Maynooth, a village of County Kildare, Ireland, 15 miles NW. of Dublin by rail; pop. (1881), including the college, 1174. It is of historical interest as the seat of the Geraldines, of whose castle striking ruins still remain; and as the scene of more than one struggle with the English power, especially the 'Rebellion of Silken Thomas,' in the reign of Henry VIII., and in the war of the Confederates (1641-50). But its chief modern interest arises from its Roman Catholic college, established (1795) by an act of the Irish parliament during Pitt's ministry, to meet a necessity created by the destruction, through the French Revolution, of the places of education in France, upon which the Irish Catholic clergy, excluded by the penal laws from the opportunity of domestic education, had been driven to rely. The original endowment, an annual vote of £8928, was continued, although not without controversy and keen opposition on the part of zealous Protestants, by the imperial parliament after the act of union. In the year 1846 Sir Robert Peel carried a bill for a permanent endowment of £26,000 a year, to which was added a grant of £30,000 for building purposes. The building erected under the original endowment is a plain quadrangle. The new college is a very striking Gothic quadrangle by Pugin, containing professors' and students' apartments, lecture-halls, and a singularly fine library and refectory.
Under the Act of 1845 the college was to receive 500 students, all destined for the priesthood. The patronage of the 500 studentships was divided in the ratio of population among the bishops of the several sees of Ireland; the candidates were subjected, before matriculation, to a comprehensive entrance examination. The full collegiate course was of eight years, two of which were given to classes, two to philosophy, and the remaining four to divinity, scripture, church history, canon law, and the Hebrew and Irish languages. The divinity students, 250 in number, received a money stipend of £20 annually; and at the close of the ordinary course, 20 'Dunboyne Scholarships' were assigned by competition to the most distinguished students, and might be held for three years. The legislative authority was vested in a board of seventeen trustees, and the internal administration in an academical body, consisting of a president and vice-president, together with a numerous body of professors and deans. Of a board of eight visitors, five were named by the crown, and three elected by the trustees.
In 1869, by the Irish Church Act, the Maynooth endowment was withdrawn—a capital sum, fourteen times its amount, being granted to the trustees for the discharge of existing interests. The college, however, is still maintained on the same footing; and although the number of pupils, owing to the suspension of free studentships and exhibitions, fell off somewhat for the few years immediately succeeding the disendowment, the diminution was only temporary. In recent years the average number of students in residence has been 500. The visitorial powers created under the act of parliament are now exercised by visitors appointed by the trustees, and all state connection is at an end. The college also possesses some landed and funded property, the result of donations and bequests, the most considerable of which is that of Lord Dunboyne, Roman Catholic Bishop of Cork. The new chapel, originally included in the design supplied by Pugin in 1846 for the new college, was (with the exception of a tower and spire 275 feet high) completed at the cost of £50,000, and dedicated in 1890. Designed by the late J. J. McCarthy in the Decorated Gothic style, it consists of a great nave, choir, and sanctuary, ending in a five-sided apse, from which radiate five chapels. The entire length is 220 feet, the width 40 feet, the height from floor to groined ceiling 70 feet. The sides of the chapel are flanked by cloisters which exteriorly present the appearance of aisles. The interior is richly fitted as a collegiate chapel, with 450 choir-stalls of finely-carved oak, mosaic pavements of varied devices, altars of Carrara marble, rich painted glass, and a sweetly-toned organ. A great part of the college was burned in 1878, but was soon restored.
See Maynooth: a Centenary History, by the Most Rev. Father Healy (1895).