John Rawson, 1st Viscount Clontarf

John Rawson, 1st and only Viscount Clontarf (–1547) was an English-born statesman in sixteenth-century Ireland, and was regarded as 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.

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 and the title of viscount.

Background

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.

Early career

John Rawson joined the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in 1497. In 1522 he obtained leave to go back to Rhodes, and he is listed among the knights who were present there. Rhodes surrendered in December of that year. Rawson returned to Ireland and was reappointed to his previous offices. In 1525 he went abroad again and spent some time in Italy; in 1527 he was appointed commander of the Order's light infantry. However, Henry VIII apparently felt unable to dispense with his services and was able to secure his reappointment as Prior of Kilmainham: he was also reappointed Treasurer of Ireland. Catherine, who married Rowland White, son of Sir Patrick White, Baron of the Exchequer, who was a successful merchant and later an influential figure in Ulster in the 1560s and the author of several influential treatises. They had three children, including John, who inherited the White family estates at Dufferin, County Down, but later sold them to the Clandeboye family, and Margaret, who married Richard Delahide of Culduffe, near Castleknock.