MAYNOOTH, a village in the county of Kildare, province of Leinster, Ireland, is situated on the Royal Canal and on the Midland Great Western Railway, 15 miles northwest of Dublin. The Royal Catholic College of Maynooth, instituted by the Irish parliament in 1765, is the chief seminary for the education of the Roman Catholic clergy of Ireland. It was supported by a parliamentary grant of £26,000 a year, which at the disestablishment of the Irish Church in 1869 was commuted by the payment of a capital sum fourteen times its amount. The building is a fine Gothic structure by Pugin, erected by a parliamentary grant obtained in 1846. Near the college stand the ruins of Maynooth Castle, built in 1426, and formerly the residence of the Fitzgerald family. It was besieged in the reign of Henry VIII., in that of Edward VI., and during the Cromwellian wars, when it was demolished. The beautiful mansion of the duke of Leinster is about a mile from the town.