FOOTNOTES:
[110] This is the amount stated in the Book of Benefactors (MS.). Dr. Bernard, in his Life of Ussher, makes the sum £1,800.
[111] Brereton’s Travels, published by the Chetham Society in 1844.
[112] When the House of Commons was debating whether they should admit Ussher to the Assembly of Divines Selden said, “They had as good inquire whether they had best admit Inigo Jones, the King’s architect, to the company of mouse-trap makers.”—Elrington’s Life of Ussher, p. 231.
[113] MS., of which a copy was given to the Library by Mr. Edward Evans, 1887.
[114] The Library of Trinity College, Dublin. An address delivered at the Seventh Annual Meeting of the Library Association, by John K. Ingram, LL.D., F.T.C.D., President.
[115] A separate room was provided for the Museum in 1777.
[116] In the judgment of the learned Dr. Rudolph Siegfried, formerly Professor of Sanskrit in this University, the name of Edward Lhuyd as a comparative philologist deserved to stand “right after” that of Bopp.
[117] The Bodleian was the first Library to acquire this privilege, James I. having induced the Company of Stationers to give it a copy of every work entered at their Hall. In the reign of Anne the Royal Library acquired the privilege, and when George II., in 1757, gave his library to the British Museum, he transferred this privilege with it. The Act of 1801 granted it to eleven libraries, but most of these have commuted it for an annual grant.
[118] Lithography would have had the appearance of greater exactness, but to a great extent only the appearance, for some of the pages are so obscure that the lithographic artist would have been unable of himself to trace the letters, and would be as dependent on a scholar for guidance as the engraver was. The errors of even so practised a decipherer at Tregelles suffice to prove this.
[119] Rendiconti del R. Istitecto Lombardo, ser. ii., vol. xix., fasc. 4.
[120] See Hermathena, No. xviii., 1892. The colophon is as follows:—“Rogo beatitudinem | tuam sce præsbiter | patrici ut quicumque | hunc libellum manu te | nuerit meminerit colum | bae scriptoris qui hoc scripsi | himet evangelium per xii dierum spatium gtia dni nri s.s.” The only doubtful letters are “hi” before “met.” If I read them rightly, the colophon must be a copy, the syllable “mi” being omitted. Moreover, the book is copied from one in which the leaves containing the summaries or “breves causæ” were somewhat disordered, and the copyist had not sufficient knowledge to correct the disorder. There are blunders, too, which could hardly have been committed by Saint Columba.
[121] “Oroit agus bendacht cholumb chille do Flaund mace mailsechnaill do Righereim la sa ndernada cumddach so.”
[122] MacGeoghegan: Annals of Ireland (MS. T.C.D.), an. 590, p. 52.
[123] Topographia Hiberniæ, ii., c. 38.
[124] Graves: Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. iii., pp. 316, 356.
[125] The note is as follows (the contractions expanded):—“Sanctus Patricius iens ad coelum | mandauit totum fructum | laboris sui tam babtismi tam causarum et elemoisina | rum deferendum esse apos | tolicae urbi quae scotice | nominatur arddmacha | sic reperi in beblioticis | scotorum ego scripsi | id est caluus perennis in con | spectu briani imperato | ris scotorum et quod scripsi | finivit pro omnibus regibus maceriae” (i.e., of Cashel). The scribe originally wrote “finit” for “finivit;” he then expunged the “t” by a point under. This is the origin of O’Curry’s ridiculous “figuivit.”
[126] On the Book of Armagh, see Sir W. Betham: Irish Antiquarian Researches; Petrie: Essay on the Round Towers; Bishop Graves, ubi supra; and Bishop Reeves, Proc. R. I. Acad., ser. iii., vol. ii., p. 77.
[127] See a drawing in Curzon’s Monasteries of the Levant.
[128] Published by Bishop Forbes in his Liber Ecclesiæ de Arbuthnott.
[129] This is the story as told to and by Monck Mason, from whom Sir W. Betham bought the MS., and who had himself bought it from a Mr. Harrison of Nenagh. Sir W. Betham not unreasonably questions the truth of the story.
[130] A remarkable instance is the Codex Purpureus N of the Gospels, of which four leaves are in the British Museum, two in Vienna, six in the Vatican, and thirty-three at Patmos.
[131] The MS. is B.3.6. On fol. cxxx. a we read: “Expletis benedictionibus faciat Episcopus Crucem in manus singulorum de oleo et chrismate dicens orationem. Consecrare et sanctificare digneris quaesumus Domine manus istas per istam unctionem et nostram benedictionem ut quaecunque consecraverint consecrentur, et quaecunque benedixerint benedicantur et sanctificentur per Christum Dominum nostrum. Deinde patenam cum oblatis et calicem cum vino det singulis dicens ad eos lenta voce. Accipite potestatem offerre sacrificium Deo missamque celebrare tam pro vivis quam et pro defunctis in nomine Domini. Sequitur ultima benedictio: Benedictio Domini Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti descendat super vos ut sitis benedicti in ordinem sacerdotalem, offerentes placabiles hostias pro peccatis atque offensionibus populi omnipotenti Deo, cui est honor et gloria in saecula saecularum. Amen. Et osculetur singulos et omnes qui ordinati sunt, deferant oblationes ad manus episcopi.” Opposite this in the margin, secunda manu, is a series of different rubrics and prayers, of which the most notable is “Post benedictionem imponat manum super capita ordinatorum dicendo: Accipite Spiritum Sanctum, et quorum remiseritis peccata remissa sunt, et quorum retinueritis retenta sunt.” Then follows, secunda manu, the “Finalis Benedictio.”
[132] On a Syriac MS. belonging to the collection of Archbishop Ussher, by the Very Rev. John Gwynn, D.D., Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxvii.
[133] None of them mentioned by M. Le Roux de Lincy in his Recherches sur Grolier, sa vie, et sa bibliothèque.
[134] Bibl. Egerton, Brit. Mus., MS. No. 75, p. 371.
[135] Conall MacGeoghegan, in his Annals of Ireland (1627, MS.), under 1063, makes the same statement as to the crown, but says that Pope Adrian gave it to Henry II.
[136] On this and other Irish harps see O’Curry: Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, vol. iii., p. 266. Petrie’s remarks are in Bunting’s Ancient Irish Music.
[137] See Classical Review, May, 1888.
[138] Gudius: Inscriptiones Antiquæ, ed. Hessel; Boeckh: Corpus, ii., p. 778, n. 3346. See a paper by Dr. Todd—Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. ii., p. 49.
FRONT OF TRINITY COLLEGE,
from Brooking’s Map of Dublin,
1728.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
THE EARLY BUILDINGS.
When Adam Loftus, Archbishop of Dublin, had induced Queen Elizabeth to grant a Charter of Incorporation to a University to be established in Dublin, he addressed himself to the Mayor and Corporation of the City with a view to obtaining a suitable site. And, happily for the success of the scheme which he and the more academic Luke Challoner so successfully carried out, and for the future welfare of the new Institution, a site the most suitable and the most admirable that could have been found in Ireland was at that moment at the disposal of the Corporation of Dublin—the old Augustinian Monastery of All Hallows, lying to the eastward, and just outside the City. As far as we can gather from the recitals in the lease of the monastic buildings and site made by the Mayor and Sheriffs in the year 1591 to John Spensfield, the precincts, besides a church, consisted of “a steeple, a building with a vault under it, the spytor, otherwise called the hall, with appurtenances all along to the north cheek of the Bawn Gate.” We find that there were also within the precincts of the Monastery the sub-prior’s orchard and the common orchard, and a field called the Ashe Park, wherein the prior and the monks had their haggard and cistern, with the western storehouse by the Great Bawn, together with a vestry cloister, a little garden within the precincts, and a tower over the gate adjoining Hoggen Green. The buildings, without the lands, appear to have been let to John Pepard, merchant, for sixty-one years, at ten shillings a-year, with a clause restraining him from taking stones, or slates, or timber out of the precincts; the materials thereon were to be used only for building on the site. Another lease was made to Edward Pepard, in 1584, of a small orchard in All Hallows for thirty-one years, at twenty-four shillings a-year; and in 1583 Edward Pepard had sub-let, for twenty-one years, to Peter van Hey and Thomas Seele, a garden with a vault at the north side of All Hallows, at a yearly rent of forty shillings, with a covenant that they should keep up the garden wall and the vaults. It would thus appear that at this time the Pepards had acquired the site of the buildings and a small orchard, possibly that formerly occupied by the sub-prior, as tenants on a terminable lease. During the fifty years which elapsed from the suppression of the Monastery, the buildings must have suffered very considerable dilapidation. Most likely they had not been originally erected in a very substantial and durable manner; and as little care seems to have been taken as to the maintenance of the church, the hall, and the monastic dwellings, they must have been for the most part in a ruinous condition. The total value of the site and precincts is stated in a letter from Queen Elizabeth to have been £20 a-year. At the close of the Queen’s reign the City of Dublin did not extend towards the east beyond St. George’s Lane, now called South Great George’s Street. An open space of ground stretched from thence to All Hallows, with paths diverging to different parts of a small stream, beyond which lay the site of the old Monastery. The whole of the precincts at that time covered about twenty-eight acres, of which twelve were in meadow, nine in pasture, and seven in orchard. On the north, towards the river, there was a boggy strip of ground covered by the water at high tide, and bounded on the south by the path leading to St. Patrick’s Well, near the present entrance to Kildare Street, and bounded on the east by lands formerly belonging to the Abbey of the Blessed Virgin, but then in the tenure of John Dougan, on the site of the modern Westland Row.[139]
And such was the influence of the Archbishop, supported by his Archdeacon, Henry Ussher, and by Luke Chaloner, of Trinity College, Cambridge, and two Scotch schoolmasters, James Hamilton and James Fullerton, who were at the time in Dublin, that the Corporation convened the citizens to a general assembly at the Tholsel, where they, after due deliberation upon the proposal to grant the site of the monastery for the intended College, immediately proceeded to make the grant. A Charter of Incorporation had in the meantime been obtained from the Queen, on the petition of Henry Ussher. The letter of Elizabeth to Sir William Fitzwilliam, Lord Deputy, and to the Irish Council, announcing her consent to this arrangement, is dated December 21st, 1591; and, on the 3rd of the following March, Letters Patent passed the Great Seal.[140] The first stone of the new building was laid on March 13th, 1592. Subscriptions from the gentry in every part of Ireland were received for the building, and on January 9th, 1594, the new College was completed. No remains of this structure exist at the present day; indeed, no buildings prior to the reign of William III. are now to be found in Trinity College. The Elizabethan edifice consisted of a small square court, which was always familiarly called The Quadrangle, and which was removed early in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Some parts of the old monastery were no doubt utilised in the new building. As the visitor approached from Hoggen Green he crossed an outer enclosed court, which formed an entrance to the College; he then entered through the great gate, and found himself in a small square, probably on the site of the southern portion of the great main square of the College, then surrounded by buildings constructed of thin red Dutch brick, with probably a good deal of wooden framework inserted. On the north side lay the old steeple of the monastery, having the porter’s lodge on the ground floor, and a chamber over it; and on the second loft was hung the College bell. Towards the east of the steeple lay the Chapel; on the same side of the quadrangle was the Hall, paved with tiles, with a gallery, and a lantern in the roof. The hall was separated from the kitchen by a wooden partition, and in the same range with them was placed the Library. This room was over the scholars’ chambers, and had a gallery, and the lower part of it was fitted with ten pews for readers. The Regent House seems to have been between the Chapel and the Hall, and a gallery in the Regent House looked into the Chapel. This range of buildings extended to the east side of the court, beyond the site of the present Campanile. On the north of this range lay the kitchen, buttery chamber, and the storehouse. The east and west sides of the quadrangle contained students’ chambers, and on the south side were placed houses for the Fellows. The three sides composed in all seven buildings for residence—three on the south side, and two on each of the east and west sides. The upper story was lightened by dormer windows, with leaden lattices, and in the centre of the quadrangle stood the celebrated College pump.[141]