The Mortgage Papers of St Patrick's College, Maynooth, 1871-1923

On 1 January 1871, under the terms of the Irish Church act of 1869, St Patrick's College, Maynooth, received a capital sum of £369,040 in compensation for the withdrawal of the annual parliamentary grant of £26,360 that had been set under the Maynooth act of 1845. Much to the delight of the then president, Rev C. W. Russell, the trustees would 'no longer [be] subject to official control, nor liable to be made the occasion of unseemly exhibitions in Parliament' but would have the power to independently administer the entire property, 'subject to one sole condition, the equitable one of applying the proceeds [of endowment] to the proper purposes of the trust'. In other words, the capital sum invested would have to provide an annual return comparable (at least) to the previous annual grant in order to safeguard the financial running of the college, of which the trustees, the only legally constituted religious corporation in Ireland, were now the legal proprietors.