilmainham a direct link with the 

 stirring story of the past. "We are all here familiar with the 

 announcement which The Duhlin Gazette is wont to contain, in the 

 occasional absence of the Viceroy, of the appointment of Lords 

 Justices for the government of Ireland. Among these, when he 

 happens to be in Dublin, the Commander of the Forces and Master 

 of Kilmainham has hitherto been almost invariably included. The 

 citizen of Dublin who is attracted by such memories will dwell with 

 pleasure on the fact that the twentieth-century Master of the Royal 

 Hospital is the direct successor to the ancient tenants of its site — 



^ Ware's " Antiquities of Ireland," ch. xvi., p. 78 (Edition of 1705). 



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