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year 1474, passed in a Parliament held in Dublin, reciting, that Richard, Abbot of St. Thomas, near Dublin, and William, Prior of All Saints, near Dublin, and their convents, had much lands within the habitation of the Irish enemies, and enacting that they might send and carry, as well victuals as other necessaries, to the said Irish, and might let to farm and sell the profits of their possessions to them, as often as they pleased, and might treat and be conversant with them, as well in war as in peace, and that they might be godfathers to such, without any offence or breach of law. In fact the lands situated beyond the English marches were either to be given up altogether, or were to be maintained by friendly dealings with those, who were styled in parliamentary language, Irish enemies; that such dealings were frequent, even in time of war, chiefly through the intervention of these great religious corporations, is proved by many existing records, and, were there no existing evidence, might be inferred from the nature of the case; but as such dealings were contrary to law, they subjected the English party to heavy penalties, and this Act of Sanction obtained from Parliament protected the House from the necessity of suing out a license from the Lieutenant, and from the legal extortion of informers and officials.

All

In the want of common inns, it was in religious houses, and at their expense, that the King's Deputy and his officers, and also Irishmen and others resorting to him, were most commonly lodged. Hallows was not backward in complying with this laudable custom ; and such is the meagreness of our information respecting our Priory, after the termination of the Registry in the middle of the fifteenth century, that we are tempted to mention, that on the 23rd of July,

a

Original Statute Roll, in Hardiman's

Statute of Kilkenny, p. 11.

IRISH ARCH. SOC. NO. IO.

e

1488,

b Want of common inns.-State Papers, vol. ii. part iii. continued, p. 130.

1488, Sir Richard Edgcomb, who had been sent to Ireland as the King's Commissioner, after the general declaration of the Anglo-Irish in favour of Lambert Simnel, had an interview with the Earl of Kildare, at a place of Canons called All Hallows, without Dublin, and there had long communication with him and his Council, and that day, at after dinner, the said Sir Richard rode to Drogheda, twenty-four miles thence; and the same parties had another conference at All Hallows, on the 29th of the same month.

In 1490, in a Parliament held at Drogheda, and thence adjourned to Dublin, before Gerald Earl of Kildare, deputy to Jaspar Duke of Bedford, Lieutenant of Ireland, Prior William (probably through the influence of the Deputy, the hereditary friend of All Hallows), obtained a privilege, indicating the unhappy circumstances of the country. Stating that his convent was grievously charged with diverse subsidies, taxes, talliages, and grants, made as well by authority of Parliament as by that of the Great Council, and also with other impositions laid upon them for great and little hostings ("grand jornaiez et petuz"), he obtained an Act, exempting him and his house for ever and their possessions in every county, barony, and deanery in Ireland, from all subsidies, taxes, talliages, and from all impositions granted to the King, or to any governor of the land, on the payment of 138. 4d. to be levied from the lands of Baldoyle, by the collector of the deanery of Swords. By this Act were also confirmed all grants made to All Hallows by Edward IV., any Act or ordinance made or to be made notwithstanding.

Sir Richard Edgcomb.-Voyage to Ireland, printed in Harris's Hibernica. d Stating.-See Addenda, No. IV.

e Act.-An inspeximus of this Act, and of the grants of Edward IV., respecting

The

the Prior's right of wreck, and of the admiralty of Baldoyle, was taken on the 20th of May, 1491, 6th Henry VII.— See Addenda, No. IV., and No. III. for Act of 18 Edw. IV.

The attention of Henry VII. was at last directed to the state of Ireland, by the countenance shewn by the Yorkist party to the two Pretenders, Simnel and Warbeck. For the encouragement of his loyal subjects he granted eight marks yearly to the guild in the chapel of St. George the Martyr, in Dublin, an old Lancastrian foundation. In 1506, the masters and wardens of the guild covenanted to pay Prior Nicholas, and the convent of All Saints, the sum of four marks yearly, "for the sustentacion and wages of a honnest chapleyn to say masse and other divine service in the said chapell, in Sundaies and Feasts and thrice by weeke, that is to say, Wednesday, Fryday, and Saturday, wekely and yearley," as long as the royal grant of eight marks should continue.

In the next year (1507) we find the last grant made to this house, of which we have any notice. Margaret White", in her pure widowhood, surrendered to the King, for the use of the Prior and convent of All Saints, her lands and tenements in Calganiston, in the barony of Newcastell, County Dublin. This was the only lordship which the " Kyng had in all Ireland in possession of thinheritaunce of the Crowne," and it was specified that the lands of Calganiston were to be held according to the uniform and laudable custom of that manor.

In 1534, the Prior was bound to send two able gunners' or archers to the hosting. On the 1st day of March, 1537, Walter Hankoke, the last Prior of this ancient foundation, granted a lease of a farm at Ballycollane', to William Baly, and Isabel his wife, for thirty

f Eight marks.-Rot. Pat. 21 Hen. VII. 9. 8 The masters.-See Addenda, No.V. h Margaret White.-See Addenda, Nos. VI. and VII.

i Lordship.-State Papers, vol. ii. part

iii. p. 416.

j Gunners.-State Papers, vol. ii. part iii. p. 212.

1

* Lease. Appendix, No. VI.

Ballycollane.-The right of the Priory

thirty-one years, at the rent of four marks. The tenant being also bound to furnish a wache hen and a goose at Christmas, all herthyeles (a word we cannot explain), a custom day to draw turf to the Abbey, and to free the ditches of his portion of the town.

It was also convenanted, that if the half-year's rent were two months in arrear, the Prior was to have a right of distress, and if no lawful distress was therein, then the lessor was to repossess the lands. The tenants were bound to keep the messuage and appurtenances stiff and staunch at their own proper costs and expence; and were not to alien or sell any part of the premisses without the consent of the Prior, under pain of forfeiture of the lease; and if the tenants died during the term, without lawful issue, the lands were to revert to the Prior and Convent, and any corn which might be growing on the lands at the termination of the lease, was to be the property of the tenant.

These are interesting covenants in the earliest lease in English of lands in Ireland, with which we are acquainted, and they give no sign of any apprehension of the impending ruin of the Priory; yet, within less than two years of the date of this lease, the chapter-house

to these lands was disputed by the Crown in the time of Richard II. They were seized into the King's hands in consequence of an inquisition taken before Sir Thomas Clifford, Escheator of Ireland, which found that a certain Sytrick Makmorgh (perhaps the founder of Inis Patrick-Mon. Hib. p. 218), gave the grange of Ballycollane to All Hallows, to find two chaplains, "Divina celebrantes," for the souls of the said Sytrick and his successors; that at the taking of the Inquisi

in

tion, on the Monday before the Feast of St. Patrick the Bishop, in the 13th of Richard II. (1390), this condition was not observed, and that the heir of Sytrick was an Irishman, and an enemy to the King. It was subsequently found by a jury, that the lands had been granted by Dermic M'Morgh, before the conquest, to William, then Prior, and had been held by all his successors; the Prior thereon had a writ "de manu amovenda," on the 4th of December, 1302.-Memorand. Roll, 17 Rich. II.

in which it was executed witnessed a very different scene. There, on the 16th November, 1538, in the presence of sundry persons, in a deed giving proof of the compulsion under which it was executed by the vehemence of the declarations of their free will, Walter Hancoke, Prior, Robert Dolyng, John Grogan, James Blake, and John Barret, the last Prior and the last Canons of All Hallows, assembled for the last time, and there signed, sealed, and delivered, to the Royal Commissioners, William Brabazon, Gerald Ailmer, John Allen, and Robert Fitzsimon, all hungry for monastic spoil, the surrender of their ancient priory. The form of surrender then executed omitted no property which could belong to the house. It specified the scite, ambit, and precinct, the whole church, belfry, and cemetery, all manors, messuages, lands, tenements, rents, reversions, and services, mills, meadows and pastures, woods and underwoods, houses, buildings, granges, granaries, stables and dovecots, fisheries, warrens, annuities, waters, ponds, rectories, vicarages, knights' fees, advowsons of churches, chapels, and chantries, pensions, porcions, tithes, oblations, courts leet, and of frank pledge, and their profits and perquisites, and all other rights, possessions, and hereditaments, as well spiritual as temporal, in the counties of Dublin, Meath, Kildare, Louth, Tipperary, Kilkenny, and elsewhere in Ireland, belonging in any way to the Prior and Canons of All Hallows. Nor were these all. There were added their charters, evidences, writings and manuscripts, their goods, chattels, utensils, ornaments, jewels, and debts, all these were granted to the King, to be disposed of at his good pleasure, without appeal or complaint, and the unhappy men were forced to declare, that they thus deprived themselves of house and home of their own free will, and that they put an end to a venerable institution, to which they were bound by the most solemn obligations, certain just and reasonable causes thereto moving their minds and their consciences.

The

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