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. [Illustration: THE EARLIEST EXTANT COLLEGE SEAL.]