288 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



and their possessions were greatly increased by the gifts with which 

 several of the grantees of Henry and of Strongbow endowed the Order. 

 It is unquestionable that in the century and a-half or so which elapsed 

 between the arrival of the Templars in Ireland and their suppression 

 in 1312, they had become an extremely wealthy corporation. But it 

 is extremely difficult at this distance of time to form a just notion of 

 the extent of their wealth. Por it is to be observed that the period of 

 their suppression is precisely the period of which the fewest records 

 survive. The thread of Irish history as supplied by official records of 

 the English Government is practically lost during the latter half of the 

 reign of Edward II, when the disorders following the wars of the 

 Eruces submerged the authority of the English Crown through three- 

 fourths of Ireland. We know, indeed, that proceedings against the 

 Templars took much the same course in Ireland as elsewhere, and that 

 after the Order in England had been put upon its trial, under circum- 

 stances of harshness and indignity, which were only partially mitigated 

 by the humanity shown by Edward II, the Knights in Ireland shared 

 the fate of their brethren in England and on the Continent. They 

 were arrested and thrown into prison, according to the entry in Grace's 

 Annals, on the day of the Purification of the Virgin, Feb. 3, 1307-8, 

 and were then summoned before the Pope's Commissary, sitting in 

 St. Patrick's Cathedral. Though it is not recorded that any of the 

 graver offences alleged against their brethren abroad were imputed 

 to them, they were unable to escape the fate of their fellows 

 elsewhere.^ AYhether guilty or innocent, the Irish Templars were 

 inevitably involved in the general suppression of their Order by the 

 EuU of Pope Clement Y in 1312, and that suppression was followed 

 by the dispersal of a great part of their property among various 

 grantees of the Crown. The principal commanderies and actual 



1 " Between the 11th of February and the 23rd of May (1310), thirty Templars 

 were examined in St. Patrick's Church, Dublin, bj- Master John de Mareschall, the 

 Pope's Commissary, but no evidence of their guilt was obtained. Forty-one wit- 

 nesses were then heard, nearly all of whom were monks. They spoke merely from 

 hearsay and suspicion, and the gravest charges brought by them against the 

 fraternity appear to be that the Templars had been observed to be inattentive to the 

 reading of the Holy Gospels at church, and to have cast their eyes on the ground 

 at the period of the elevation of the Host." Thus Addison in his " History of the 

 Templars," p. 234 ; but his dates do not appear to be quite accurate. The trial of 

 the Templars, as distinguished from the preliminary investigation before John de 

 Mareschall (who was Commissary of the Bishop of Kildare, not, as Addison says of 

 the Pope), was held before a tribunal of Dominicans, the accusers being members of 



