Wood — The Templars in Ireland. 



^61 



has a particular interest for us, not only because Irish money went 

 to pay for its construction, but because the Irish Master, Walter 

 le Bachelor, was confined there. There is a penitential cell (four 

 feet six inches by two feet six inches) opening upon the stairs 

 leading to the triforium, with slits towards the church, through 

 which the prisoner, unable to lie down, could still hear Mass. 

 In this cell Walter le Bachelor, Master or Grand Preceptor of 

 Ireland, was starved to death for disobedience of the rules of his 

 Order. 



I have appended to this paper a schedule of all the lands for 

 which I could find any authority for believing that they at any time 

 belonged to the Templars. But there are many other places in 

 Ireland which tradition or careless historians have attributed to that 

 Order. Of some of these it is impossible, with our limited sources of 

 information, to say whether tradition is right or wrong. It is possible 

 that in some cases lands formerly belonging to the Templars were by 

 them exchanged or assigned to others, and that, whilst any trace of 

 such a proceeding has disappeared, the tradition of their having once 

 possessed them has lingered on. But in other cases, the error has 

 undoubtedly arisen through the confusion in many people's minds 

 between the two Orders of Templars and Hospitallers — a confusion 

 which has been assisted by the fact of many of the lands of the f oimer 

 passing, on their dissolution, to the latter. Of these cases, Kilmain- 

 ham is a striking example. It is difficult to take up any work dealing 

 with that place without finding the statement that it belonged to the 

 Templars. Archdall is, perhaps, the cause of this error, for in his 

 account of this Priory in his Monasticon, he has not only stated that 

 it was given to the Templars by Strongbow, but has mixed up the 

 two Orders in such inextricable confusion, that one can hardly blame 

 others for being unable to disentangle it. The curious point is that 

 he quotes, as his authority. Archbishop King's mss., but on consulting 

 these, I do not find anything to support Archdall's statement. Sir 

 John Gilbert, too, has followed Archdall in his History of the 

 Viceroys; but in his Historical and Municipal Documents of Ireland,^ 

 he quotes from the White Book the contention between the mayor 

 and citizens of Dublin and the Prior of the Hospitallers at Kilmain- 

 ham in 1261, respecting ground at Kilmainham. Prom this we learn 

 that the Prior pleaded a charter of Heniy II, and at an inquest held 

 by order of the Justices, it was returned that Richard Strongbow in 



1 Page 495. 



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