Chapter 34.

Grace Dieu,

the last place of interest in the course of this excursion, was* *once the seat of the most extensive nunnery in this county. Only the foundations of the principal building now remain, extending 27 yards in length by seven in breadth. Within this enclosure is a solitary flat tombstone, with the inscription, “Hic jacet Johannes Hurley, cujus animae propitietur Dominus, Amen,” but no date can be traced; and at a short distance hence, in the same field, is another ancient tombstone, but the inscription has been too worn down to justify any interpretation. At one side of it lies a stone-head, but the sculpture, by time and exposure to the elements, has been almost smoothed away. The cemetery has itself been utterly disconsecrated, and the plough has long since torn up the sacred remains of the buried dead.

The church was dedicated to the Blessed Virgin of the Nativity, and the convent of nuns, who were of the order of regular canonesses of St. Augustine, was founded here, or rather removed hither from Lusk b; Archbishop Comyn, about the year 1190, at which time this prelate gave them the tithes of wool in his manor of Ballymore, and of those of his mill of Swords, and he subsequently appropriated to their house the church of Portrane; that of Westpalstown was also about this time annexed to it, as was likewise the church of St. Audeon or St. Owen in Dublin, but the latter endowment was withdrawn by Archbishop Henry de Loundres, who gave to the nuns, in lieu thereof, the church of Ballymadun with the chapelry adjoining, and, granted St. Audeon’s to the treasurer of St. Patrick’s. For an incident referring to Grace Dieu in 1313, see “Howth” at that year.

[510] In 1473 King Edward granted a license to the prioress to purchase lands to the value of £20 yearly, notwithstanding the statute of mortmain, which license was confirmed by act of parliament.

In 1533 Robert Begge was seised, according to the course of family settlements, of parts of the lands of Nutstown, Clonmethan, Cabragh near Killen, Grace Dieu, Swords, Tobbergragan, Killon, &c.

At the commencement of the 16th century this nunnery, with six appropriate benefices, paid £3 6s. 8d. proxies to the Arcbishop of Dublin. The prioress was then seised of the priory church, steeple, and cemetery, the hall and dormitory, with a cellar and two chambers below them, three chambers with cellar, a kitchen, storeroom and brewhouse, two granaries, a barn, a kiln, two stables, a cow-house, sheep-house, two pig-styes and other buildings, two haggards, a garden, two orchards and six acres of pasture; also, the manor of Grace Dieu, 33 cottages, 33 gardens, two dove houses, 290a. arable, 20a. meadow, and 20a. pasture, a horse mill and a water mill with the mill-race, 140a. in Dunganstown held under the Archbishop of Dublin, 7a.* in Brownstown, 90a. in Irishtown, 58a. in Crumlin, 240a. in Wimbleton, 100a. *in Dowlagh, 30a. called Francum’s land in Swords, 106a. in Lusk, and a flaggon of ale out of every brewing for sale in Lusk. The following rectories were likewise appropriated to this house, - Grace Dieu, Portrane with a messuage and 18 acres belonging to the rectory, Lambay waste, a portion of tithes in the parish of Lusk, Westpalstown, Ballymadun, Newcastle-MacKinegan, and Killadreny, with the advowscn of the vicarage and the rectory of Tobber.

In 1538 Archbishop Browne writes tc Lord Cromwell in reference to this house, “Whereas I wrote unto your Lordship for the obtainment of a very poor house of Friars named the New Abbey, an house of the obstinates’ religion, which lay very commodious for me by Ballymore, to repair unto in times of need, I am clean dispatched of any pleasures there, and the profit thereof given to an Irishman, so that I am counted an unworthy person. Wherefore to you, my special good Lord, I make my moan, having [511] no other refuge, beseeching your Lordship, that if the Abbot of Grace Dieu be suppressed, that I may have it in farm, for it lieth even within the midst of my lands; yea, and also I am founder of the same, and rather than I would lack it, would give the King’s Highness yearly £10 above any other, or else make permutation with his Grace for other lands of mine about Ballymore, which be more for his Highness, and amongst his Majesty’s lands there lying, whose Majesty might so defend them, that it would amount far above the extents of the lands of Grace Dieu, as knoweth the Blessed Trinity, who have your good honourable Lordship in his most safe tuition.”

In the following year, however, when the Suppression of monasteries in Ireland was resolved upon, the Lord Deputy and Council interposed “for the common weal of said land,” praying that six houses should continue, “changing their clothing and rule in such sort and order as the King’s Grace should will them.” The nunnery, which is the present subject of consideration, was one of these; the other five being St. Mary’s Abbey, Christ Church, Connal, Kenlis, and Jerpoint. “For,” as they represented,, “in those houses commonly and other such like, the King’s Deputy and all other his Grace’s Council and officers, also, Irishmen and others, resorting to the King’s Deputy in their quarters, is, and hath been, most commonly lodged at the costs of the said houses; also in them, young men and children, and other both of mankind and womankind, be brought up in virtue, learning, and in the English tongue and behaviour, to the great charges of the said houses, that is to say, the womankind of the whole Engglishry of this land for the more part in the said nunnery, and the mankind in the other said houses. And, in the said house of St. Mary’s Abbey, hath been the common resort of all such of reputation as bath repaired hither out of England. And in Christ Church Parliaments, Counsels, and the common resort in term time for definitions of all matters by judges and learned men, is for the most part used. Also at every hosting, rode, and journey, the said houses, on their proper costs, findeth as many men-of-war according the rate of the king’s wages as they now standing do find and hath found, over and beside the yearly payment both [512] of subsidy, also, the 20th part of their small revenue, with, also, their first fruits at every change of their head rulers.” [State Papers, temp. Hen. VIII.]

Notwithstanding this influential memorial, the nunnery, with all its possessions in the Counties of Dublin, Meath, Kildare, Louth, and elsewhere, was surrendered in the same year by Alison White, its last prioress, who had thereupon a pension of £6 per annum granted to her, charged upon Grace Dieu, Lusk, Donganstown, Irishtown, and the churches of Portrane, Westpalstown, and Ballymadun, and the house being thereupon suppressed, its site was granted to Sir Patrick Barnewall, who immediately after made it his residence, as appears by his correspondence yet extant; and especially by one letter dated at Grace Dieu the 19th of May, 1540, written to Lord Essex, and displaying many good qualities of head and heart. It particularly contains this short pithy comment in reference to the government of this country: “To reduce this land to order, my poor advice shall be, that your good Lordship shall be the mean that the King’s Highness shall so provide and order, that his Grace’s Deputy of this his Majesty’s land for the time being, shall be faithful, sure, and constant in his promises, and in especial in any concluding of peace; and that he shall be such a person, that shall have more regard to his own honour and promise, than to any covetous desire of praise or booties of cattle; and that he shall make no wilful war, and when war is made upon a good ground, that the same be followed till a perfect conclusion thereof be taken, and not left at large, nor yet to take a feint peace; and that the said Deputy shall not be, in weighty matters, counselled nor guided by such persons, as be openly known to be ill doers in their ill doings against the King’s Majesty and his Grace’s subjects in time part, for the same hath and may hinder.” [Ib.]

For a notice of Grace Dieu in 1548 see at “Lusk;” and of its tithes in 1609 see at “Clondalkin.”

In l615 Sir John King, as assignee of George Blundell, passed patent for the site and circuit of the chapel of St. Macvidogh, the cemetery, a parcel of land lying round the said chapel enclosed with a ditch, containing eight acres, called St. Macdivogh’s lands, parcel of the estate of the monastery of Grace Dieu, also for 40a. [513] in Westpalstown near Newcastle, parcel of the estate of the hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, a watermill in “the king’s” Miltown, and the land called Windmill land, containing 40a. - For a further notice in 1615, see at “Portrane,” and for another in 1617, at “Crumlin.”

About the year 1666 the name of Peter Sherlog of Grace Dieu, appears among the distinguished signatures to the Roman Catholic Remonstrance. In 1685 Lord Kingsland passed patent for (inter alia) the town and lands of Grace Dieu, with the tithes thereof, the right to which still continues in the Lord of Trimlestown.

In 1697 the Rev. Mr. Whitehead, a monk, was returned as the officiating Catholic clergyman here.

In a field, at a short distance from the ruins, on the direction to Brownstown, is a small, sharply-conical moat, evidently once an ornament of the nunnery garden. From its base a very remarkable ancient narrow causeway leads into Swords, and restores the tourist to the city. It was paved with a reddish stone, and presents some curious small, yet singularly elevated arches of bridges over the intervening rivulets. Some of the noble stock of apple-trees, which grew in the convent orchards beside it, are still represented in the soil, but now degraded into “crab-tree staves.” Viewing them in their emblematical degeneracy, (yet covered with a bloom of the most delicate rose colour,) and inhaling the reverence of the traditions that in a manner consecrate every pace of the above old avenue, it was impossible to exclude the wish, that no unhallowed presentment of justices or cess-payers may ever presume to render doubtful the identity of this “Via sacra.” [514]

Ch. 35. Fingal.