fact that district priests are invited to councils for the distribution of public charity. It is not necessary to argue the case. None can know the subject better; for seven days of the week they are in the midst of it; it is their one business outside the door of the church.

3. The question of repairing tenement houses is both present and practical; and here again the priest comes in. He knows the houses every one, inside and out, along with the names and addresses of the negligent owners, and could furnish a society like the Social League with an unanswerable case for compulsion by the city authority.

4. It would be hard to devise a better system of distribution than that of the children's milk fund, where the recipient pays one half and the fund the other. A similar system might with profit be applied to the coal fund, which at present is grossly abused by the wholesale selling of free tickets; or the experiment of giving money might well be tried, for no one makes a shilling go further than the poor housekeeper.

5. Finally, the question of temperance halls is not altogether outside our subject, though the very poor, whom poverty drives to drink, cannot enter them-a matter of dress. They are as necessary in a large parish as a jail in a city, and for much the same reason. Every day there are men of the labour and trades class needing the pledge, and there must be some place ready for them to spend their evenings in; otherwise it will be drink again the next night, and poverty to follow. But well-filled halls are no certain evidence of parish virtue; the home is the ideal place for the true father of a family. For the young, too, they are equally necessary, for they preclude the danger of the public-house habit entering in; and so for young and old they fulfil a vital purpose, and ought never be dispensed with.

The problem of the poor is never absent for a day; its working demands the best resources available; and efficiency marks a highly progressive civic life. The poor

always need our help; they deserve honour for their fortitude, and respect for their independence; and while we stand amazed at their charity and virtue, some would even be disposed to envy their simple pleasures.

Studiously to avoid exaggeration is certainly to err on the other side--the fault of this essay.

T. J. NUNAN.

THE COMING OF THE KNIGHTS

TEMPLARS TO IRELAND

By J. B. CULLEN

WITH the exception of the Cistercians, most of the great religious Orders, notably the Franciscans, the Carmelites, the Dominicans, and the Hermits of St. Augustine, were introduced into Ireland after the Anglo-Norman Invasion.

Somewhat less than thirty years previous to the landing of the English on our shores in 1169-the Cistercians were established in this country by St. Malachy, Archbishop of Armagh-their first foundation being at Mellifont, near Drogheda. The abbeys of Bective, Newry, and Boyle were founded in quick succession--all during the life-time of the saintly Primate. Eventually, their houses numbered fortytwo, and nearly every county in Ireland possessed one or more of their splendid monasteries.

All these institutions flourished down to the time of the Protestant Reformation-when they shared the common fate of everything Catholic, and were almost wholly blotted away beneath the tempest of fanaticism, bigotry, and persecution. But, in our better days, as in a second springtime, they are with us once again, taking part in the manifold activities of the Church, and promoting the blessings of religion, education, and social virtues among our people.

While most of us are familiar with the origin and history of these Orders, there was one religious body whose members played a very remarkable part in the affairs of Christendom during the Middle Ages, concerning which very little, comparatively speaking, has been recorded in our national annals, namely, the Knights of the Temple of Jerusalem. Previous to its dissolution in the early part of the fourteenth century, this military-religious Brotherhood had upwards of forty houses in Ireland, and possessed estates and tenements in several counties and towns. Moreover, the patronage and advowsons of numerous

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parishes and churches were vested in its control. vileges and immunities of a most remarkable and extensive kind were conferred on the order by successive Pontiffs and kings, which rendered its members independent of all ecclesiastical or secular authority-save that of the Pope, alone. Yet, strange to say, while the Templars, during the century and a half of their connexion with Ireland, must have exercised considerable influence in the religious administration of the country, we find, as have said, very scant information about them in the pages of our chroniclers, and, save in the echoes of place-names here and there or in the faint traditions which fireside folklore weaves round the sites of their bygone castlestheir existence or martial memories came to be almost entirely forgotten. Wherefore, it may be asked, this curious silence regarding the Templars ?

It may be explained, partly, by the fact that the Knights of the Temple were not priests or clerics in Holy Orders, or scholars, in the accepted sense, and hence they valued not the services of the scribe or annalist, who usually held such an important position in the monasteries of the Middle Ages. Neither were they racy of the soil -they were not Irish in any sense. Their headquarters were in England, where the Grand Master of the Order resided at the House of the Temple, London. The inmates of their first houses were foreigners--English, French, Spanish, or of other nations; in fact, they had no national ties with this country or, it might be said, with any other, for their only nation was Christendom, and from the circumstances that called their order into existence, their only concern was centred in defending the interests of the Holy See-as the militant servants of the Pope.

At the time the Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland was initiated in the reign of Henry II, the leaders of the enterprise made it part of their policy to give the Invasion the semblance of a crusade, undertaken for the religious betterment of the Irish nation. Whether their pretensions or motives, in this respect, were based on the conditions embodied in the (doubtful) grant of Pope Adrian IV or not, it is apparent that they gave proof of their missionary zeal very soon after they had secured their first foot-hold in the south-eastern part of Ireland (the present Co. Wexford) by establishing monasteries and other

religious

institutions in institutions in the newly-acquired territory. The Preceptory of the Templars at Kilclogan, in the parish of Templetown (1172), was the first of these Norman foundations. A few years later (1175) the great abbey of Dunbrody came into existence, its founder being, according to the Cistercian chronicles, Hervy de Marisco, from Wales, marshall of King Henry the Second's army in Ireland and seneschal of the whole territory of Richard, Earl of Pembroke, surnamed Strongbow.' This was the first English monastery, of its kind, built on Irish soil. Within a few years or so, after the date of the charter of Dunbrody, De Marisco became a monk in the Benedictine Priory of Canterbury, and apparently the material erection of the abbey was not undertaken till 1182. It was mainly built by the founder's nephew, Harlwien, Bishop of Leighlin, who is said to have been its first abbot. The sister Abbey of Tintern, a few miles distant and in the same barony, was built and endowed by William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, the son-in-law of Strongbow (1200). In the town of Wexford the ancient Priory of the Canons Regular, styled the Monastery of SS. Peter and Paul, was re-founded, under the auspices of the Norman familyDe Roches-and its designation changed, being thenceforth known as the Abbey of the Holy Sepulchre.' Some members of the second founder's family took part in the Crusades; hence, we may assume, they desired to perpetuate the memories of the Holy Land in the dedication of the abbey church which they rebuilt. In the more northern part of the county-at Enniscorthy-another of the Norman adventurers founded the Priory of the Canons of St. Victor of Paris and peopled it with a foreign community. The old-time houses of the Canons Regular at Ferns and New Ross were re-constituted and endowed by the Elder and Younger Earls of Pembroke-of the ill-fated line of the Marshalls. The priories and convents of the Mendicant Orders were established at Wexford and elsewhere in the county later in the thirteenth centuryall under English patronage.

We have touched on these few items of local history, in advance of the immediate subject of our narrative, in order to show, to some extent, what the earlier effects of the Invasion of Ireland were--at least in spiritual matters.

As we have noted, the Order of the Templars was the first to settle in Ireland. In the year 1171,

when Henry II arrived to assume the direction of the enterprise, which Strongbow and the earlier invaders had begun, he was accompanied, we are told, 'by a fleet of four hundred transports carrying a numerous body of archers, and a company of five hundred knights, their esquires, and attendants.' In the train of the English monarch,, doubtless, the Templars were largely represented, since it was close to the spot where the royal fleet cast anchor, in the estuary of Waterford Harbour, that the first lands granted them were situated. In the deed of Henry II to the Templars the grant was made on condition that the grantees should pray for the soul of the grantor and the souls of his ancestors. The lands specified were the manor of Kilclogan, on the Wexford side of the harbour, and the lands of Crook, on the opposite shore, in the Co. Waterford. It was at the latter place Henry and his followers disembarked.

From this early charter we have instances of churches as well as lands being conferred on the Brotherhood of the Temple, a custom which was not uncommon in their day. This must strike us as rather singular, since, as we have just said, the Templars were not priests in Holy Orders -however, they were permitted to appoint or secure the services of members of the clergy, whom they paid a salary to administer the sacred functions, while the parochial revenues or benefices were retained by the Templars themselves. By the Bull of Pope Alexander III (1173) formal permission was given to the order to enroll priests as chaplains, who were exempted from episcopal control. Here it may be recalled that churches in the olden time were frequently endowed for the support of the clergy, or for suffrages to be offered at their altars for the welfare of benefactors, and hence constituted very valuable property.

The foregoing facts go to show the esteem in which the Knights of the Temple were held, and how great were the distinctions and privileges lavished upon them by Church and State. It goes without saying, that this body of military monks enjoyed favours and immunities greater by

1The annual value of the church of Kilclogan was 24 marks, while the chaplain's yearly salary was 4 marks. To the Preceptory of Kilsaran (Co. Louth) seventeen parishes and twenty churches were attached. The churches and houses of the Templars had the right of 'sanctuary,' whither criminals might fly for refuge, and be safe from arrest.