12, A.M., and 2 to 4, P.M. Hutchinson was unquestionably very arbitrary and offensive in some of his regulations, but whether he was right or wrong he met the same cynical measure in “Pranceriana.”[22]

The “Lachrymæ,” published in 1777, was the work of Dr. Duigenan alone (see note B), and in it he gives full fling to his hatred of the Provost. It is an able and envenomed indictment, and the author hits his victim with the utmost roughness. He accuses the Provost of violating every clause of the Provost’s oath, and of being guilty of every possible abuse of his high office; he, moreover, defames Dr. Leland (see note C), and the other Fellows who were or became civil and courteous to the Provost. Duigenan acknowledges that he set himself to be insolent to the Provost; he tells what brave plans of defiance and revenge he formed, and how, after all, the Provost punished him and put him down.

The “Lachrymæ” records all this in piquant and entertaining fashion; and, besides being damaging to the Provost’s character, it is interesting still as a sort of College Calendar of the period, giving antiquarian information of much value concerning the administration, economies, and discipline of the College a hundred years ago. It begins with reciting the naked and unprincipled manœuvre with Sir John Blacquiere, the Chief Secretary[23] to Lord Lieutenant Harcourt, by which Hutchinson, a layman, was appointed Provost, by virtue of the Crown’s dispensing with the Statute which required the office to be filled by a Doctor or Bachelor in Divinity. Blacquiere’s origin, Duigenan says, was like the source of the Nile, only to be guessed at, and Blacquiere himself was insolent, illiterate, and avaricious. On the death of Provost Andrews, in 1774, he recommended as his successor John Hely Hutchinson, who resigned in his patron’s favour the office of Alnager, which Blacquiere ere long farmed out at £1,200 per annum.

Duigenan says that whilst the bargain was in agitation Blacquiere represented the Provostship as much more valuable than it was. He adds that Hutchinson “complained loudly that he had been bitten,” and that to make the best of a bad bargain he took in hands the College Estate.

Henry Flood was an eager candidate for the Provostship, and was put off with a vice-treasurership, and a salary of £3,500 a year. Blacquiere would have given him the Provostship if he could have paid a higher price than Hutchinson; and “he would have sold it to a chimney-sweeper if he had been the highest bidder.” Duigenan says that all he knew of Flood was that he had been bought by Blacquiere, but he had no doubt that he would have made a better Provost than Hutchinson.[24] His disgust against Hutchinson is so intense that it overrides his sour nationality and his jealousy for the rights of the body to which he belonged; and he declares that he would have preferred the appointment of an Oxford or Cambridge clergyman.

In the Gazette announcement of Hutchinson’s appointment his “LL.D.” was puffed, but Duigenan strips the degree of all merit by explaining that it was only an “honorary” one—that it had no Academic significance—that every member of the Irish Parliament had a customary right to it—that it had just been conferred on an ignorant carpenter, one John Magill[25]—and that, as the climax of the prostitution, he himself, Duigenan, in his capacity of Regins Professor of Civil Law, had officially presented Blacquiere for the honour![26]

Non-fellow, unlearned, and layman as he was, Hutchinson got the Provostship, and he was not long in finding out that the constitution of the college afforded a sphere for energy which precisely suited him. By the “New Statutes,” i.e., the Charter and Statutes drawn up by Archbishop Laud, the Provost possessed, or was supposed traditionally to possess,[27] almost absolutely, the management of the college estates, the disposal of its revenues, the nomination of fellows and scholars, and the power of rewarding and punishing fellows and scholars. The choice of parliamentary representatives for the University rested—not as since the Reform Act, with the registered Masters of Arts and Ex Scholars at large—with the corporate body of the fellows and scholars for the time being, all of whom were in a great degree subject to the statutable powers and underhand influence of the Provost. The body consisted of twenty-two fellows and seventy scholars. The College was the only asylum in the kingdom for friendless merit, and Duigenan knew five contemporary bishops who had been fellows.[28] All its usefulness and all its glories were swept away by the appointment of “Mr.”—for he would not call him Dr.—Hutchinson.

Duigenan explains that it took five years’ hard study to get a fellowship; that the juniors were subject to incessant toil and irksome bondage as tutors, and that their single compensating prospect was co-option. The income of the juniors was only £40 a year, but the seniors at that time handed over to them the pupils to help their scanty maintenances.[29] The “Natives’ Places” were held by Scholars who were Irish born, and who succeeded to the Places by seniority and diligent attendance on college duties.

Sizarships were given by nomination, the Provost claiming eight nominations to one of each of the senior fellows, the previous system of election by examination having been superseded by Hutchinson. There was not one of these departments in which, according to Duigenan, Provost Hely Hutchinson did not traffic—and Duigenan’s statements are borne out by the evidence before the parliamentary committee.[30] It was the same with “non-coing,”