Falkiner — The Hospital of St. Jolin of Jerumlem. 299 



ilarc, and consequently a member of the rival house of FitzGerald. 

 The Chronicle of William Gregory, Skinner," tells how in the year 

 1446 this Prior of Kilmainham exhibited his knightly prowess after 

 the most approved fashion of mediaeval chivalry by appearing fully 

 armed in the English capital, ready to bid defiance to his hereditary 

 foe : — 



" And that same yere there was a pechyng i-made uppon the 

 Erie of Ormounde by the pryour of Kylmayn for certaine poyntys of 

 treson, the whyche was takyn into the Kyngys grace, where uppon 

 hyt lykyd oure soverayne lorde to graunte a generalle pardon unto 

 the sayde Erie. Eut nevyrtlieles the sayde pryour appayryde in 

 8methefylde the iiij day of the monythe of October, as hyt was 

 apoyntyde, fulle clenly liarnyssyd, redy whythe alle hys fetys and 

 whythe alle hys wepyns, kepynge the fylde tylle hyghe none."^ 



Eut, as Professor Eichey has observed, ^ if the Knights of St. John 

 were generally useful auxiliaries to the Government, they could 

 sometimes prove dangerous from their turbulence. The development 

 of this undesirable side of their activity was in part due, no doubt, to 

 the enfeeblement of English authority consequent on the dynastic 

 contentions in England. Eut it was also in part due to the introduction 

 of a new and different vein of political sentiment into the leaders of the 

 Order in Ireland. The Priors of the latter half of the fifteenth cen- 

 tury reflect, in their altered attitude towards the English Crown, the 

 change which during the same epoch had transformed a great part of the 

 Angio-!N'orman nobility of Ireland into a serai-independent baronage, 

 largely imbued with an Irish spirit. It has been observed by D'Alton 

 "that a singular circumstance maybe remarked in reference to the 

 succession of the Priors of this house, many of whom held the highest 

 office of the State, that the name of one person of the ancient Milesian 

 stock does not appear in the whole series, and perhaps this l emark 

 would apply to all the Preceptories belonging to this Priory throughout 

 Ireland." In view alike of the constitution of the Hospitallers' Order 

 and of the circumstances under which it was introduced into this 

 country, this is a feature in the history of the Priory which 

 can scarcely surprise us. The Order was essentially cosmopolitan. 

 Its establishments in Ireland were directly subject to the authority 

 of the Grand Master, which, though exercised for the greater part 

 of the period with which we are concerned from an island so remote 



1 Camden Society's rublications, Third Series, pp. 18G, 187. 



2 Short History of the Irish People," p. 289. 



