The Book of Trinity College Dublin 1591-1891Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland)
History
The Book of Trinity College Dublin 1591-1891
Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland)
Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland)
When the Restoration supervened, Winter and his intimates were
expelled as intruders, and a new governing body and scholars
appointed. But as Cromwell had taken care to keep up the traditions
of the College by continuing some of the previous Fellows, so the
Government of Charles II. reappointed several men who had stood by
the College all through the interregnum, and saved the continuity
of its teaching. Above all, the framers of the well-known Act of
Settlement took special care of the College, securing to it all
the estates to which it had a claim, and even endowing the Provost
with charges upon forfeited lands in the Archbishopric of Dublin.
Provisions were made for the founding of a second College under
the University; presently Dr. Stearne obtained a Charter for the
College of Physicians at Trinity Hall, close to the Green, in
connection with the College. Ussher’s books, which were still
lying in Dublin Castle, though long since purchased by Cromwell’s
soldiers for the College, were now formally handed over to it; and
in every way its interests were fostered and promoted. The Duke of
Ormonde as Lord Deputy, and also as Chancellor of the University,
and Bishop Jeremy Taylor as Vice-Chancellor, may be regarded as the
main movers in this policy; whether other secret influences were
at work I have not been able to ascertain.[44] How firm and wise
a friend of the College Ormonde was, appears from the following
protest he made to the then Secretary of State. An Englishman had
just been nominated to an Irish bishopric. “It is fit that it
should be remembered that near this city there is an University
of the foundation of Queen Elizabeth, principally intended for
the education and advantage of the natives of this kingdom, which
hath produced men very eminent for learning and piety, and those
of this nation, and such there are in the Church: so that, while
there are such, the passing them by is not only, in some measure,
a violation of the original intention and institution, but a great
discouragement to the natives from making themselves capable
and fit for preferment in the Church, whereunto, if they have
equal parts, they are better able to do service than strangers;
their knowledge of the country and relations in it giving them
the advantage. The promotion, too, of the already dignified or
beneficed will make room for, and consequently encourage, students
in the University, which room will be lost, and the inferior clergy
much disheartened, if, upon the vacancy of bishopricks, persons
unknown to the kingdom and University shall be sent to fill them,
and be less useful there to Church and kingdom than those who are
better acquainted with them.”[45] The scandalous policy of setting
obscure and careless Englishmen to govern competent Irishmen,
which reached its climax under Primate Boulter’s influence, has
now veered round so completely that there is an outcry if an
incompetent Irishman is not preferred to any Englishman, however
competent.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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