John Rawson, Viscount Clontarf

John Rawson, 1st and only Viscount Clontarf (c. 1470–1547) was an English-born statesman in sixteenth-century Ireland, who was regarded as one of the mainstays of English rule there. He was the last Prior of the Kilmainham house of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem; this was a fighting order 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 fathered several natural children. At the Reformation, with little seeming reluctance, he surrendered all his Order's properties in return for a pension and the title of viscount.

He came from a family which had long been settled at Fryston village 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 Michael Stanhope (died 1552); Richard Rawson (priest) (died 1543), a royal chaplain and Canon of Windsor from 1523-1543; Christopher Rawson, Merchant of the Staple of Calais whose 1518 brass survives at Allhallows Barking; and Nicholas Rawson, master of the free chapel at Grysenhale, Norfolk.

John Rawson joined the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in 1497; he is next heard of undertaking a diplomatic mission to Rome and Venice in 1510. In 1511 he was appointed Prior of Kilmainham; this was a position of considerable political power, entitling him to sit both in the Irish House of Lords and on the Privy Council of Ireland. In 1517 he became Lord Treasurer of Ireland.

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