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HE Priory of All-Hallows or All Saints, which stood upon the ground now occupied by Trinity College, Dublin, was founded by Dermod Mac Morough, King of Leinster. This unhappy prince, who, among his many other crimes, is charged with having burned many churches", was the founder of religious houses in different parts of his territories. At Ferns in Wexford, in atonement for having burned the town, he founded for

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monks of the Order of St. Augustine the Abbey of St. Mary; at Baltinglass in Wicklow, he built the Cistercian Abbey de Valle Salutis; and the Nunnery of St. Mary de Hogges of Dublin, with its dependant cells at Kilcleeheen', in Kilkenny, and Athady, in Carlow, owed its origin either to his policy or to his transient penitence.

By a charter granted about the year 1166, when he had succeeded in taking hostages from O'Carroll, King of Uriel (or Louth, Armagh, and Monaghan), this prince conferred on his spiritual father and confessor, Edan, Bishop of Louth, for the use of the canons of the church of the daughter of Zola, the land called Ballidubgaill', with its men, that is, with Melisu (Malise) Macfeilecan, his sons and grandsons, free and released from any procuration or expedition (to be rendered) to himself lands would appear to have been previously granted by Sitric to the Priory of H. Trinity. Mon. Hib. p. 148.

De Valle Salutis.-Mon. Hib. p. 761. Cambr. Evers. 191. Albin O'Molloy, the unrelenting excommunicator of the Earl Marshal, was Abbot of Baltinglass. Girald. Cambr. de rebus a se gestis. Part ii. cap. 13, in Anglia Sacra, vol. ii. p. 486.

d Kilcleeheen, or De Bello Portu. Mon. Hib. pp. 366, 804. It stood on the west side of the River Suir, opposite the King Tower, in Waterford. No part of the ruins now remain, but its site is occupied by a modern church.-J. O'D. For the notes with these initials the Editor is indebted to the kindness of Mr. J. O'Donovan. e Uriel." O sei amenad O'Karuel Le fiz le rei de Yriel." -Cong. Irel. 21.

This expedition explains the connexion between Dermod and Edan, Bishop of Louth or Uriel, which would otherwise be unaccountable. See note, p. 125.

f Ballidubgaill.-Now Baldoyle. These

& Procuration.-Procuracio et expedicio, Registry, p. 50, may perhaps be translated Cess and Hosting; that is, money-payment and military service. The fourth decree of the Synod of Cashel, shewing the lay exactions to which church property was subject in Ireland, is thus translated by Stanyhurst in the language of his time: "Fourthlie, that all the church lands and possessions throughout all Ireland, shall be free from all secular exactions & impositions: and especiallie that no lords, earles, nor noblemen, nor their children, nor familie, shall extort or take anie coine & liverie, cosheries, nor cuddies, nor anie other like custome from thenseforth, in or upon anie of the church lands and territories. likewise that they nor no other person doo henseforth exact out of the said church

And

himself or his successors in the government of Leinster and Dublin for ever; and he charged the men of Dublin and Leinster to maintain the bishop and his canons in the possession of the said land, in all liberty, without any exaction of tithes, as fully and honourably as any college of canons or monks in Ireland was possessed of any royal endowment.

In the absence of authentic and of historical evidence, if we are unwilling to indulge in vague conjectures or fanciful etymologies, we must confess our ignorance of the church of the daughter of Zola, from which Dermod brought the canons of All-Hallows. From whatever church they were derived, this priory, if not from the first, adopted very soon after its foundation the rule of St. Augustine, as reformed and rendered stricter in the Convent of Aroasia".

lands old wicked & detestable customes of coin & liverie which they were wont to extort upon such towns and villages of the churches, as were neere and next bordering upon them."

These decrees furnish an instance of the weakness of law against custom. In the fourth decree it is enjoined with a particularity omitted in Stanyhurst's translation, "Quod de villis Ecclesiarum cibus ille detestabilis qui quater in anno a vicinis comitibus exigitur, de cetero nullatenus exigatur." Yet in an Irish Deed, made in 1503, between the Friars of Kilcormick, in the Queen's County, and Theobald, the son of Donagh, it is expressed that the friars owe the food of four persons, each quarter of a year, according to the custom of the country.—Miscell. Irish Arch. Soc.

vol. i. p. 104.

Aroasia.—Archbishop Lawrence in

As

troduced this Order into his diocese. "Vir sanctus et timoratus sive religiosus, honestatis amator et zelator religionis operam dedit industriamque adhibuit et (ut?) clericos sæculares, qui in Ecclesia Dublinensi erant instituti canonici, secundum exteriorem et interiorem hominem mutatos in melius, in regulares canonicos transformaret. Et ut hoc summi Pontificis autoritate confirmaretur, duos e Canonicis suis misit Romam, propter usum et consuetudinem Aroasiensis ordinis, per quos sancti viri desiderium adimpletum est. Fecitque regulares stare cantores circa altare ut laudarent nomen Domini, et dedit in celebrationibus decus et in sono eorum dulces fecit modos."—Vita S. Laurentii, Messingham, p. 384. See also Miræus, Canonicorum Regularium Ord. S. Aug. origines. Cap. x. Coloniæ. 1614.

As long as this monastic rule was fully observed the canons of All-Hallows must have mingled little in the affairs of life, and have been little noticed in public history, and accordingly we have been able to discover only few and indistinct traces of this house in the records and chronicles of the time. Still, the situation of the priory, at the very gate of Dublin, at the head of the level ground then called the Steyn, stretching along the south bank of the Liffey to the sea, must have made the canons spectators at least of many great events. From this plain Hasculf and John le Deué, with their iron-clad Danes, some in long breastplates and some in iron plates sewn together, and with round red shields edged with iron, prepared to assault Dublin,

"Une citè mult loé

Que Hathcleyth iert einz nomé,"

which Strongbow had given to the safe-keeping of Miles Cogan; and it was here

"Desur le Hogges de Sustein;"

that Gilmeholmoc', having agreed with Cogan to be "strong upon the stronger side," awaited the issue of the contest, ready to join the conqueror; and it was near this priory, at the old Thengmote of the Danish colonists, at St. Andrew's Church, the site of the present Castle Market, on the south side of Dame-street,-alas for the transitoriness of human grandeur-that Henry II.* spent from Martinmas to Shrovetide, A. D. 1171-2, in a royal palace, "de virgis levigatis ad modum patriæ illius constructum," where, at Christmas, to please

i Hibernia Expugnata, lib. i. cap. 21. j Gilmeholmoc.-D. Macgilla Colmoc is one of the witnesses to Dermod's charter. See No. xlix. He was chief of Hy-Dunchadha, the district through which the

the

River Dodder flows. He was of the same stock with the O'Byrnes of Offelan.-J. O'D.

k Henry II.-Hib. Expug. I. 30. Hoveden, p. 302.

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