Sir John Rawson, 1st Viscount Clontarf, Knight of Rhodes and St. John of Jerusalem

John Rawson, 1st Viscount Clontarf

John Rawson, 1st and only Viscount Clontarf (c. 1470–1547) was an English-born statesman in sixteenth-century Ireland, who was one of the mainstays of English rule in the Kingdom of Ireland. He was the last Prior of the Kilmainham house of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. The Knights Hospitaller, as they were usually known, were a fighting order of monks and Rawson himself was an experienced soldier who took part in the Siege of Rhodes (1522). Despite taking holy orders, he was not celibate, and he fathered several illegitimate children. At the Reformation, with no apparent reluctance, he surrendered all his Order's properties to the English Crown in return for a pension [500 Marks annuity] and the title of viscount.

He came from a family which had long been settled at New Fryston in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His father, Richard Rawson, moved to London, where he became an alderman and a warden of the Mercers' Company. John's mother Isabella Craford died in 1497. He had four brothers:

• Averey (or Alured) Rawson of Essex, whose granddaughter Ann married Sir Michael Stanhope of Shelford, Nottinghamshire, who was executed for conspiracy in 1552
• Sir Richard Rawson (died 1543), who was a royal chaplain and Canon of Windsor from 1523 to 1543
• Christopher Rawson, a member of the Company of the Merchants of the Staple of Calais, whose 1518 monumental brass survives at the church of All Hallows-by-the-Tower, adjacent to the Tower of London
• Nicholas Rawson, who was master of the free chapel at Gressenhall, Norfolk.

Henry VIII decided to dissolve the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and after lengthy negotiations Rawson in 1541 surrendered the Priory of Kilmainham in return for a payment of 500 marks and the title of Viscount Clontarf. The Order's house at Kilteel, County Kildare, was granted to Thomas Alen (a cousin of Archbishop Alen), who had married Rawson's natural daughter, Mary: the impressive medieval tower house at Kilteel has survived to the present day. Lord Clontarf was by now an old and sick man, and he died in 1547; the title died with him.

He does not seem to have taken his vow of celibacy at all seriously, since he had at least three illegitimate children (little seems to be known of their mothers). The children were:

• Sir John Rawson
• Mary, who married Thomas Alan (died after 1554) of Kilteel, Clerk of the Crown and Hanaper, and brother of Sir John Alan, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and had at least one daughter, Eleanor, who married Robert Dillon, Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas
• Catherine, who married Rowland White, son of Sir Patrick White, Baron of the Exchequer, who was an influential figure in Ulster in the 1560s, by whom she had three children, including John, who inherited the White family estates at Dufferin, County Down.

Nice photograph of Kilteel Castle, a tower house, as it stands today.

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CLONTARF CASTLE, COUNTY OF DUBLIN, article printed in THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1840. Number 11. Volume I

"On the suppression of the monastic order in the thirty-second year of Henry the Eighth, Sir John Rawson, the Prior of Kilmainham—a very distinguished man, who had at various periods held the office of Treasurer of Ireland—having, with the consent of his Chapter under their common seal, surrendered the hospital with its dependencies into the King’s hands, he was created Viscount of Clontarf in 1541, on a representation made to his majesty by the Lord Deputy, with a pension of five hundred marks, in right of which dignity he sat in the parliament of that year."

HISTORY OF DROGHEDA, Vol. 1 (1844), by John D'Alton, Esq. pp.413-14

"In 1522, John Rawson, Prior of Kilmainham, demised for a term of years to Oliver Plunkett, of Uriel, gentleman, and Nicholas Chamberlain, chaplain, their heirs and assigns, the churches and tithes of Monasterboyce, Dysard, and Clonkeen, and the oblations, rents, and services, arising annually out of Termonfeckin, Dunleer, and Dunany, at the rent of £10 135. 4d. per annum, said lessees being bound to keep up and support, at their own expense, the churches of Monasterboyce, Dysard, and Clonkeen, and all burdrens attending same. This lease was renewed in 1538, for sixty years. In 1542, it was found on inquisition taken, that the Prior of the great House of Kilmainham was seised (inter alia) of two messuages; 60a. of land and bog in Mountsterbute, annual value 66s. Sd.; a messuage and 4a. of land in the town of Mayne, &c. The Primate's possessions in Monasterboyce are before alluded to in the notice of Termonfeckin."