Читать книгу The Book of Trinity College Dublin 1591-1891 - Ireland) Trinity College (Dublin - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Laudamus te, benignissime Pater, pro serenissimis,

Regina Elizabetha hujus Collegii conditrice,

Jacobo ejusdem munificentissimo auctore,

Carolo conservatore,

Ceterisque benefactoribus nostris.

The Caroline Grace.

The origin of the University of Dublin is not shrouded in darkness, as are the origins of the Universities of Bologna and Oxford. The details of the foundation are well known, in the clear light of Elizabethan times; the names of the promoters and benefactors are on record; and yet when we come to examine the dates current in the histories of the University and the relative merits of the promoters, there arise many perplexities. The grant of the Charter is in the name of Queen Elizabeth, and we record every day in the College our gratitude for her benefaction; but it is no secret that she was urged to this step by a series of advisers, of whom the most important and persuasive remained in the background.

The project of founding a University in Ireland had long been contemplated, and the current histories record various attempts, as old as 1311, to accomplish this end—attempts which all failed promptly, and produced no effect upon the country, unless it were to afford to the Roman Catholic prelates, who petitioned James II. to hand over Trinity College to their control, some colour for their astonishing preamble.[2] It is not the province of these chapters to narrate or discuss these earlier schemes. One feature they certainly possessed—the very feature denied them in the petition just named. Most of them were essentially ecclesiastical, and closely attached to the Cathedral corporations. There seems never to have been a secular teacher appointed in any of them—not to speak of mere frameworks, like that of the University of Drogheda. Another feature also they all present: they are without any reasonable endowment, the only serious offer being that of Sir John Perrott in 1585, who proposed the still current method of exhibiting English benevolence towards Ireland by robbing one Irish body to endow another. In this case, S. Patrick’s Cathedral, “because it was held in superstitious reverence by the people,” was to be plundered of its revenues to set up two Colleges—one in Armagh and one in Limerick. This plan was thwarted, not only by the downfall of its originator (Perrott), but by the active opposition of an eminent Churchman—Adam Loftus, the Archbishop of Dublin. The violent mutual hostility of these two men may have stimulated each to promote a public object disadvantageous to the other. Perrott urged the disendowment of S. Patrick’s because he knew that the Archbishop had retained a large pecuniary interest in it. Perhaps Loftus promoted a rival plan because he feared some future revival of Perrott’s scheme. Both attest their bitter feelings: for in his defence upon his trial Perrott calls the Archbishop his deadly enemy; and Loftus, in the Latin speech made in Trinity College when he resigned the Provostship, takes special credit for having resisted the overbearing fury of Perrott, and having gained for Leinster the College which the other sought to establish either in Armagh or Limerick, exposed to the dangers of rebellion and devastation.[3] But before this audience, who knew the circumstances, he does not make any claim to have been the original promoter of the foundation. Even in his defence of S. Patrick’s, he had a supporter perhaps more persuasive, because he was more respected. It is mentioned in praise of Henry Ussher, “he so lucidly and with such strength of arguments defended the rights of S. Patrick’s Church, which Perrott meant to turn into a College, that he averted that dire omen.”[4] Nevertheless, the Archbishop is generally credited with being the real founder of Trinity College, and indeed his speeches to the citizens of Dublin, of which two are still extant, might lead to that conclusion. But other and more potent influences were at work.

Some years before, Case, in the preface to his Speculum Moralium Quæstionum (1585), had addressed the Chancellors of Cambridge and Oxford conjointly on the crying want of a proper University, to subdue the turbulence and barbarism of the Irish. This appeal was not original, or isolated, or out of sympathy with the age. Such laymen as Spencer, and as Bryskett, Spencer’s host near Dublin, must have long urged similar arguments. In 1547, Archbishop George Browne had forwarded to Sir William Cecil a scheme for establishing a College with the revenues of the then recently suppressed S. Patrick’s.[5] Another scheme is extant, endorsed by Cecil, dated October, 1563, with salaries named, but not the source of the endowment. In 1571, John Ussher, in applying for the rights of staple at the port of Dublin, says in his petition that he intends to leave his fortune to found a College in Dublin. In 1584, the Rev. R. Draper petitions Burghley to have the University founded at Trim, in the centre of the Pale, as this site possessed a waterway to Drogheda, and was furnished with great ancient buildings, then deserted, and falling into decay.

But in addition to these appeals of sentiment, there were practical men at work. Two successive Deputies, Sir Henry Sidney and Sir John Perrott, had urged the necessity of some such foundation (1565, 1585), and the former had even offered pecuniary aid. The Queen, long urged in this direction, had ultimately been persuaded, as appears from her Warrant, that the City of Dublin was prepared to grant a site, and help in building the proposed College; and the City, no doubt, had been equally persuaded that the Queen would endow the site. The practical workers in this diplomacy have been set down in history as Cambridge men. This is one of those true statements which disguise the truth. The real agitators in the matter were Luke Challoner and Henry Ussher. A glance at Mr. Gilbert’s Assembly Rolls of the City of Dublin the reign of Elizabeth will show how both family names occur perpetually in the Corporation as mayors, aldermen, etc.[6] The very site of the future College had been let upon lease to a Challoner and to the uncle of an Ussher.[7] These were the influential City families which swayed the Corporation. Henry Ussher,[8] who had become Archdeacon of Dublin, went as emissary to Court; Challoner[9] superintended the gathering of funds and the laying out of the site, which his family had rented years before. It was therefore by Dublin men—by citizens whose sons had merely been educated at Cambridge, and had learned there to appreciate University culture—that Trinity College was really founded. They had learned to compare Cambridge and Oxford, with Dublin, life, and when they came home to their paternal city, they felt the wide difference.

Queen Elizabeth, in her Warrant, puts the case quite differently. She does not, indeed, make the smallest mention of Loftus, but of the prayer of the City of Dublin, preferred by Henry Ussher, thus:

December 29, 1592.

Elizabeth, R.

Trustee and right well beloved we greet you well, where[as] by your Lrēs, and the rest of our Councell joyned with you, directed to our Councell here, wee perceive that the Major and the Cittizens of Dublin are very well disposed to grant the scite of the Abbey of Allhallows belonging to the said Citty to the yearly value of Twenty pounds to serve for a Colledge for learning, whereby knowledge and Civility might be increased by the instruction of our people there, whereof many have usually heretofore used to travaile into ffrance Italy and Spaine to gett learning in such forreigne universities, whereby they have been infected with poperie and other ill qualities, and soe became evill subjects, &c.[10]

The Usshers and the Challoners had no inclination to go to Spain or France, nor is it likely that they ever thought they would prevent the Irish Catholic priesthood from favouring this foreign education. They desired to ennoble their city by giving it a College similar to those of Oxford and Cambridge, and they succeeded.

The extant speech of Adam Loftus, to which I have already referred, makes no allusion to these things. His argument is homely enough. Guarding himself from preaching the doctrine of good works, which would have a Papistical complexion, he urges the Mayor and Corporation to consider how the trades had suffered by the abolition of the monasteries, under the previous Sovereign; how the city of Oxford and town of Cambridge have flourished owing to their Colleges; how the prosperity of Dublin, now depending on the presence of the Lord Deputy and his retinue and the Inns of Court, will be increased by a College, which would bring strangers, and with them money, to the citizens. Thus it will be a means of civilising the nation and enriching the city, and will enable many of their children to work their own advancement, “and in order thereto ye will be pleased to call a Common Council and deliberate thereon, having first informed the several Masters of every Company of the pregnant likelihood of advantage,” etc. Again, “it is my hearty desire that you would express your and the City’s thankfulness to Her Majesty,” etc.

This harangue, in which “our good Lord the Archbushopp” gives himself the whole credit of the transaction, is said to have been delivered “soon after the Quarter Sessions of St. John the Baptist”—viz., about July, but in what year I cannot discover. Mr. Gilbert says, “after Easter, in the year 1590.” In Loftus’ Latin speech occurs—“As soon as I had proposed it to the Mayor and Sheriffs, without any delay they assembled in full conclave and voted the whole site of the monastery.” But in the meetings of the Dublin Council there is no allusion whatever to this speech, no thanks to the Queen, no resolution on the matter whatever, till under the date “Fourth Friday after December, 1590” (33 Elizabeth), we find the following modest business entry:—“Forasmoch as there is in this Assembly by certayne well-disposed persons petition preferred,[11] declaring many good and effectual persuacions to move our furtherance for setting upp and erecting a Collage for the bringing upp of yeouth to learning, whereof we, having a good lyking, do, so farr as in us lyeth, herby agree and order that the scite of Alhallowes and the parkes thereof shalbe wholly gyven for the erection of a Collage there; and withall we require that we may have conference with the preferrers of the said peticion to conclude how the same shalbe fynished.”[12] The Queen’s Warrant is signed the 29th December, 1592 (34 Elizabeth).[13] It is hard to find any logical place for the Archbishop’s speech, either before, between, or after these dates and documents.

At all events, the Queen gave a Warrant and Charter, some small Crown rents on various estates in the South and West of Ireland, and presently, upon further petition, a yearly gift of nearly £400 from the Concordatum Fund, which latter the College enjoyed till the present century, when it was resumed by the Government. From the Elizabethan Crown rents the College now derives about £5 per annum. The Charter was surrendered for that of Charles I.

Thus the benevolences of Elizabeth, like the buildings of her foundation, have dwindled away and disappeared.

The Archbishop’s sounding words have had their weight in benefiting his own memory, as has been shown, beyond his merits in this matter.

The modest gift of the Corporation of Dublin, consisting of 28 acres of derelict land partly invaded by the sea, has become a splendid property, in money value not less than £10,000 a-year, in convenience and in dignity to the College perfectly inestimable.

THE OLDEST MAP OF THE COLLEGE (1610).

The necessary sum for repairing the decayed Abbey of All Hallowes, and for what new buildings the College required, was raised by an appeal of the Lord Deputy Fitzwilliam (dated March 11, 1591) to the owners of landed property all over Ireland. The list of these contributions is very curious, and also very liberal, if we consider that the following sums represent perhaps eight times as much in modern days:—

	£	s.	d.		£	s.	d.
“The Lord Deputy,	200	0	0	Advanced by his means in the Province of Munster,	100	0	0
Archbishop Adam Loftus,	100	0	0	Sir Francis Shane,	100	0	0
Sir Thomas Norreys, Vice-President of Munster,	100	0	0	” ” a-year for his life,	20	0	0
Sir Warham St. Leger,	50	0	0	Sir Henry Harrington,	50	0	0
Sir Richard Dyer,	100	0	0	Thomas Jones, Bishop of Meath,	50	0	0
Sir Henry Bagnall,	100	0	0	The gentlemen of the Barony of Lecale,	59	0	0
Sir Richard Bingham,	20	0	0	Sir Hugh M‘Ginnis, with other gentlemen of his county [Down],	140	0	0
The Province of Connaught by same,	100	0	0	The clergy of Meath,	30	0	0
The County of Galway by same,	100	0	0	Thomas Molyneux, Chancellor of the Exchequer,	40	0	0
The town of Drogheda,	40	0	0	Luke Chaloner, D.D.,	10	0	0
The city of Dublin,	27	0	0	Edward Brabazon,	15	0	0
A Concordatum from the Privy Council,	200	0	0	Sir George Bourchier,	30	0	0
Alderman John Foster (for the Iron-work),	30	0	0	Christopher Chartell,	40	0	0
Lord Chief Justice Gardiner,	20	0	0	Sir Turlough O’Neill,	100	0	0
Lord Primate of Ireland [Garvey],	76	0	0