i.e., allowing money in lieu of commons in the hall; the same in the matter of chambers, the same in regard of leaves of absence, the same in regard of fines, and the same in everything. In all these matters benefits were given to those who would vote for the Provost’s sons, and rights were refused to those who would not so vote. The Fellows in those days used to have to purchase their rooms from the college—they could be compelled by the Provost to attend the lectures of the professors, and Duigenan says that the Provost once ordered him to leave the law courts to attend one of these lectures. Fellows had the right of visiting the students’ rooms—they used to chum together—they used to be allowed to borrow money from the College, and under this arrangement Duigenan owed £300, while Leland and others owed more.

[Pg xxviii]From the time of the “Glorious Revolution” none but Fellows had ever been made Provosts, although during that period five Provosts had been appointed. Dr. Andrew’s Fellowship was a sort of excuse for appointing him, although he was a layman; and Duigenan, in calculating the pecuniary losses which he sustained through Hutchinson, intimates that a similar dispensation might have been exercised towards himself if in due course he had succeeded to his Senior Fellowship. These losses he sets down at £3,000 actual, and £6,000 on the calculation of contingencies. The Provostship was worth £2,100 a year, besides a splendid residence. A Senior-Fellowship, we are told, was worth £700 a year; a Junior-Fellowship, including pupils, £200; Scholars had free commons, and there were thirty Native Places, with £20 a year each additional; the Beadle of the University had £20 a year; the Porters £5 a year, with clothes and food in the hall. On an average two Fellowships became vacant every three years. All these particulars Duigenan gives, and they all are made to serve as counts in his indictment of the Provost.

Hutchinson had the College estates surveyed, and Duigenan makes a grievous complaint of this proceeding. He says the survey cost the College two thousand pounds, and that it was an iniquitous device for raising the College rents upon improvements that had been effected by the tenants.[31] He declares that from the rent-raising there resulted beggary, discontent, and emigration. The renewal fines were divided into nine parts, of which two went to the Provost, and one to each of the seven seniors. In the year 1850, the fines were transferred to the College account, and the Senior Fellows were compensated out of the “Cista communis.”[32]

The “Lachrymæ” tells how the Provost got the large old college plate melted down, and turned into a modern service, destroying the engraved coats-of-arms and names of the donors, at an expense to the college of £400.[33] He soon after had it moved out to Palmerston House, and Duigenan does not seem to feel at all sure about its honest return. Most of the Fellows were in the Provost’s power by being married, and Duigenan says that he used the power tyrannically.[34] A Fellow going out on a living was allowed only five months’ benefit of salary.[35]

Duigenan seems to hold the Provost responsible for the “mean and decayed” condition of the chapel, and he more than once rails at him for being of mean parentage.[36] He finds that since the time of Charles I. no Provost, except Hutchinson and his predecessor, had ever sat in the House of Commons. He is obliged to admit that Dr. Andrews’ conduct in private life was somewhat too loose and unguarded for a Provost; but still he was better than Hutchinson, though he was told that the latter was a good husband and father. Mr. Hutchinson might be a good husband and father, “but no one would think the better of a wolf because the beast was kind to its mate and cubs.” Hutchinson had destroyed the seclusion and retirement of the college by infesting its walks and gardens with his wife, adult daughters, infant children with nurses and go-carts, and military officers on prancing horses. He had endeavoured to institute a riding-school and a professorship of horsemanship after the example of Oxford, and he had desecrated the Convocation or Senate Hall by making it a fencing-school. Duelling had become the fashion among the students under the influence of the Provost’s evil example, and the college park was made the ground for pistol practice.[37]

We are told further by Duigenan that the number of students then on the college books was 598, of whom 228 were intern.[38] We see by the Liber Munerum Hiberniæ that by 1792 the number of students had so much increased, consequently on the liberal education spirit of Grattan’s parliament, that a King’s Letter was obtained raising the quarterly examination days from two to four. In the following year was the King’s Letter directing the admission of Catholics to degrees on taking the oath of Abjuration and Allegiance, in accordance with the Act of the Irish Parliament, and in 1794 appears the first “R. C.” entry (Thomas Fitzgerald, of Limerick) on the College Matriculation Books. From that date onward the religious denomination of pupils has always been recorded.

“Pranceriana,” i.e., probably Duigenan, asserts that the Provost, on the eve of the second election in which his son was returned, offered to supply to a voter amongst the[Pg xxxiii] candidates for Fellowship a copy of the questions which he was to give in Moral Science for the ensuing examinations;[39] and Duigenan openly says that the Provost was determined that no one should be elected a Scholar who would not previously promise to vote as he should direct him.

He kept an electioneering agent inside the walls, a spy and a corrupter,—“in short, the Blacquiere of Mr. Hutchison.” Duigenan gives a long list of the Provost’s insolences to himself and to other members of the body. He resisted marriage dispensations to the Fellows who were his opponents, while he procured them for his creatures—Leland and Dabzac.

On the death of Shewbridge the Fellow, which was attributed to Hutchison’s