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Nec conclusisti me in manibus inimici: statuisti in loco spatioso pedes meos.—Ps. xxx. 9.

The great expansion of the College about the time of its first Centenary seems to have been rather the effect of circumstances than of a strong and able government. The Provosts were perpetually being promoted to Bishoprics, and were in any case not very remarkable men. Nevertheless, the Centenary was celebrated with great pomp, and in a manner widely different from that which is now in fashion at such feasts. Almost the whole day was occupied with various orations in praise of founders or of the studies of the place. We do not hear that any visitors but the local grandees of Dublin attended, nor is there any detail concerning the entertainment of the body, after the weariness inflicted upon the mind, of the audience. There may possibly be some details still concealed in the College Register, the publication of which among our historical records is earnestly to be desired. Dr. Stubbs (pp. 136-8) prints the following:—

In the morning there were the customary prayers in the Chapel and a sermon.

At 2 p.m., after a musical instrumental performance, an oration was made by Peter Browne, F.T.C., containing a panegyric in honour of Queen Elizabeth: “Deus nobis hæc otia fecit.” Dominus Maude, Fellow Commoner, followed with a Carmen Seculare in Latin hexameters—

“Aspice venturo lætentur ut omnia seclo

... sequitur ramis insignis olivæ.”

Then Benjamin Pratt, F.T.C., followed with praise of King James the First: “Munificentissimi Academiæ auctoris;” “pariter pietate vel armis egregii.”

George Carr, F.T.C., commemorated the Chancellors of the University during the preceding century—

“Nec nos iterum meminisse pigebit Elissæ.”

Sir Richard Gethinge, Bart., followed with an English poem in memory of the illustrious founder of the College.

Robert Mossom, F.T.C., delivered a Latin oration in praise of Charles the First and Charles the Second—

“Heu pietas, heu prisca fides ...

... Amavit nos quoque Daphnis.”

Then followed a recitation of some pastoral verses by Dr. Tighe and Dr. Denny, Fellow Commoners, bearing upon the revival of the University by William and Mary—

“Jam fides et pax, et honor pudorque

Priscus, et neglecta redire Virtus

Audet.”

A thanksgiving ode was then sung, accompanied by instrumental music.

A grateful commemoration of the benefits which the City of Dublin had conferred upon the University, by Richard Baldwin, F.T.C.—

“Laudabunt alii claram Rhodon aut Mitylenen.”

Verses commemorating the hospitality shown to the members of the University when dispersed, by the sister Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, were recited by Benjamin Hawkshaw, B.A., William Tisdall, B.A., Jeremiah Harrison, B.A.—

“ ... Quales decet esse Sorores.”

Then there was a Latin debate on the subject, “Whether the Sciences and Arts are more indebted to the Ancients or the Moderns.”

For the Ancients—Nicholas Foster, B.A.

For the Moderns—Robert Cashin, B.A.

Then followed a “Carmen seculare lyricum,” recited by Anthony Dopping, son of the Bishop of Meath—

“Alterum in lustrum meliusque semper

... Proroget ævum.”

Concerning the increase of University studies, in a humorous speech by Thomas Leigh, B.A.

Eugene Lloyd, Proctor of the University, closed the Acts.

A skilled band of musicians followed the procession as they left the building.

To this Dunton, writing from Dublin in 1699, while the memory of it was still fresh, adds some curious details—

Leaving Dr. Phœnix’s house, our next visit was to the College of Dublin, where several worthy gentlemen (both Fellows and others) had been great benefactors to my auction. When we came to the College, we went first to my friend Mr. Young’s chamber; but he not being at home we went to see the Library, which is over the Scholars’ lodgings, the length of one of the quadrangles, and contains a great many choice books of great value, particularly one, the largest I ever saw for breadth; it was an “Herbal,” containing the lively portraitures of all sorts of trees, plants, herbs, and flowers. By this “Herbal” lay a small book, containing about sixty pages in a sheet, to make it look like “the Giant and the Dwarf.” There also (since I have mentioned a giant) we saw lying on a table the thigh-bone of a giant, or at least of some monstrous overgrown man, for the thigh-bone was as long as my leg and thigh; which is kept there as a convincing demonstration of the vast bigness which some human bodies have in former times arrived to. We were next showed by Mr. Griffith, a Master of Arts (for he it was that showed us these curiosities), the skin of one Ridley, a notorious Tory, which had been long ago executed; he had been begged for an anatomy, and, being flayed, his skin was tanned, and stuffed with straw. In this passive state he was assaulted with some mice and rats, not sneakingly behind his back, but boldly before his face, which they so much further mortified, even after death, as to eat it up; which loss has since been supplied by tanning the face of one Geoghagan, a Popish Priest, executed about six years ago for stealing; which said face is put in the place of Ridley’s.

At the east end of this Library, on the right hand, is a chamber called “The Countess of Bath’s Library,” filled with many handsome folios, and other books, in Dutch binding, gilt, with the Earl’s Arms impressed upon them; for he had been some time of this house.

On the left hand, opposite to this room, is another chamber, in which I saw a great many manuscripts, medals, and other curiosities. At the west end of the Library there is a division made by a kind of wooden lattice-work, containing about thirty paces, full of choice and curious books, which was the Library of that great man, Archbishop Ussher, Primate of Armagh, whose learning and exemplary piety has justly made him the ornament, not only of that College (of which he was the first scholar that ever was entered in it, and the first who took degrees), but of the whole Hibernian nation.

At the upper end of this part of the Library hangs at full length the picture of Dr. Chaloner,[66] who was the first Provost of the College, and a person eminent for learning and virtue. His picture is likewise at the entrance into the Library, and his body lies in a stately tomb made of alabaster. At the west end of the Chapel, near Dr. Chaloner’s picture (if I do not mistake), hangs a new skeleton of a man, made up and given by Dr. Gwither, a physician of careful and happy practice, of great integrity, learning, and sound judgment, as may be seen by those treatises of his that are inserted in some late “Philosophical Transactions.”

Thus, Madam, have I given you a brief account of the Library, which at present is but an ordinary pile of building, and cannot be distinguished on the outside; but I hear they design the building of a new Library, and, I am told, the House of Commons in Ireland have voted £3,000 towards carrying it on.[67]

After having seen the Library, we went to visit Mr. Minshull, whose father I knew in Chester. Mr. Minshull has been student in the College for some time, and is a very sober, ingenious youth, and I do think is descended from one of the most courteous men in Europe; I mean Mr. John Minshull, bookseller in Chester.

After a short stay in this gentleman’s chamber, we were led by one Theophilus, a good-natured sensible fellow, to see the new house now building for the Provost, which, when finished, will be very noble and magnificent.[68] After this, Theophilus showed us the gardens belonging to the College, which were very pleasant and entertaining. Here was a sun-dial, on which might be seen what o’clock it was in most parts of the world.

This dial was placed upon the top of a stone representing a pile of books; and not far from this was another sun-dial, set in box, of very large compass, the gnomon of it being very near as big as a barber’s pole.

Leaving this pleasant garden, we ascended several steps, which brought us into a curious walk, where we had a prospect to the west of the city and to the east of the sea and harbour; on the south we could see the mountains of Wicklow, and on the north the River Liffey, which runs by the side of the College.

Having now, and at other times, thoroughly surveyed the College, I shall here attempt to give your Ladyship a very particular account of it. It is called Trinity College, and is the sole University of Ireland. It consists of three squares, the outward being as large as both the inner, one of which, of modern building, has not chambers on every side; the other has, on the south side of which stands the Library, the whole length of the square. I shall say nothing of the Library here (having already said something of it), so I proceed to tell you, Madam, that the Hall and Butteries run the same range with the Library, and separate the two inner squares. It is an old building, as is also the Regent-house, which from a gallery looks into the Chapel, which has been of late years enlarged, being before too little for the number of Scholars, which are now, with the Fellows, &c., reckoned about 340. They have a garden for the Fellows, and another for the Provost, both neatly kept, as also a bowling green, and large parks for the students to walk and exercise in. The Foundation consists of a Provost (who at present is the Reverend Dr. George Brown, a gentleman bred in this house since a youth, when he was first entered, and one in whom they all count themselves very happy, for he is an excellent governor, and a person of great piety, learning, and moderation), seven Senior Fellows, of whom two are Doctors in Divinity, eight Juniors, to which one is lately added, and seventy Scholars. Their Public Commencements are at Shrovetide, and the first Tuesday after the eighth of July. Their Chancellor is His Grace the Duke of Ormonde. Since the death of the Right Reverend the Bishop of Meath[69] they have had no Vice-Chancellor, only pro re nata.

The University was founded by Queen Elizabeth, and by her and her successors largely endowed, and many munificent gifts and legacies since made by several other well-disposed persons, all whose names, together with their gifts, are read publicly in the Chapel every Trinity Sunday, in the afternoon, as a grateful acknowledgment to the memory of their benefactors; and on the 9th of January, 1693 (which completed a century from the Foundation of the College), they celebrated their first secular day, when the Provost, Dr. Ashe, now Bishop of Clogher, preached, and made a notable entertainment for the Lords Justices, Privy Council, Lord Mayor and Aldermen of Dublin. The sermon preached by the Provost was on the subject of the Foundation of the College, and his text was Matthew xxvi. 13: “Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her;” which in this sermon the Provost applied to Queen Elizabeth, the Foundress of the College. The sermon was learned and ingenious, and afterwards printed by Mr. Ray, and dedicated to the Lords Justices, who at that time were the Lord Henry Capel, Sir Cyril Wiche, and William Duncomb, Esq. In the afternoon there were several orations in Latin spoke by the scholars in praise of Queen Elizabeth and the succeeding Princes, and an ode made by Mr. Tate (the Poet Laureate), who was bred up in this College. Part of the ode was as this following:—

Great Parent, hail! all hail to Thee;

Who has the last distress surviv’d,

To see this joyful day arriv’d;

The Muses’ second Jubilee.

Another century commencing,

No decay in thee can trace;

Time, with his own law dispensing,

Adds new charms to every grace,

That adorns thy youthful face.

After War’s alarms repeated,

And a circling age completed,

Numerous offspring thou dost raise,

Such as to Juverna’s praise

Shall Liffey make as proud a name

As that of Isis, or of Cam.

Awful Matron, take thy seat

To celebrate this festival;

The learn’d Assembly well to treat,

Blest Eliza’s days recall:

The wonders of her reign recount,

In strains that Phœbus may surmount.

Songs for Phœbus to repeat.

She ’twas that did at first inspire,

And tune the mute Hibernian lyre.

Succeeding Princes next recite;

With never-dying verse requite

Those favours they did shower.

’Tis this alone can do them right:

To save them from Oblivion’s night,

Is only in the Muse’s power.

But chiefly recommend to Fame

Maria, and great William’s name,

Whose Isle to him her Freedom owes

And surely no Hibernian Muse

Can her Restorer’s praise refuse,

While Boyne and Shannon flows.

After this ode had been sung by the principal gentlemen of the Kingdom, there was a very diverting speech made in English by the Terræ Filius.[70] The night concluded with illuminations, not only in the College but in other places. Madam, this day being to be observed but once in a hundred years, was the reason why I troubled your ladyship with this account.

The sermon preached by Dr. St.-G. Ashe, who presently resigned the Provostship, is still extant;[71] so is the musical ode, but so scarce that there seems to be only one copy known, which the researches for the present feast have unearthed. Some of the text, which was composed by Nahum Tate, sometime (1672) a scholar of the House, is given above from Dunton; the rest, which is printed with the music, is of the same quality. It is chiefly a panegyric of the reigning sovereigns, William and Mary, justified by their recent indulgences to the College on account of its losses in the Revolution. The music of the ode was composed by no less a person than Henry Purcell, and would certainly have been repeated at our Tercentenary had it been equal to his standard works. But it is a curiously poor and perfunctory piece of work, whereas the anthem then recently composed by Blow, “I beheld, and lo, a great multitude,” still holds its place in our Chapel, and we gladly reproduce it in the present festival. The title-page of the score of the ode states that it was performed at Christ Church, whereas the accounts of the celebration speak of it in the College—a discrepancy which I cannot reconcile.

TITLE-PAGE OF THE CENTENARY SERMON.

A SERMON PREACHED IN Trinity-College Chappell,

BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN

JANUARY the 9th, 169 3 4 .

Being the First SECULAR DAY SINCE ITS FOUNDATION BY Queen ELIZABETH

By St. George Ashe, D. D. Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. Published by the Lords Justices Command. Printed by Joseph Ray on College Green, for William Norman Bookseller in Dames Street, Dublin. 1694

The series of Provosts to whom I have referred—Ashe (1692), G. Browne (1695), Peter Browne (1699), Pratt (1710)—were all promoted to Bishoprics, except the first Browne, who died of the blow of a brickbat which struck him in a College row, and Pratt, who was so insignificant that he could only obtain a Deanery as a bribe for his resignation. Of these but one man has left a name, Peter Browne[72] who composed a work on the “Procedure of the Understanding,” evidently called forth by the recent Essay of Locke, which had been introduced into the post-graduate course by Ashe, and was then very popular. More celebrated, and more interesting in this history, is the well-known Charge to the clergy of Cork on drinking healths, in which the Bishop criticises “the glorious, pious, and immortal memory” so dear to Irish Protestants, and all such other toasts, as senseless, heathenish, and offensive. It was always understood by his contemporaries that this Charge showed the writer to be a Jacobite, and when we hear of the long struggle of Provost Baldwin in subduing this spirit in the College, we may fairly conjecture that during the reign of Browne (1699-1710) it was allowed to grow without active interference. It may indeed be thought that the declaration of loyalty to Queen Anne, drawn up and signed by the Senate in 1708 (Stubbs, Appendix xxxiv.), where Peter Browne’s name as Provost appears next to the Vice-Chancellor’s, is evidence against this statement. The declaration was caused by the speech of one Edward Forbes, who was deprived of his degrees. I do not, however, think this merely formal declaration can overcome the indirect, but serious evidence of the Bishop’s personal Charge. There seem to be very few details published concerning this remarkable man’s life. But a group of famous young men were then passing through the College—Swift, Berkeley, Delany; and King, an old scholar, was Archbishop of Dublin. Berkeley was a Fellow, but we hear nothing of him in the College politics of the day.[73]

The Foundation, therefore, had now become strong enough to live and flourish in spite of, or in disregard of, its governors. There is now, indeed, much insubordination mentioned. There seem to have been many disturbances; the discipline of the place had doubtless suffered through constantly changing Provosts, who were probably counting upon promotion as soon as they were appointed. It was therefore of no small importance to the ultimate success of Trinity College, that for almost the whole of the eighteenth century it was ruled by three men who were not promoted, and who devoted a life’s interest to their duties. In the forty years preceding 1717 there had been (counting Moore) eight Provosts. In the eighty years succeeding there were only three, and of these the first, Baldwin, was probably the guiding spirit during the rule of his weak predecessor, since 1710. The reasons which prevented Baldwin going the way of all Provosts in those days, and passing on to a Bishopric, have never been explained. His contemporaries were more surprised at it (says Taylor) than we can be. And yet these reasons are manifest enough, and disclosed to us in one of the most obvious sources of information—the private correspondence of Primate Boulter. That narrow and mischievous Whig politician, whose whole correspondence is one vast network of jobbing in appointments, came into power in 1724, and was for eighteen years the arbiter of promotion, even of lay promotion, in Ireland. He was a man so tenacious of a few ideas, that he keeps repeating them in the same form with a persistency quite ludicrous, if it had not led to very mischievous effects. He shows the same earnestness, whether it be in importuning Bishops and Ministers for the promotion to a Canonry of an obscure friend whose eyesight was so defective that he was unfit for any post; or whether it be in urging his narrow policy that all the high offices in Ireland should be filled by Englishmen. “I hope, after what I have written in many letters before, I need not again urge the necessity of the See not being filled with a native of the country.”[74] And it is remarkable that by natives he only means the Anglo-Irish who had now attained like Swift, some feeling for the rights of Ireland. Hence he shows in many letters a marked dislike and suspicion of Trinity College, which asserted its independence against him. This nettled his officious and meddling temper considerably. “I cannot help saying it would have been for the King’s service here if what has lately been transacting in relation to the Professors had been concerted with some of the English here, and not wholly with the natives, and that after a secret manner; that the College might have thought it their interest to have some dependence on the English” (i., 227). Swift and Delany he accordingly disliked exceedingly, and so persistent was his hostility to the Fellows, whom he calls a nest of Jacobites, that he kept hindering their promotion to the Bench during the whole of his unfortunate reign—for such we may call it—over Ireland. Twice he touches upon the claims of Baldwin, whom he confesses to be a strong Whig politician; he speaks of him with coldness. He mentions with alarm the rumour that the Provost is to be promoted, because he regards it impossible to find a safe man to succeed him in the College. He clearly urges this difficulty as a reason against his promotion. In another place—which has been called a recommendation of Baldwin—he uses the following words:—“Since my return the Bishop of Ossory is dead, and we [the Lords Justices] have this day joined in a letter to your Grace, mentioning the most proper persons here to be promoted to that See. But I must beg leave to assure your Grace that I think it is of great importance to the English interest that some worthy person should be sent us from England to fill this vacancy. If any person here should be thought of, I take the promotion most for the King’s service here will be the making Dr. Baldwin Bishop, and Dr. Gilbert Provost.” To this letter he receives a reply in ten days, to which he answers in his next—“I am glad to hear of the promotion of Dr. Edward Tenison to the See of Ossory, and thank your Grace for the news.”

So successful, indeed, was this malefactor to the College in impressing his policy upon English ministers, that while the years 1703-20 had seen six future Bishops and three future Deans obtain Fellowships, from 1721 to 1763 but one Fellow was elected, Hugh Hamilton, who obtained either honour. The non-promotion of Baldwin was therefore a mere instance of Boulter’s policy, which prevailed for half-a-century. But the accident of this injustice was of great indirect benefit to the College. Instead of many Bishoprics, we obtained our first permanent Provost.

The greatest luminary in the united Church of England and Ireland at the time was the modest and pious George Berkeley. How does Boulter accept his promotion, which he could not prevent? “As to a successor to the Bishop of Cloyne, my Lord Lieutenant looks upon it as settled in England that Dean Berkeley is to be made Bishop here on the first occasion. I have therefore nothing more to say on that point, but that I wish the Dean’s promotion may answer the expectation of his friends in England!”

The next two Provosts were laymen and politicians, to whom promotion did not bar the retention of the Collegiate office. When the last of these three men passed away, the government of the College again lapsed into the hands of a series of Bishops-expectant, succeeding one another with monotonous obscurity, till the advent of Bartholomew Lloyd in 1837 marks a new epoch, almost in modern times. The eighteenth century, therefore, stands out with great distinctness in this history. Almost all the buildings of the College that give it dignity date from this time. A new conception of what the country owed to the University, and the University promised to fulfil, entered into men’s minds. Grants of hundreds now became grants of thousands; salaries were no longer pittances but prizes; the Fellows of the College became dignitaries, not only on account of their position, but their wealth; and the much-tried and long-struggling College at length attained security, respect, and influence throughout the country. The external appearance of the buildings changed as completely as the spirit of the students. The College in 1770 was far more like that of 1892 than that of 1700.

The first of these three Provosts, Baldwin, had probably more influence on the history of the College than any one since the founders. He was either a self-made man, or put forward by some influence which disguised itself, so that many varying traditions were current about his origin and youth. Taylor, who gives very explicitly the authorities for his story, tells us (p. 249) that Baldwin, being at school at Colne, in Lancashire, where he was born in 1672, killed one of his schoolfellows with a blow, and so fled to Ireland. On arriving in Dublin, being then twelve years of age, he was found crying in the streets, when a person who kept a coffee-house took pity on him, and brought him to his home, where he remained for some time in the capacity of a waiter. A few months after, Provost Huntingdon wanted a boy to take care of his horse, when Richard Baldwin was recommended to him, and the Provost had him instructed and entered at the College. Dr. Stubbs ignores this story altogether, apparently on the ground of the (not inconsistent) entry in Kilkenny College, that a boy of this name matriculated from that place in April, 1685; the College admission book, however, gives the date April, 1684; indeed, most of the dates of his earlier promotions appear inaccurate, for though he may have been a scholar in 1686, how can he have been a B.A. in 1689, when he is known to have fled to England, and to have supported himself by teaching in a school in Chester? Dr. Barrett’s statements are evidently only hearsay. It is certain that grants of money were given to him as a refugee in England in 1688. At all events, he was made a Fellow in 1693, and a Senior Fellow in 1697, from which time he either helped in governing, or governed the College, till his death in 1758. He was Vice-Provost, under a lazy absentee Provost, from 1710; he was appointed Provost in 1717.

Baldwin appears to have been in no sense a literary man, beyond what was necessary for his examinations; on the other hand, he was a strong and consistent Whig politician, a disciplinarian, and evidently very keen about the architectural improvement of the College. He accumulated a large fortune, which he left to endow it, and which various claimants of his name from England strove to appropriate for seventy years. In spite of all these merits towards the College, he is not remembered with affection. The extant portraits of him represent a stupid and expressionless face, suggesting severity without natural dignity or good breeding, though he became so great a figure in the College from the mere duration of his influence. He did little to improve the intellectual condition of the students. His temper was morose, and his policy of crushing out not only political, but other opposition among both students and Fellows made him for a long time very unpopular. It is more than likely that his tyrannical conduct in politics increased rather than diminished the Jacobite spirit in the College, for the recalcitrant tendencies of youth were then as they now are, and neither Queen Anne nor George I. was ever likely to inspire the Irish students with any enthusiastic loyalty.

But Baldwin may fairly be called the architect of the College. I do not include under that expression his vigilant supervision and enhancement of the College rents—a very important duty,—or his large bequests to the society, which have made the office of Provost one of wealth as well as of dignity. His claim to be remembered by the Irish public rests upon more obvious grounds. The undertaking of the present Library building coincides with his advent to power. It was actually commenced when, as Vice-Provost, he ruled for the easy-going Pratt. It was finished in the early and stormy years of his Provostship; and when we consider that of all the buildings which give Dublin the air and style of a capital not one then existed, we may better understand the largeness and boldness of the plan. The Royal Hospital at Kilmainham had indeed been recently erected, as the arms of the second Duke of Ormonde over the main door testify. This building, which a vague and probably false tradition in Dublin attributes to Wren, must have produced no small impression by its splendour. It was planned exactly as a college, with the hall and chapel in directum, forming one side of a quadrangle, and surmounted by a belfry. Such is the plan of many colleges at Oxford. And such was still the plan of Chapel and Hall in Trinity College when the eighteenth century opened, and when larger ideas suggested themselves with the increase of wealth and the disappearance of danger from war or tumult. Building had never ceased in the College since the Act of Settlement secured the great College estates in the North and West. Seele had worked hard to restore and enlarge the buildings, dilapidated through age and poverty; Marsh and Huntingdon had built a new Chapel and Hall on the site of the present Campanile, but excessively plain and ugly; even Pratt proposed the building of a new belfry over the Hall, a plan which was carried out thirty years after his resignation. The Chapel is compared by a visitor to a Welsh church. The old tower at the north side of the College, which had lasted from the days of All Hallowes’ Abbey, was restored by Seele, who evidently strove to save this relic of the past. The Front Square was being rebuilt, when the dangerous interlude of James II.’s occupation beggared the College for a moment, after which the houses of the Library Square, which still stand there, were taken in hand. Perfectly plain they were, but solid, and have stood the wear and tear of nearly 200 years, not to speak of the improving fury of occasional innovators, who, even in our day, have threatened them with destruction.[75] They have been disfigured, as the Royal Hospital has been, with ugly grey plaster. If the original red bricks were uncovered, and a tile roof set upon them, the public would presently find out that they were picturesque. At all events, the west side, which was taken down in this century, was a better and more suitable building than those erected (“Botany Bay”) by way of compensation.

The bold undertaking of building the present great Library, without possessing books enough to fill more than a corner of it, must have been Baldwin’s idea. It was no doubt he who hit upon the idea of soliciting the Irish Parliament for grants, although the College was rapidly increasing in wealth. £15,000 was obtained in this way between 1712 and 1724, when the building was finished. The total cost is said to have been only £17,000! Dr. Stubbs deserves the credit of discovering the name of the architect, which was long forgotten, and which is not mentioned, I believe, in the College Register. He was Mr. Thomas Burgh, in charge of the fortifications of King William III. If the Royal Barracks, lately abandoned, were also his work, they offer a strange contrast to his plan for the Library. What his old Custom House in Essex Street was like I do not know.[76] Neither do I know upon what authority Dr. Stubbs adds another detail, that the two small staircases inside the west door, which lead to the gallery, were transferred from the older library, where Bishop Jones had set them up in 1651. If so, these staircases are the oldest piece of woodwork in the College, unless it be the pulpit used for grace in the present Dining Hall, which bears evidences of being equally old. The further history of this Library, which was rapidly enriched by many valuable bequests, forms the subject of another chapter.

The next improvement seems to have been the laying out and planting of the College Park, beyond a closed quadrangle behind the present Library Square, in which the students had their recreations. The walled-in court was probably thought sufficient, and most assuredly, until the whole College Park was enclosed, the unfortunate students would by no means have been allowed to wander through it. The lodge, built in 1722 for a porter, at the north-east end, seems to imply that the fencing was then in process.[77]

These improvements were followed rapidly by the building of a new Dining Hall, commenced in 1740. A bequest of £1,000 seems to have been the only help required, and in 1745 it was even adorned with some of the portraits which still survive. But in 1758 this Hall was so unsafe that it was taken down, and after dismissing the College bricklayer for his work,[78] the present Hall was set up on the same site, and apparently without change of plan. It must be added, in extenuation of the bricklayer’s conduct, that the ground in that part of the College affords very insecure foundations, as we know from recent experiences. The present building has many great cracks in it, and the new rooms just added have had their foundations sunk to a great depth.[79] What is, however, more interesting as history, is to note that the style of this Hall, not finished till after 1760, is rather the plain and panelled building of the preceding generation. The Theatre (Examination Hall) is decorated in a very different, but not, perhaps, a better style.