Viscount Clontarf

John Rawson, 1st and only Viscount Clontarf (c. 1470–1547) was an English-born statesman in sixteenth-century Ireland, and 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:

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.

The seat of the Order of St John of Jerusalem was Rhodes, and as the Ottoman Empire moved to seize the island, Rawson was summoned to its defence. In 1519 he was given leave to go to Rhodes for three years, but the increasingly unstable political situation in Ireland caused Henry VIII to revoke the licence, and he ordered Rawson to return to Ireland in 1520 to advise the Lord Deputy. In 1522 he evidently obtained leave at last to go to Rhodes, and he is listed among the knights who were present there. Rhodes surrendered in December and 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 appointed Treasurer of Ireland again.

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