Falkiner — The Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. 289 



foundations of the Templars undoubtedly passed to the Hospitallers, 

 but a substantial proportion of the endowments formerly allotted to 

 them was in all probability irrecoverably alienated. True it is 

 that under a further Bull of the same pontiff, the Knights of St. 

 John, in reward of their recent display of prowess against the 

 Moslem infidels in the capture of Ehodes,^ were declared the 

 inheritors of the possessions of their despoiled rivals throughout 

 Europe. But it by no means followed that this Papal title was 

 everywhere recognized. Of what happened in Ireland we have 

 no record. But if events in this country followed the course 

 pursued abroad, it is unquestionable that much of the property 

 of the fallen brotherhood passed into lay hands, and never reached 

 the new grantees. For the European monarchs, who had seconded 

 the Papal denunciations of the Templars largely in hopes of 

 benefiting by the spoliation of so wealthy a community, saw no direct 

 advantage in the aggrandisement of the Hospitallers. Abroad, it has 

 been computed, the Hospitallers never obtained a twentieth part of 

 the ancient possessions of the Templars."- In England, Edward II 

 declined to recognize the Pope's title to dispose of property without 

 the consent of the Crown, and pending the grant which he ultimately 

 made at the end of 1313 confirming the Hospitallers in the ownership 

 of the Templars' lands, he made numerous assignments of their pos- 

 sessions to other hands, resulting in an irrevocable alienation of 

 much of the confiscated property to lay purposes. In spite of our lack 

 of any records of the course of the proceedings in Ireland, we may 

 assume with considerable confidence that what Edward II did in 

 England his ministers in this country were not slow to imitate ; and 

 that, although the Knights of St. John undoubtedly became the legal 

 successors in title to the Templars, and in 1314 were formally 

 instituted into the possession of all the lands and possessions of the 

 latter, 3 they were far from realizing the whole of the splendid 

 heritage assigned to them."^ 



the Franciscan and Augustinian Orders in Dublin. Much of the evidence taken 

 against the Templars in Ireland will be found in ^Yilkins's " Concilia," vol- ii., 

 pp. 373-380. 

 1 A.D. 1310. 



- Addison's "History of the Knights Templars," p. 211. 

 ^ Bowling's Annals. 



* The late Dr. Kichard Caulfeild printed in the Journal of the Royal Historical 

 and Archaeological Association of Ireland, 4th series, vol. ii., pp. 331-334, from a 

 manuscript in the British Museum entitled Monastic Kecords, Ireland (6165 Plut., 



