MAY NOOTH, a village of the co. Kildare, Ireland, 15 m. n.w. from Dublin by the Midland Great Western railway; pop., including the college, '71, 2,091. It is of some historical interest as the seat of the powerful family of the Gera'dines, of whose castle large and very striking ruins still remain; aud 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 inter est arises from the well-known Roman Catholic college, which supplied for many years material for strife to the zealots of the rival religious parties in Great Britain. This college was established during the ministry of 3Ir. Pitt, in the year 1795, by an act of the Irish parliament, in order to meet a necessity created by the utter destruction, through the French revolution, of the places of education in France upon which the Irish Cath olic clergy, excluded by the penal laws from the opportunity of domestic education, had hitherto been driven to rely. The original endowment, an annual vote of £8,928, was continued, although not without sustained opposition, by the imperial parliament after the act of union. In the year 1846 sir Robert Peel carried a bill for a permanent endow ment of R26,000 a year, to which was added a grant of z£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. Pugin's design included a chapel and common-hall, which, owing to insufficiency of funds, have been postponed. Under the act of 1845 the college was to receive 300 students, all odestined 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; but the candidates thus named were subjected, before matriculation, to examination in a comprehensive entrance course, The full collegiate course was of 8 years, 2 of which were given to classics, 2 to philosophy, and the remaining 4 to the more directly professional studies of 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 scholarships, called from the fowader, lord Dun boyne, " Dunboyne scholarships," were assigned by competition to the most distinguished students, and might be held for 3 years. The legislative authority was vested in a board of 17 trustees, and the internal administration in an academical body, consisting of a president and vie-president, together with a numerous body of professors and deans. A visitorial power was vested in a board of 8 visitors, of whom 5 were named by the •crown, and 3 elected by the trustees. In 1869, by the Irish church act (82 and 33 Viet. c. 38-41), the Maynooth endowment was withdrawn—a capital sum, 14 times its amount, being granted to the trustees for the discharge of existing interests. The college, however, is still maintained on the same footing. The educational arrange ments are unaltered, and although the number of pupils, owing to the suspension of free studentships and exhibitions, has somewhat fallen off, the diminution is regarded as temporary. The visitorial powers created under the act of parliament are now exer eised 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, who had for a time conformed to the Protestant faith. A great part of the college buildings was burned in Nov., 1878.