290 Proceedings^ of the Royal Irish Academy. 



If it be difficult to trace the record of the Hospitallers in the 

 service of the State otherwise than in the merest outline, or to 

 identify with exactitude the extent of their numerous and widely 

 extended property, it is assuredly a no less perplexing task to attempt 

 to ascertain the form of their social system, or to arrive at a notion of 

 their mode of living. It would add much to the reality of our 

 conception of mediaeval Dublin could we attain to something like a 

 just view of the daily life of these Knights, and of the character 

 of their intercourse with the citizens of Dublin. But we possess 

 no sufficient materials for such a picture. IS'o such admirable 

 illustration of life in a fourteenth -century Priory as is supplied by 

 the "Account Roll of the Priory of the Holy Trinity, 1337-1346," 

 has been preserved to inform us how the Hospitallers of Kilmainham, 

 lived, moved, and had their being. We must, therefore, content 

 ourselves with such occasional and unsatisfactory glimpses as the 

 State papers give us of the life of the Hospitallers generally, and 

 more particularly of those of Kilmainham. 



The Irish Hospitallers appear to have enjoyed, in common with 

 the Templars, the special immunities which were granted in England 

 to both Orders by Henry II, and confirmed by his successor. A 

 Charter in the first year of King John extended to the Knights 

 Hospitallers in Ireland the liberties granted in the previous year to 

 their English brethren. These included "freedom from actions, the 

 King's toll, passage, pontage, viuage, wayte, carriage, sumage, works 

 regarding castles, parks, bridges, and vivaries {i.e. preserves), army and 

 cavalry summonses, aids and tallage, wastes, regards of the forests and 

 assarts, amerciaments ; besides freedom from forfeitures of property 

 by their retainers, and from being impleaded before the King's 

 Justiciary in civil matters."^ From the nature of their property, 

 as indicated by the records of sundry civil actions to which the 



clxxi. D), an account of the property of the Knights Templars in Ireland in 

 the year 1307, on the suppression of the Order. This contains a list of all 

 the Manors and Churches then in their possession. It is curious that this list doesnot 

 enumerate a single possession in Ulster or Connaught, notwithstanding a licence 

 given to the Templars hy Henry III in 1234, to have *'a free guest in every 

 County and Borough in Ireland" ; and in point of fact the estahlishments of the 

 Templars, unlike those of the Hospitallers, appear to have heen confined, with the 

 sole exception of the Preceptory of Teach-Temple in Sligo, to the provinces of 

 Munster and Leinster, and more particularly to the south-eastern parts of these 

 provinces. 



1 Sweetman's Calendar of Documents " (1171-2511), p. 19. 



