302 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Acadetmj. 



and intruded prior, . . . and other his predecessors, late priors of 

 the same priorate, by their mysgoyernance and mysgidyng have greatly 

 impoverished the said priorate ; and over that . . . ev'ry of theym in 

 the tyme they were priours ther have sold and laid to pledge almoste 

 all the reliques, juclls and ornamentys, and yn especiall a p'cious 

 relyque or pece of the holy crosse belonging to the said priorate, 

 against all due order of ther religion."^ 



The misdeeds of Prior Keating were not confined to offences 

 against the interests of his Order ; and we may suspect that the 

 Parliament of Henry VII would scarcely have shown so much 

 zeal for the good government of the Hospitallers had the latter 

 extended to the new Tudor dynasty the active support which had 

 been traditionally rendered by the Priors of Kilmainham to the reign- 

 ing sovereign. Prior Keating, liowever, had been very far from 

 following the examples of his predecessors in this respect. His 

 twenty years' tenure of the priorate was one long scene of storm and 

 violence. His hand seems to have been against every man. The king 

 and his subjects, the clergy and the laity, and even his Superiors and 

 the brethren of his own Order, seem to have been equally the objects 

 of his impartial hostility. In 1478, he held Dublin Castle, of which 

 he had been appointed Constable, against the Deputy of Edward IV, 

 and destroyed the drawbridge. In 1482, having been deprived of the 

 priorate by the Master of the Rhodes for the crimes specified in the 

 Statute already cited, he bid oj^en defiance to his Superior, imprison- 

 ing Sir Marmaduke Lomley, the knight appointed to succeed him. 

 Keating's performances on this occasion are set out in another of the 

 many Statutes which his excesses provoked. Chapter xvi of the 10th 

 Henry VII recites how collation being made by the Grand Master of 

 a gentleman of the same religion, born within the realm of England, 

 named Sir Marmaduke Lomley, late deceased, which Sir Marmaduke 

 going into Ireland for to attain the same priorate according to the 

 collation and gift of the said Great Master was there taken by force 

 by the said Sir James Keating and his retinue, and the bulls and 

 writings of the said Great Master taken away from him, and so 

 cast into prison by the said Sir James, by the occasion w^hereof the 

 said Sir Marmaduke died."^ Lastly, to complete the catalogue of 



1 UnpubHshed Statutes of Ireland at the Public Record Office. 



- Lomley addressed a letter of complaint to Henry VII, in the following terms : — 

 Makmaduke Lomley's Letter to Henry YII, ex Registro Octav. de Palatio, f. 115. 



Most liigh and mighty Prince, and my most redoubted sovereign liege Lord, 

 in my most lowly wise 1 recommend me unto your most Eoyal Majesty — Please it 



