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III. 



HISTORY OF THE RELIGIOrS GILD OF S. ANXE, IN S. 

 AUDOEN'S CHURCH, DUBLIN, 1430-1740, TAKEN FROM 

 ITS RECORDS IN THE HALIDAY COLLECTION, R.I.A. 



By henry F. berry, I.S.O., M.A. 



[Plate I.] 



Eead January 11. Ordered for Publication January 13. 

 Published March 24, 1904. 



FoEMixG portion of what is known as the " Haliday Collection" in 

 this Academy, are some 160 ancient deeds and documents (including 

 three testaments), which would appear to have lain in the strong room, 

 almost unnoticed, since their presentation. They are all that are now 

 known to be extant of the muniments and title-deeds of the religious 

 gild of S. Anne in the church of S. Audoen, save a volume of abstracts 

 of 841 documents made in 1772 by James Goddard, clerk of the 

 gild, among the Gilbert mss. in the City Hall. The deeds in the 

 Academy were originally numbered 1 to 600, while one of them bears 

 the number 831, but there only remain, practically, Nos. 50 to 120 ; 

 500 to 570 ; and 580 to 599, which extend in point of date from the 

 year 1285 to 1740. Though S. Anne's gild was not founded until 

 1430, some of the title-deeds of its subsequently acquired pi-operty 

 extend thus far back. Two of them belong to the thirteenth century, 

 about twenty are dated in the fourteenth, and most of the remaining 

 documents were drawn up in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. 

 What became of all the rest it would be idle to conjecture, but inas- 

 much as this gild of S. Anne acquired extensive property in the city 

 and county of Dublin and elsewhere, which (owing to a suspicion that 

 the trusts impressed on it were not carried out) subjected its affairs 

 to unpleasant inquiry by the Church and the Government, it became 

 safer for those interested to conceal or destroy incriminating documents. 

 To Launcelot Bulkeley, Archbishop of Dublin, may be attributed the 

 preservation of those now under consideration. James I. and Charles I. 

 essayed to pry into the working of the gild and its alleged illegal 

 procedure, while a "too great eagerness in searching into the affairs 



R.I.A. PUOC, VOL. XXV., SEC. C] [3] 



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