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." Duigeran 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.* 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

Flood, who did not get the provostship, bequeathed, by his will, in 1791, to the college, his estate in Kilkenny, worth £5,000 a year, to found and endow a professorship of the Erse or Irish language, and to establish a library of manuscripts and books in that language, and in the modern polished languages. Provost Hutchinson did not leave a shilling to the college. Flood's bequest fell through owing to his illegitimacy. He entered Trinity College as a fellow commoner, completed his junior sophister terms, and then migrated ad eundem to Oxford.-[Flood's “Life of Flood," and Webb's "Com, Biog."]

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 significancethat 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*-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!†

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, 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

* He was a Commissioner of Barracks; as was also Sir Herc. Langrishe. Langrishe was, besides, Commissioner of Revenue and Commissioner of Excise.

+ There does not seem to have been any Mr. Barlow in these servile days to exercise the ancient tribunitial power of the Senior Master Non Regent the power to veto, in the name of the community, dishonouring presentations to honorary degrees.

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.* 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

* In 1726, Primate Boulter wrote that unless a new Englishman was appointed to a then vacant bishopric there would be thirteen Irish bishops to nine English, to the Primate's great dismay. The Editor of "Boulter's Letters," in 1770, adds, in a note, that there was at one time in the Irish House of Lords a majority of native bishops, of whom five had been fellows of the University, viz., Drs. Howard, Synge, Clayton, Whitcombe (Archbishop of Cashel), and Berkeley. These are, probably, the five alluded to by Duigenan. In a pamphlet entitled "Thoughts on the Present State of the College of Dublin,” published in 1782, the well-informed author says that in King William's reign, at or nearly at the same time, "the people saw ten prelates on the bench, who had been Fellows." The writer says that there was a great increase in the number of students -that the undergraduates were 565, the average of entrances 144 yearly, and the average of B.A. degrees, 78.-[Halliday Collection.]

We can ourselves remember, dating from the year 1830, eight bishops and one archbishop, all Ex-Fellows. Altogether" there have been seven archbishops and forty-two bishops of the Irish Church chosen from amongst the Fellows of Trinity College. Eight have become Members of Parliament, and six have been raised to the Judicial Bench."-[Coll. Cal.]

time handed over to them the pupils to help their scanty maintenances.* 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. It was the same with "non-coing," 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.

This seems not to have been the case in Dr. Delany's time. See Primate Boulter's Letters, and Mrs. Delany's, and Swift's.

† See page xlv, &c.

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.* He declares that from the rent-raising there re

* The rack-renting cannot have been very exorbitant, inasmuch as the average rent per acre now paid to the College by its perpetuity tenants is four shillings and twopence. The great bulk of the College property is situated in the counties of Armagh, Kerry, and Donegal. The following statement gives in round numbers the acreage and rental: