severities of the Feudal system must have been much softened when it was administered by the easy and formal churchman, connected by blood more frequently with the middle ranks than with the nobles of the land.

Perhaps the most startling grant in this collection is the concession and donation by Richard de Pheypo", of certain serfs, with all the issue and progeny of their sept. From the name Mackelegan, and from their being said to be of Balydugyl, it is likely that these men were the descendants of the Melisu Macfeilecan, of Balydubgil, who, with his descendants, was granted to the priory in King Dermod's charter. They are here given separate from the land, and as pure serfs or "villeins" in gross," not as neoyffs", betaghs, or ascripti glebæ. The difference between these forms of villeinage was considerable; the betagh or native was an occupier of the land, bound to the performance of certain offices connected with land; he was bound to the land and granted with it; he was obliged to bear talliage, high and low, at the will of the lord; his right to dispose by will of his chatell property was denied in the King's Courts; and even were he to raise himself to the rank of a citizen of Dublin, any landed property which he acquired was liable to be seized upon by the lord. In this form villeinage existed in Ireland to the sixteenth century', when Archbishop Alan, in 1531, counts up his

natives as he would count up his stock"; but as servi, these Mackeligans were in a worse state than betaghs or natives; so far as is indicated by this charter they were absolute slaves, and, as they were given without land, might be removed or sold from it.

In the early charters the grant of a turbary at Finglas, where turf might be dug for the supply of all the houses of the priory, and the condition in the grant of forty shillings of annual rent in Manhthonin, in the tenement of Arclo", that it should be exchanged for equal charge on land nearer to Dublin, are worthy of observation.

These grants were in pure alms "pro salute animarum," or the rent was only nominal and illusory, a rose, or a pair of spurs, or a pound of pepper; but a change now took place. The fervour of religious zeal, which the monks and canons had diverted to themselves, from older and now almost forgotten institutions, was directed towards the Mendicant Orders in the thirteenth century, and the followers of St. Benedict and St. Augustine gave way to those of St. Francis and St. Dominick.

The subsequent grants then were of a different kind, and were more in the nature of sales or of perpetual leases. Of these one of the earliest and most interesting is that of Waleran de Welleslegh, who grants fifty acres in his tenement of Crewath, with the lordship and feudal service of the ten acres held by John Wodeloc, together with the common pasture of the whole mountain, in wood and tur

bary, broom, and heath, at the rent of forty shillings a year, and to secure himself against the depreciated currency of the black or copper money, Welleslegh expressly mentioned that the payment should be in silverf.

In the charters and deeds relating to the property of the priory within the city or suburbs of Dublin, there are many things to attract the notice of the local antiquary, and who is not a local antiquary in his own neighbourhood? The very names of the streets are not without interest and significance; Rochelle-street tells of foreign trade, Bertram-street of the city residence of the noble family of Verdon, Skinner-row, the north side of which we have seen pulled down, of the hides and furs which our ancestors used to barter for the wines of Poictous; while the incidental mention of the Thengmote carries back the view to the dark times of the Danish colony. We have a mill and a millrace in the present College-green, and a milldam and a quarry in Dame-street.

"Aurea nunc olim sylvestribus horrida dumis."

e Black or copper money.-Simon on Irish Coins, p. 17.

f Silver.-Gold, probably in the form of ring-money, seems to have been the most ancient medium of exchange in Ireland. In Jocelin's Life of St. Patrick the saint is said to have found buried treasure three different times, and at each time it is specified that it was gold.-Capp. 15, 106. Malachy also found treasure at Banchor, but his treasure was of silver, "argenteos multos."-Vita Malachia, cap. 9. Was this silver money Saxon pennies, the produce of Danish piracy in England, such as are still frequently found near all the Danish

IRISH ARCH. SOC. NO. IO.

d

The

stations in Ireland, or did it consist of Irish penings and bracteates, such as those found in the Round Tower of Kildare?— (See Petrie's Essay on Round Towers). The constant troubles of the country are still borne witness to by the turning up of hid treasure of every age.

& Poictou. Top. Hib. Dist. I. c. 5.

h Mill.-In 1297 a grant was made by parliament to the Prior of All-Saints of four large oaks from the King's Forest of Glencry (Glancree), to repair the mill and bridge at Steyne. See an unpublished Act of Parliament quoted by Sir William Betham. Feudal Dignities, p. 272.

The times were now coming when the lands in the immediate neighbourhood of Dublin, although not the most extensive, would be the most valuable possessions of the priory. With short-sighted policy', Edward the First had wasted the flower of the Anglo-Irish nobles in the wars of Gascony and Scotland, while, with unusual weakness, to secure their favour, he had resisted his own wish to consolidate his power in Ireland, and to attach the natives to his government by extending over all the protection and the authority of English law, and by abrogating altogether those Irish customs, which were still recognized in his courts. It is not strange then, that the natives, who had in vain sought the shelter of the throne from the oppression of their petty tyrants, should have taken advantage of the misfortunes of Edward II. and should have been encouraged to resistance by the success of the Scots. Nor is it strange that, having no one great man to guide them, and no principle of union to raise their discordant septs to the feeling of national independence, they should have satisfied at once their vengeance and their cupidity by predatory attacks on the property of the English, by burning their homesteads, by driving away their cattle, and finally by entering into possession of the lands, which they had made worthless to the occupiers. In this general lawlessness, the priory must have found great difficulty in establishing its rights in its remoter estates; as early as 1305, we find the prior complaining of a rescue of distresses which had been made in the fee of Tipperary', and in 1318 he was pardoned

Short-sighted policy. This conduct is less excusable, as it is plain, from the remaining records of law processes, that the attention of Edward, when he was Lord of Ireland during his father's life, had been much turned to the state of this country. i Tipperary.-In 1305 the prior sued Hugh de la Hyde and Mabel his wife, for

rescuing from Brother William, his servant, certain distresses he had made for suits and services due to the prior in the fee of Tipperary, for which he laid his action at £20. King's MSS. quoted in Mon. Hib. p. 176.

k In 1318.-In this year, to secure good legal counsel the prior granted to Master

doned a fine, on the grounds of poverty, a plea again used for the like purpose in 1396; and in 1423', according to the statement of the Canons, confirmed by Archbishop Talbot, the priory was reduced to such a state of misery", by the ruin of its buildings, by the unjust and hostile occupation of its lands, by the unfruitfulness of the seasons, by the mortality of men and cattle, and by the number of strangers, and other oppressions, that their remaining goods were scarcely sufficient to support the prior and the convent, so that Divine worship, the observance of the rule, and other works of piety, could no longer be maintained without the relaxation of two marks of the six payable to the archbishop for proxies.

In 1374 the prior was summoned to Parliament". It was in 1380, when the priory was smarting from loss of property and sinking

Walter de Islep, clerk, for his good services, an annual pension of five marks for life, the said Walter binding himself to give his advice, help, and assistance, against all persons whatsoever, those alone excepted to whom he was bound before the present agreement. Mon. Hib. from King's MSS. p. 286.

m

In 1423.-No. LXXXIX.

Misery. In these circumstances the leases of the property in the city and suburbs of Dublin, where rents could always be collected, were carefully registered and preserved, and clauses of various kinds were inserted in them. In some it was conditioned that if the lessee wished to sell the lands demised, or to put them in

pawn, the first offer was to be made to the priory. In one for forty years, provided the tenant's life should last so long, a power was granted to the tenant to take

into

away any trees he might plant on any land
reclaimed by him from a mill-pond. In
another, right of re-entry is secured on
the rent being one month in arrear. In
another, right of seizure for rent was
given on another tenement, if sufficient
distress was not found on the premises.
In most of them the tenant is bound to
repair the buildings, and to deliver them
up
"stiff and staunch" at the end of his
term. In one the rent was reduced one-
half for forty years, in consideration of
the expenses of the tenant in repairs and
buildings. We have also the purchase, or
perhaps the repurchase, by the priory of
the remaining portion of a lease of forty
acres at Donnybroke, of which some years
had expired.-Nos. XXIII. IV. VIII.
XXXI. II. III. V. VII. VIII.

n Parliament.-Lynch's Feudal Dignities, p. 323.