Falkixkr — r/^e Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. 291 



Hospitallers were parties at various periods, and from the inventories 

 of their goods taken from time to time, we may gather that each 

 Preceptory was possessed of very large agricultural interests, with a 

 large home farm adjacent to the Priory. Mills were in many cases, 

 and particularly in that of Kilmainham, which had large mills on the 

 Cammoge stream, an important feature in the domestic economy of 

 the Preceptories. There can be little doubt that the Hospitallers 

 were in general the overseers of the milling industry, and the owners 

 of the granaries of the districts in which they were established ; 

 though the existence of the King's mills at Dublin Castle in close 

 proximity to Kilmainham, must have prevented the Hospitallers of 

 Kilmainham from enjoying anything like a monopoly of the milling 

 industry in Dublin. The Templars, in their day, seem to have been very 

 extensive wheat-growers, doubtless in consequence of their proximity 

 at Clontarf to the celebrated wheat-growing lands of Fingal and 

 of the north portion of the County Dublin. In the tliirteenth century, 

 indeed, both Orders appear to have been extensively concerned in the 

 corn trade, and to have been the principal distributors of flour 

 through the country. In 1225, for example, the master of the 

 Templars in Ireland was licensed for five years by the King, " to 

 convey his wheat whither he will throughout all Ireland for 

 trading purposes,"^ without being impeded; and in 1243 a royal 

 mandate enjoined upon the Justiciary that no mill should be built in 

 "VYaterford to the damage of the Templars' mills there, and that he 

 should cause any mill already erected to their injury to be razed. 



The owners of the Preceptories, like those of most monastic 

 establishments in the Middle Ages, were also much interested in the 

 fishing industry. The once valuable salmon fisheries of the Liffey 

 were closely looked after by the Hospitallers of Kilmainham, who in 

 consequence sometimes came sharply in conflict with the citizens of 

 Dublin. The thirteenth-century suit between the Hospital and the 

 City has already been mentioned. That dispute does not seem to 

 have been the first in which the same parties found themselves at 

 issue. A mandate issued to the Justiciary as early as the year 1220 

 recites how ''the good men of the King's City of Dublin" claimed 

 that the City was entitled to have the water-way of the Liffey so kept 

 open, that provisions could be sent up and down the river in boats, 

 and further that they had always had a fishery on that river ; and 

 also how they complained that " the Prior and Friars of the Hospital 



1 Sweetmau's Calendar of Documents " (1171-1-251), pp. 193 and 396. 



R.I. A. PKOC, VOL. XXVI., SEC. c] [27] 



