Читать книгу The Book of Trinity College Dublin 1591-1891 - Ireland) Trinity College (Dublin - Страница 5

“These sums amount to over £2,000, and they must have been considerably supplemented, for we have a return made by Piers Nugent with respect to one of the baronies in the County of Westmeath, in which he gives the names of eleven gentlemen in that barony who are prepared to contribute according to their freeholds, proportionally to other freeholders of Westmeath.

“Money, however, came in very slowly, specially from the South of Ireland; Sir Thomas Norreys informed Dr. Chaloner that the County of Limerick agreed to give 3s. 4d. out of every Plough-land, and he promised to do his best to draw other counties to some contribution, but he adds, ‘I do find devotion so cold as that I shall hereafter think it a very hard thing to compass so great a work upon so bare a foundation.’

“Dr. Luke Chaloner seems to have been the active agent in corresponding with the several contributors, and to have been most diligent in collecting subscriptions.”[14]

The coldness of Limerick—perhaps disappointed at the failure of Perrott’s scheme—contrasted with the zeal of Dublin. Dr. Stubbs quotes from Fuller, the Church historian, a statement which the latter had heard from credible persons then resident in Dublin, that during the building of the College—that is to say, for over a year—it never rained, except at night. This historically incredible statement is of real value in showing the feelings of the people who were persuaded of it. The great interest and keen hopes of the city in the founding of the College are expressed in this legendary way.

Thus by the earnestness and activity of some leading citizens of Dublin, supported by the voice of educated opinion in Cambridge, the eloquence of the Archbishop, and the sound policy of Queen Elizabeth’s advisers, Trinity College was founded. The foundation-stone was laid by the Mayor of Dublin, Thomas Smith, and for at least 150 years the liberality of the Corporation of Dublin was commemorated in our prayers.

“We give Thee thanks for the Most Serene Princess Elizabeth, our most illustrious Foundress; for King James and King Charles, our most munificent Benefactors, and for our present Sovereign, our Most Gracious Conservator and Benefactor; for the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, together with his brethren, the Aldermen, and the whole assembly of the citizens of Dublin, and all our other benefactors, through whose Bounty we are here maintained for the exercise of Piety and the increase of Learning,” etc.[15]

THE PRAYER BEFORE SERMON.

Let thy merciful Ears, O Lord, be open to the Prayers of thy Humble Servants, and grant that thy Holy Spirit may direct and guide us in all our ways, and be more especially assistant to us in the Holy Actions of this day, in enabling us with grateful Hearts and zealous Endeavors to celebrate this Pious Commemoration, and to answer to our Studies and Improvements all the great and useful ends of our Munificent Founders and Benefactors. We render thee humble Praise and Thanks, O Lord, for the Most Serene Princess Queen Elizabeth, our Illustrious Foundress; for King James the First, our most Liberal Benefactor; King Charles the First and Second, our Gratious and Munificent Conservators; for the protection and bounty we have received from their present Majesties, our most Indulgent Patrons and Restorers; for the Favour of our present Governours, the Right Honorable the Lords-Justices; for the Lord Mayor and Goverment of this City, our Generous Benefactors; for the Nobility, Clergy, and Gentry of this Kingdom; thrô whose Bounty and Charitable Generosity we are here Educated and Established; for the Improvement of Piety and Religion, the advancement of Learning, and to supply the growing necessities of Church and State; beseeching thee to bless them all, their Posterity, Successors, Relations, and Dependants, with both Temporal and Eternal blessings, and to give us Grace to live worthy of these thy Mercies, and that as we grow in Years so we may grow in Wisdom, and Knowledg, and Vertue, and all that is praiseworthy thrô Jesus Christ our Lord

Such being the true history of the foundation of Trinity College, as the mother of an University, to be a Corporation with a common seal, it was natural that upon that seal the Corporation should assume a device implying its connection with Dublin. Accordingly, though there is no formal record of the granting of arms to the College, the present arms, showing it to be a place of learning, Royal and Irish, add the Castle of the Seal of the Corporation of Dublin. Dr. Stubbs quotes (note, p. 320) a description of it in Latin elegiacs, of which the arx ignita—towers fired proper—are a modification of the Dublin arms,[16] which I have found on illuminated rolls of the age of Charles I. preserved by the City. But this description is undated, and although he ascribes it to the early years of the 17th century, it will be hard to prove it older than the seal extant in clear impressions, which bears the date 1612 above the shield, and upon it the towers, not fired, but domed and flagged. This date may even imply that the arms were then granted, and that it is the original form.[17] The recurrence of the domes and flags upon some of our earliest plate (dated 1666) gives additional authority for this feature, nor have we any distinct or dated evidence for the fired towers, adopted in the 17th century by the City also, earlier than the time of Charles II., when they are given in a Heraldic MS. preserved in the Bermingham Tower. I have digressed into this antiquarian matter in proof of my opening assertion that the details of the foundation are often obscure, while the main facts are perfectly clear.

THE EARLIEST EXTANT COLLEGE SEAL.

Let us now turn from our new-founded College to cast a glance at the City of Dublin of that day, as it is described to us by Elizabethan eye-witnesses, and as we can gather its features from the early records of the City and the College. Mr. Gilbert has quoted from Stanihurst’s account of Dublin, published in 1577, a curious picture of the wealth and hospitality displayed by the several Mayors and great citizens of his acquaintance; and that the Mayoralty was indeed a heavy tax upon the citizen who held it, appears from the numerous applications of Mayors, recorded in the City registers, for assistance, and the frequent voting of subsidies of £100, though care is taken to warn the citizens that this is to establish no precedent. The City is described as very pleasant to live in, placed in an exceptionally beautiful valley, with sea, rivers, and mountains around. Wealthy and civilised as it was, it would have been much more so, but that the port was open, and the river full of shoals, and that by the management of the citizen merchants a great mart of foreign traders, which used to assemble outside the gates and undersell them, had been abolished. The somewhat highly-coloured picture drawn by Stanihurst is severely criticised by Barnabe Rich,[18] who gives a very different account, telling us that the architecture was mean, and the whole City one mass of taverns, wherein was retailed at an enormous price, ale, which was brewed by the richer citizens’ wives. The moral character of the retailers is described as infamous. This liquor traffic, and the extortion of the bakers, are, to Rich, the main features in Dublin. The Corporation records show orders concerning the keeping of the pavements, the preserving of the purity of the water-supply, which came from Tallaght, and the cleansing of the streets from filth and refuse thrown out of the houses. These orders alternate with regulations to control the beggars and the swine which swarmed in the streets. Furthermore, says Stanihurst—“There are so manie other extraordinarie beggars that dailie swarme there, so charitablie succored, as that they make the whole civitie in effect their hospitall.” There was a special officer, the City beadle, entitled “master” or “warden” of the beggars, and “custos” or “overseer” of the swine, whose duty it was to banish strange beggars from the City, and keep the swine from running about the streets.[19]

In one of the orders relating to this subject, dated the 4th Friday after 25th December, 1601, we find the following:—“Wher[as] peticion is exhibitid by the commons, complaineing that the auncient lawes made, debarring of swyne coming in or goeing in the streetes of this cittie, is not put in execution, by reyson whearof great danger groweth therby, as well for infection, as also the poore infantes lieing under stales and in the streetes subject to swyne, being a cattell much given to ravening, as well of creatures as of other thinges, and alsoe the cittie and government therof hardlie spoken of by the State, wherin they requirid a reformacion: it is therfore orderid and establyshid, by the aucthoritie of this assemblie, that yf eny sowe, hogge, or pigge shalbe found or sene, ether by daie or nyght, in the streetes within the cittie walles, it shalbe lawfull for everye man to kill the same sowe, hogge, or pigge, and after to dispose the same at his or their disposition, without making recompence to such as owneth the same.”

Thus this present characteristic of the country parts of Ireland then infected the capital. I have quoted the text of the order for reasons which will presently appear.

The City walls, with their many towers, and protected by a fosse, enclosed but a small area of what we consider Old Dublin. S. Patrick’s and its Liberty, under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop, who lived in the old Palace (S. Sepulchre’s) beside that Cathedral, was still outside the walls, which excluded even most of Patrick Street, and was apparently defended by ramparts of its own. Thomas Street was still a suburb, and lined with thatched houses, for we find an order (1610) that henceforth, owing to the danger of fire[20] in the suburbs, in S. Thomas Street, S. Francis Street, in Oxmantown, or in S. Patrick Street, “noe house which shall from hensforth be built shalbe covered with thach, but either with slate, tyle, shingle, or boord, upon paine of x.li. current money of England.” We may therefore imagine these suburbs as somewhat similar to those of Galway in the present day, where long streets of thatched cabins lead up to the town. Such I take to have been the row of houses outside Dame’s Gate, the eastern gate of the city, which is marked on the map of 1610. They only occupy the north side of the way, and for a short distance. There had long been a public way to Hogging or Hoggen Green, one of the three commons of the City, and the condition of this exit from Dublin may be inferred from an order made in 1571, which the reader will find below.[21]

The reader will not object to have some more details about the state of this College Green, now the very heart of the City, in the days when the College was founded. In 1576 the great garden and gate of the deserted Monastery of All Hallowes was ordered to be allotted for the reception of the infected, and the outer gate of All Hallowes to be repaired and locked. In the next year (and again in 1603), it is ordered that none but citizens shall pasture their cattle on this and the other greens. It is ordered in 1585 that no unringed swine shall be allowed to feed upon the Green, being noisome and hurtful, and “coming on the strand greatly hinder thincrease of the fyshe;” the tenant of All Hallowes, one Peppard, shall impound or kill them, and allow no flax to be put into the ditches, “for avoyding the hurte to thincrease of fyshe.” In the same year the use and keeping of the Green is leased for seven years to Mr. Nicholas Fitzsymons, to the end the walking places may be kept clean, and no swyne or forren cattle allowed to injure them. In 1602 Sir George Carye is granted a part of the Green to build a Hospital, and presently Dr. Challoner and others are granted another to build a Bridewell; and this is marked on the map of 1610, near the site of the present S. Andrew’s Church.[22]

This is our evidence concerning the ground between the College and the City—an interval which might well make the founders speak of the former as juxta Dublin. It was a place unoccupied between the present Castle and College gates, with the exception of a row of cottages, probably thatched, forming a short row at the west end and north side of Dame Street, and under that name; opposite to this was the ruined church of S. Andrew. On the Green were pigs and cattle grazing; refuse of various kinds was cast out in front of the houses of Dame Street, despite the Corporation order; a little stream crossed this space close to the present College gate, and the only two buildings close at hand, when the student looked out of his window or over the wall, were a hospital for the infected, by the river, and a bridewell on his way to the City.

Further off, the view was interesting enough. The walled City, with its gates, crowned the hill of Christ Church, and the four towers of the Castle were plainly visible. A gate, over a fosse, led into the City, where first of all there lay on the left hand the Castle entrance, with the ghastly heads of great rebels still exposed on high poles. Here the Lord Deputy and his men-at-arms kept their state, and hither the loyal gentry from the country came to express their devotion and obtain favours from the Crown. In the far distance to the south lay the Dublin and Wicklow mountains, not as they now are, a delightful excursion for the student on his holiday, but the home of those wild Irish whose raids up to the City walls were commemorated by the feast of Black Monday at Cullenswood, whither the citizens went well guarded, and caroused, to assert themselves against the natives who had once surprised and massacred 500 of them close to that wood. The river, the sea, and the Hill of Howth, held by the Baron of Howth in his Castle, closed the view to the east. The upland slopes to the north were near no wild country, and therefore Oxmantown and S. Mary’s Abbey were already settled on the other bank of the river.

We must remember also, as regards the civilisation of Dublin, that though the streets swarmed not only with beggars and swine, but with rude strangers from the far country, yet the wealthy citizens were not only rich and hospitable, but advanced enough to send their sons to Cambridge. This is proved by the Usshers and Challoners, and we may be sure these were not solitary cases. As regards education, there are free schools and grammar schools constantly mentioned in the records of the time. It is well known that one Fullerton, a very competent Scotchman, was sent over by James VI. of Scotland to promote that King’s interests, and that he had a Hamilton for his assistant, who afterwards got great grants of land for himself, as Lord Clandeboye, and also obtained for the College those Crown rents which resulted in producing its great wealth. Fullerton, a learned man, was ultimately placed in the King’s household. Both were early nominated lay Fellows of the College. These were people of education who understood how to teach.

But most probably the great want in Dublin was the want of books. There must have been a very widespread complaint of this, when it occurred to the army which had defeated the Spaniards at Kinsale (in 1601) to give a large sum from their spoil for books to endow the new College.[23] This sent the famous James Ussher to search for books in England, and laid the foundation for that splendid collection of which the Archbishop’s own books formed the next great increase, obtained by the new military donation of Cromwell’s soldiers in 1654. There is probably no other so great library in the world endowed by the repeated liberality of soldiers. Still we hear that, even after the founding of the collection, James Ussher thought it necessary to go every third year to England, and to spend in reading a month at Oxford, a month at Cambridge, and a month in London, for the purpose of adding to that mass of his learning which most of us would think already excessive. Yet it is a pity that smaller men, in more recent days, did not follow his example, and so save the College from that provincialism with which it was infected even in our own recollection.

Let us now turn to the internal history of the College. The great crises in the first century of its existence were the Rebellion under Charles I. and the civil war under James II., ending with the Settlements by which Charles II. and William III. secured the future greatness of the Institution. This brief sketch cannot enter into details, especially into the tedious internal quarrels of the Provost and Fellows; we are only concerned with the general character of the place, its religion, its morals, and its intellectual tendencies. Upon all these questions we have hitherto rather been put off with details than with a philosophical survey of what the College accomplished.

It has been well insisted on by Mr. Heron, the Roman Catholic historian of Trinity College, that the Charter of Elizabeth is neither exclusive nor bigoted as regards creed. Religion, civility, and learning are the objects to be promoted, and it is notorious that the great Queen’s policy, as regards the first, was to insist upon outward conformity with the State religion without further inquisition. A considerable number of the Corporation which endowed the new College were Roman Catholics, and we know that even the Usshers had near relations of that creed. There was no insistence that the Fellows should take orders—we know that Provost Temple, and Fullerton and Hamilton, among the earliest Fellows, were laymen,—and though in very early days the degree of Doctor conferred was apparently always that in Theology, the Charter provides for all the Faculties, and it was soon felt that Theology and the training of clergy were becoming too exclusively the work of the place. The constant advices from Chancellors and from other advisers to give special advantages to the natives, and the repeated attempts to teach the Irish language, and through its medium to educate the Irish, show plainly that they understood Elizabeth’s foundation as intended for the whole country, and more especially for those of doubtful loyalty in their creed, who were tempted to go abroad for their education.

“A certain illustrious Baron,” says Father Fitz-Simons, writing in 1603, “whose lady, my principal benefactress, sent his son to Trinity College. Notwithstanding my obligations to them for my support, I, with the utmost freedom, earnestness, and severity, informed and taught them, that it was a most impious thing, and a detestable scandal, to expose their child to such education. The boy was taken away at once, and so were others, after that good example. The College authorities are greatly enraged at this, as they had never before attracted any [Roman Catholic] pupil of respectability, and do not now hope to get any for the future. Hence I must be prepared for all the persecution which their impiety and hatred can bring down upon me.”[24]

On the other hand, the early Provosts imported from Cambridge, Travers, Alvey, Temple, were men who were baulked in their English promotion by their acknowledged Puritanism—a school created or promoted by that desperate bigot Cartwright, who preached the most violent Genevan doctrines from his Chair of Divinity in Cambridge. But these men, who certainly were second to none in the intolerance of their principles, were themselves in danger of persecution from the Episcopal party in England. Complaints were urged against Temple for neglecting to wear a surplice in Chapel—a great stumbling-block in those days; the Puritanism of the College was openly assailed, so that its Governors were rather occupied in defending themselves than in attacking the creed of others. Any sect which is in danger of persecution is compelled so far to advocate toleration; we may be sure that the Irish Fellows who lived among Catholics in a Catholic nation curbed any excessive zeal on the part of the Puritan Provosts; and so we find that they did not scruple to admit natives whom they suspected, or even knew, to be Papists. Moreover, the Fellows and their Provost were very busy in constitution-mongering. They had the power by Charter of making and altering statutes—a source of perpetual dispute; and, besides, the Plantation of Ulster by James I. in 1610 gave them their first large estates, which were secured to them by the influence of Fullerton and Hamilton, already mentioned as Scottish agents of the King. Provost Temple spent most of his time either in framing statutes or in quarrelling about leases with his Fellows.

A review of the various documents still extant concerning these quarrels shows that the first of the lay Provosts was not inferior in importance to his two successors in the eighteenth century, and that in his day all the main problems which have since agitated the Corporation were raised and discussed.

In the first place we may name the distinction between University and College, one often attempted by theorists, and which may any day become of serious importance if a new College were founded under the University, but one which has practically had no influence in the history of Trinity College. We even find such hybrid titles as Fellow of the University, and Professor of the College, used by people who ought to have known the impropriety.[25] Temple, with the consent of his Fellows, sought to obtain a separate Charter for a University, and drew up, for this and the College, Statutes which Dr. Stubbs has quoted.

The second point in Temple’s policy was an innovation which took root, and transformed the whole history of the College. It was the distinction of Senior and junior Fellows, not merely into separate classes as regards salary and duties, but into Governors and subjects. It was rightly felt that, after some years’ constant lecturing, the Fellows who still adhered to the College should have leisure for their studies, and for literary work, as well as a better income, in reward of their services. But when Temple made a College Statute that the Seniors should govern not only the scholars and ordinary students, but also the Junior Fellows and Probationers (which last correspond somewhat to our present Non-Tutor Fellows), he soon came into conflict with the Charter, which gave many privileges—the election, for example, of the Provost—to all the Fellows without distinction; and on this question arose a great dispute immediately on Temple’s death, there being actually two Provosts elected—one (Mede) by the Seniors, the other (R. Ussher) by the Juniors. Bedell was only elected by a compromise between the two parties, with distinct protests on the part of the Juniors.[26] The Caroline Statutes finally decided the matter, and gave the whole control to the Seniors.

Whether this great change, introduced by Temple, and certainly promoted by Ussher, has been a benefit or an injury to the College, is a question not easy to answer. There is no doubt that a small body, such as the Governing Board of Provost and Senior Fellows, is far more likely to carry out a consistent policy, and even to decide promptly, where discussion and divergence of opinion among a larger number cause delay and paralyse action. But, on the other hand, the concentration of power into the hands of a small and irremovable body sets temptations before its members to look after their own interests unduly, and cumulate upon themselves offices and emoluments to the damage of the Corporation.

The reservation of a large number of offices to the Senior Fellows, and the consequent appointment, occasionally, of incompetent persons to discharge important duties, were the necessary result of such an arrangement, and might be of great injury to the Corporation. It might even result in the trafficking in offices, or in acts of distinct injustice towards the other members of the Corporation, which could not have been committed had the acts of the Governing Body been subject to the public criticism and control of the whole body of Fellows.

On the other hand, as some working Committee must be selected to administer the affairs of the College, nothing was more obvious to Temple or to Ussher than that those who had been Fellows for eight or ten years should be preferred to those who had just entered the Corporation. In a body, however, of celibates, with many good livings and other promotions around them, it never occurred to the framers of the Statute that new circumstances would arise which made a Fellowship practically a life office, and thus placed the government in the hands of a group of men, of whom many were disabled by age, and, moreover, distracted by family cares. We should not stare with more wonder at a Vice-Provost of 40, than would Ussher have stared at a Junior Fellow of 40 years’ standing. Had such things been even dimly foreseen, it would have been easy to avoid the danger of accumulating emolument and office upon incompetent persons by making the Governing Body elective from the whole Corporation.

The third question which arose in Provost Temple’s day was the proper leasing of the College estates. The tendency to take present profit at the expense of our successors, or to postpone the interests of the abstract Corporation to the claims of private friendship, is nowhere more conspicuous than in the document Dr. Stubbs has printed (p. 32), in which the Provost, and two Senior Fellows, the greatest names at the foundation, and the most attached friends of the College, James Ussher and Luke Challoner, actually consent to lease for ever all the Ulster estates to Sir James Hamilton, their old personal friend and colleague, who had helped the College to obtain these lands from the King. Had the earnest endeavours of these two excellent Senior Fellows been carried out, the College would not have owned nearly so many hundreds, as it now owns thousands, in Ulster. This calamity was only averted by the active interference of the Junior Fellows, who obtained an order from the State forbidding the Board to give perpetual leases. Nevertheless, so long as the Senior Fellows divided the renewal fines, there was constant danger of the rents of the College being cut down, and the incomes of the lessors being increased: it redounds to the credit of this “Venetian Council” that, after such vast opportunities of plundering public property, only some few cases of breach of public trust can be asserted against them. One of the most manifest attempts has been just noticed. Another was partly carried through by Temple. He obtained a lease, and appointed his son Seneschal of the Manor of Slutmulrooney—a delightful title, but also a solid estate, which he evidently coveted for a family property.[27]

We turn with satisfaction from such things to the two great names in the College and the Irish Church which mark that period—Bedell and James Ussher.

It was by rare good fortune that the nascent College secured such a student as James Ussher. He must have made a name in any case; yet the world is so apt to judge any system not by the average outcome, but by the best and worst, that one such name was at that moment of the last importance. He was the first great home growth, and, though he refused the Provostship, he was so closely connected with the College as Fellow, Lecturer in Divinity, as Vice-Provost and as Vice-Chancellor, that no one has ever thought of denying him and his fame to the College. His works and character will be discussed in another chapter. What I am concerned with is his attitude in the great ecclesiastical quarrels of the day. It was no easy course to steer the Church of Ireland between the “Scylla of Puritanism” and the “Charybdis of Popery.” Ussher well knew that both were dangerous enemies. In his youth, owing to his daily contact with Roman Catholic relatives, with Jesuit controversialists, with the temporising policy of King James, who offered further stages of toleration in return for subsidies of money from the Irish Catholics, he was strong against the danger on that side, and protested with prophetic wisdom that such concessions would lead to rebellion and ruin in Ireland. In his old age, when living constantly, either from his public importance or his persecutions, in England, when witnessing and suffering from the outrages of the English Revolution, he said in a conversation with Evelyn, “that the Church would be destroyed by sectaries who would in all likelihood bring in Popery.” The personal complexion of his religion, his constant preaching, his great liberality and good feeling towards pious Dissenting ministers, show that he was a strong Protestant, and he always showed the strongest apprehension of the ambitious policy of the Romish priesthood, which he feared as a pressing danger; but, nevertheless, he was so loyal a Churchman, that he was content to overlook many abuses in the system which he administered.

It was this temper, so common in the Anglo-Irish Protestant, which separates him in his policy from his eminent and amiable contemporary, Bishop Bedell. But the latter was a stranger brought over from England to be Provost, who, with all the generosity and all the kindliness of his noble nature, set himself to instruct the native Irish, and to work out the regeneration of these barbarians by teaching them religion through the Irish language. So sterling and single-hearted was the Bishop, that even the excited rebels of 1641, amid their rapine and massacre, spared and respected the excellent old man, and at his death honoured him with a great public funeral. But it is plain from Primate Ussher’s dealings with him that this policy of persuading the natives was not to the Primate’s taste. Ussher probably believed that there were serious dangers in the policy of reclaiming the natives through kindness, and their priests through persuasion; and if the historians note it as curious that, of all those who ruled the College, those by far the most anxious to promote Irish studies were two Englishmen,[28] Bedell and Marsh, it will be replied by many in Ireland, that this contrast between the views of the English stranger, and of the English settler who knows the country, is still perpetuated.

Such, then, was the attitude of the early rulers of the College, and such their controversies. All of them that were not complete Puritans felt what Provost Chappel says in his autobiographical (iambic) poem—Ruunt agmine facto in me profana turba Roma Genevaque. But from the very commencement the College was Puritanical enough to save it from Ecclesiasticism. There is therefore nothing strange in the habit of making lay Fellows read short sermons (commonplaces) in the Chapel as part of their duty—a practice only abandoned within the memory of our seniors in this century.[29]

We turn to the few and meagre traditions concerning the moral condition and conduct of the students. It must be remembered that they came up at a very early age—12 to 14 years old are often mentioned—and were only supposed to be partly educated when they took their B.A. degree. There were special exercises and lectures for three years more, and only with the M.A. were they properly qualified. We may, indeed, be sure that the post-graduate studies were far the more important for the serious section of the lads. For they came up very raw and ignorant; they even had a special schoolmaster to teach them the elements of Latin and Greek, and of course the books they could command were both few and imperfect as educational helps. I do not think that from the first the College was at all abandoned to the poor or inferior classes. The very earliest lists of names contain those of the most respectable citizens; there were often favourite pupils of a Provost, or other Don, who came from England, brought over with their teacher. Very soon the Irish nobility began to send their sons. The Court of Wards, established by King James I. in 1617, ordered that the minors of important families in Ireland should be maintained and educated in English habits, and in Trinity College, Dublin; and the first instance of this kind is that of Farrall O’Gara, heir to Moy Gara, County Sligo, who was to remain at the College from his 12th to his 18th year. By this means many youths of quality, or at least of important family, were enrolled among the students. The Earl of Cork sent two sons in 1630; the famous Strafford two in 1637; and we find Radcliffes, Wandesfords, and other aristocratic names. What strikes us in the face of this is the extreme economy—or rather the apparently very small prices mentioned in the various early accounts printed by Dr. Stubbs from the Bursar’s books.[30]

This economy, however, only applies to the scholars supported by the House, especially the natives, who had various privileges. Fellow-Commoners, and Nobles, such as Strafford’s sons, were probably allowed various indulgences. It is interesting to notice that from the first a certain proportion of lads came, as they now do, from the counties of England (especially Cheshire) nearest to Dublin. On the other hand, while natives are carefully distinguished from lads born in Ireland, I cannot find what test was applied to determine a “native.” Even in 1613, 20 out of the 65 students are so denominated. The majority of the natives, says Archbishop Marsh two generations later, had been born of English parents, and were mostly of the meaner sort, but by having learned to speak Irish with their Irish nurses, or fosterers, had acquired some knowledge of the vernacular. But they could not read or write it. The names quoted by Bedell in 1628 suggest that this account of the parentage is true. Conway, Baker, Davis, and Burton are admonished for being absent from Irish prayers. These are not Irish names. It is also added by Marsh that most of these native scholars, bred in the College, turned Papists in James II.’s reign. This proves that they had Irish mothers, and would have afforded James Ussher a strong confirmation for his policy as against Bedell’s.

This society of students was then, as it has ever since been, very various in race, social position, and parentage, and to this not a little of its great intellectual activity may be traced. It should also be added here that one of the strongest natural reasons for the great prominence of the Anglo-Irish, and the extraordinary distinctions they have attained in every great development of the British Empire, is that the English settlers of Elizabethan and Jacobean days were the boldest adventurers, the young men (often of good family) of the greatest energy and courage, to be found among the youth of England. They came to incur great risks, to brave many dangers, but to attain great rewards. The rapidity of promotion among the ecclesiastics, for example, is quite astonishing: Bishops at 30, Archbishops and Chancellors at 40, are not uncommon. And if these daring adventurers were often unscrupulous, at all events they and their quick-witted Irish wives produced a most uncommon offspring.

We do not find that any hereditary turbulence showed itself in disorders among the students. The early quarrels recorded are all among the Fellows, and upon constitutional questions. The main complaints against the boys were very harmless freaks, if we except the constant apprehensions of the Deans concerning ale or tippling houses in the city, which were assumed to be haunts of vice. Stealing apples and cherries from the surrounding orchards was a common offence, coupled, moreover, with climbing over the wall of the College. It shows Ussher’s hand when we find this local feature formally noted in the Caroline Statutes. A few of Bedell’s entries are the following:—

1628. July 16 and 18.—At the examinations each forme was censured, and it was agreed that none shall ascend out of one forme to another, however absent, till he be examined.

August 18.—Examination for Scholars—Apposers, Mr. Thomas and Mr. Fitzgerald.

August 21.—The Bachelors to be hearers of the Hebrew Lecture, unless they that were able to proceed in that tongue by their private industry, and those are to help in the collation of the MSS. of the New Testament in Greek. Twelve Testaments were given by Sir William Ussher for the Irish.

August 24.—A meeting about the accounts. Warning given of town haunting and swearing. The Deans requested to appoint secret monitors for them.

September 13.—The Dean may punish for going in cloaks by the consent of the Provost and greater part. Mr. Temple’s letters to the Provost and Fellows answered—his cause of absence to study in Oxford not gravis much less gravissima.

September 22.—The course for banishing boys, not students, by occasion of Mr. Lowther’s boy striking Johnson consented to, viz. that fire and water, bread and beer and meat be denied them by the butler and cook, under pain of 12d. toties quoties.

September 23.—Deane and Wilson mulcted a month’s Commons for their insolent behaviour, assaulting and striking the butler, which was presently changed into sitting at the lower end of the Scholars’ table for a month, and subjecting them to the rod.

The order for placing the Fellow Commoners by themselves in the Chapel for having more room begins. Service books bought and bound for the natives.

October.—Election of Burgesses for Parliament. The Provost and Mr. Donellan, upon better advice, the Provost resigning, Mr. Fitzgerald was chosen.

December 28.—The Lord Primate dined in the College at the Hall, and the same Dr. James Ware presented the petition for renewing the lands of Kilmacrenny. Jo. Wittar admonished for playing at cards.

January 28.—Tho. Walworth refused to read Chapter, and enjoined to make a confession of his fault upon his knees in the Hall—which he disacknowledging—he had deserved expulsion.

July 23, 1629.—Sir Walworth said to have sold his study to haunt the town. Somers, Deane, and Elliott appointed to sit bare for going out of the Hall before grace, and not performing it, made to stand by the pulpit.

April 2.—The proclamation against Priests and Jesuits came forth.

April 5.—Easter day, at which the forms were used for conveniency about the Communion Table.

April 11.—Mr. Travers, for omitting his Common place the second time appointed, punished 13s. Mr. Tho. for omitting prayers reading, 5s.

May 12.—The Sophisters proposed supper to the Bachelors: prevented by sending for them and forbidding them to attempt it.

July 11.—The Fellow Commoners complain of Mr. Price for forbidding them to play at bowls in the Orchard; they were blamed, and it was shown that by Statute they could not play there.

July 29.—Six natives, Dominus Kerdiffe, Ds. Conway, Ds. Baker, Ds. Davis, Ds. Kerdiffe, jun., and Burton, admonished for being often absent from Irish Prayers.

August 19.—The natives to lose their weekly allowance if they are absent from prayers on the Lord’s Day.

August 29.—Sir Springham said to keep a hawk. Rawley, for drunkenness and knocking Strank’s head against the seat of the Chapel, to have no further maintenance from the house.

Booth, for taking a pig of Sir Samuel Smith’s, and that openly in the day time before many, and causing it to be dressed in town, inviting Mr. Rollon and Sir Conway (who knew not of it) was condemned to be whipped openly in the Hall, and to pay for the pig.

August 6.—Communion. Sermon upon Psalm 71. 16. The Articles of the Church of Ireland read.[31]

The entries of the 29th August (1629) are peculiarly interesting, but have hitherto not been understood in their local connection. There is an entry in Mr. Gilbert’s Assembly Roll (ii., p. 82) awarding a citizen £8 for a goshawk he had purchased for the city, which hawk had died. This is a very large sum—perhaps equal to £70 now, and out of all proportion to the salaries and the prices of necessaries in the College. To keep a hawk was, therefore, somewhat like keeping an expensive hunter now, and a proof of great extravagance. As regards the story of the pig, it was nothing more than a comic carrying out of an order (above, p. 13) frequently issued by the Corporation, whom Booth took at their word. It seems, therefore, that either such proclamations were a sham, or that they only referred to the right of citizens to interfere with the roving swine.

THE SOUTH BACK OF THE

ELIZABETHAN COLLEGE.

The courts seem to have been in grass, as there is an early item for mowing, and 1s. 4d. for an old scythe. A vegetable garden was kept for the use of the College on the site of the present Botany Bay Square, and the further ground belonging to the precincts is called a firr park, which seems to mean a field of furze, much used for fuel in those days. There was neither room nor permission for the games and sports so vital to modern College life. The old and strict notion of a College life, still preserved in some Roman Catholic Colleges abroad, excluded all recreation as waste of time. The Caroline Statutes formally forbid playing or even loitering in the courts or gardens of the College. Nor was this any isolated severity. In the detailed horarium laid down for a proposed College at Ripon, to be founded by James I.’s Queen (Anne of Denmark) at this very time, every half-hour in the day is fully occupied with study, lectures, or prayers.[32] There was considerable license, however, allowed at Christmas, and it was perhaps from the old Monastery of All Hallowes that the fashion was transmitted of acting plays at that season in the College. The performance seems to have been undertaken by the several years or classes. In 1630 it was ordered that the play should be acted, but not in the College. The Lord Deputy constrained the unwilling Provost Ussher to permit it. Even in the Caroline Statutes, remains of this Christmas license appear in the permission to play cards—at other times strictly forbidden—in the Hall on that day. Every 17th March (S. Patrick’s Day), the town population came in crowds from the city to S. Patrick’s well at the southern limit of the College (now Nassau Street, opposite Dawson Street), there to test the miraculous powers of that holy well, which at that moment of the year worked strange cures of diseases. We can imagine the furze bushes or trees around this well all hung with tattered rags, as may still be seen at wells of similar pretensions in the wild parts of Ireland. If the enclosed S. Stephen’s Green was still remarkable in the last century “for the incredible number of snipes” that frequented it, so the College Park must have contained them in abundance. But it was reserved for our grandfathers to boast that they had shot a snipe in the College precincts.[33]

The intellectual condition of the average 16th century student is even harder to ascertain, and I have sought in vain for adequate materials. It does, indeed, appear that the Irish New Testament and Prayer Book had been printed. Sir H. Sidney’s Irish Articles of Religion were brought out in 1566. John Ussher had promoted Kearney’s Irish Alphabet and Catechism, produced in Dublin from type supplied by the Queen in 1571.[34] William Ussher had produced the New Testament in Francke’s printing, 1602. This printer is probably the man mentioned as the “King’s printer” in 1615 (for proclamations?). But though there is extant a proposed arrangement with the very printer of one of these books (Kearney) to live and work in the College,[35] there is no trace of his having done any real service. Even the Statutes were in MS., copied out by the hand of the Provost or Vice-Provost. The annals of Dublin show, I believe, none but isolated printing till about 1627;[36] it was in 1641, both in Kilkenny and Waterford, as well as in Dublin, that printing began to be used for disseminating political views. But the earliest students must have found it very difficult to obtain books, and there is no trace that any printing press started up to meet this urgent want. I am now speaking only of text-books for students, by which I mean such small and handy editions as the Latin Isagoge of Porphyry, printed at Paris in 1535, of which copies are often found in Dublin, as the work was diligently taught in the 17th century course. Dudley Loftus’ Logic and Introduction, printed in 1657 (Dublin), seem to me the earliest books likely to have been used as text-books in Trinity College. Strange to say, there is no copy of either in our College Library. But the official teaching was strictly oral, and the students were merely required to write out in theses or reproduce in disputations what their tutors had told them. The College course, as laid down by Laud (or Ussher?) in the Caroline Statutes, is plainly not a course in books, but in subjects. Not a single text-book, unless it be the Isagoge of Porphyry, is specified, and this rather for the lecturer than the students. Whatever practical relaxations the course then laid down may have undergone, it was chiefly in the post-graduate studies; for the officers of the College had no power to alter or emend the programme of Laud till the year 1760, when a special King’s Letter gave them authority to do so. This accounts for the great quantity of lecturing which went on, each tutor giving three hours every day, not to speak of the efforts of the College Schoolmaster, who undertook those that were raw in Latin and Greek. Archbishop Loftus, indeed, in his parting address to the College (Armagh Library MS.), exhorts the new Provost (Travers)—“See that the younger sort be well catechised, and that you prescribe to the rest a catalogue of approved books to be read by them as foundations of learning, both human and divine.” But this alludes to post-graduate studies, for which the Library was then established,[37] and not to the daily studies of the undergraduates. Logic was the chief subject, the system of Ramus being brought into fashion by the Cambridge Puritans, and especially by Provost Temple, who had written a book on the subject. Chappel was also a famous Ramist logician. Very little mathematics was taught, but, on the other hand, Hebrew was regarded as of equal importance with Greek; and in every subject we find the student’s knowledge tested, not by reproduction of his reading, but by disputations, which showed that he had so far grasped a subject that he could attack an adversary or defend himself when attacked.