In 1733 the rooms of one of the Fellows were attacked by six or eight of the Students, and they perpetrated there disgraceful mischief and outrage. The rebellious spirit of some of the Students went so far that, when they were expelled, or rusticated, they refused to leave the College, and the authorities could not put them out without violence. One of the Students so expelled actually assaulted a Senior Fellow in the Hall while the sentence of his expulsion was being read out. These violent proceedings on the part of a few reckless Students were aided by outsiders, who always came into College when riots were expected. Thus the unhappy disorders in the College had become widely known, and were fast bringing the institution to the lowest disrepute.
A contemporary pamphlet complains that while there were in the College from five hundred to six hundred Students between seventeen and twenty-four years of age, there were only twenty Masters to control them. The Scholars objected to the statutable custom of capping the Fellows, and it states that—
When the Board meets to inquire into a violation of the Statutes on the part of the Students, the young gentlemen who are conscious of their guilt assemble in the courts below; they have secured a number of their friends; they are surrounded by a great crowd of their brethren; how many they may have engaged to be of their party is not to be discovered, and they give, perhaps, plain intimations that they will not suffer them to be censured. Trusting in their numbers, they will not suffer any one man to be singled out for an example.... Physical violence is consequently to be expected by the Provost, Senior Fellows, and the Dean proceeding to the Hall to read out censures.
Primate Boulter’s letters throw some light upon the state of discipline in the College at this time. Baldwin, now become Provost, most likely from his known devotion to the Whig party and the Hanoverian Succession, and his efforts to subdue the Jacobite faction in College, was a man of a very arbitrary and determined character. He appears to have used the full authority which the Statutes gave him, and frequently summoned the two Deans, and removed from the College books the names of disorderly Students without consulting the Board. Some of the Senior Fellows, notably Dr. Delany, a strong Tory, whose politics were shared by his friend and colleague, Dr. Helsham, were opposed to these arbitrary proceedings, and took measures in London to bring the matter before the Council, in order to have the Provost’s statutable power in these matters curtailed. We learn from Boulter’s letters to the Duke of Newcastle, that early in 1725—
Two Undergraduates of the College, one of them a Scholar, had company at their chambers till about an hour after the keys of the College were carried, according to custom, to the Provost. When their company was willing to go, upon finding the College gates shut, and being told the keys were carried to the Provost, the Scholars went to the Provost’s lodgings, and knocked there in an outrageous manner. Upon the Provost’s man coming to the door to see what was the matter, they told him they came for the keys to let out their friends, and would have them, or they would break open the gates. He assured them the keys were carried to his master, and that he durst not awake him to get them, and then the man withdrew. Upon their coming again to knock with great violence at the Provost’s door, he was forced to rise, and came down and told them they should not have the keys, and bid his man and the porter take notice who they were. The next day he called the two Deans to his assistance, as their Statutes require, and sent for the lads to his lodgings. The Scholar of the house came, but not the other. To him they proposed his making a submission for his fault in the Hall, and being publicly admonished there. This he made a difficulty in doing; and upon their proceeding to the Hall, when he came out of the lodgings he put on his hat before the Provost and walked off. The Provost and Deans went on to the Hall, and after waiting there some time to see whether he would come and submit, they expelled them both.
The Scholar’s name was Annesley, a relation of Lord Anglesea, and through his influence with the Lord Lieutenant (Lord Carteret) and the Visitors [and upon his apologising] he was restored.... We find that he took the B.A. degree in 1726, and that of M.A. in 1729.
We are told in a pamphlet, supposed to have been written by Dr. Madden, that one of the Students, after a long course of neglect of duties, as well as for a notorious insult [committed] upon the Junior Dean, was publicly admonished. In order to resent this punishment, ten or twelve of the Students behaved themselves in a most outrageous manner; they stoned the Dean out of the Hall, breaking into his rooms, and destroying everything in them. They continued to ravage other parts of the College until the middle of the night, evidently endangering the life of the person who was the object of their resentment. Dr. Madden adds that this was done “in a time of great lenity of discipline—perhaps too much so.” “The Board offered considerable rewards for the discovery of the perpetrators of these riotous proceedings; the Students retorted by offering higher rewards to anyone who would bring in the informer, dead or alive. A threatening letter was sent to the Provost. Strangers from town, as was usually the case, came into the College to assist in the pillage. One of these attempted to set fire to the College gates; and had not some of the well-disposed Students prevented this, they would have laid the whole College in ashes, as the flames would have caught hold of the ancient buildings, extravagantly timbered after the old manner, and would have reached the new buildings [the Library Square], and the flames could not then have been extinguished.”
One of the Junior Fellows, named Edward Ford, who had been elected in 1730, had rendered himself particularly obnoxious to the Students. He was not Junior Dean; but he appears to have been an obstinate and ill-judging man, who took upon himself to restrain the Students in an imprudent manner. They resented this interference. He had been often insulted by them, and had received a threatening letter. This caused him much dejection of spirits; and as his rooms had suffered in the previous tumult, he kept loaded arms always by his side. One night he was asleep in his rooms (No. 25), over a passage which then led from the Library Square into the playground (a walled-in enclosure which at that time occupied the site of the present New Square). A loaded gun lay by his bedside. Some of the Students threw stones against his windows, which was the usual way in which they annoyed the College authorities. Ford rose from his bed and fired upon them from his window, which faced the playground. Determined to retaliate, the band of Students rushed to their chambers, seized the fire-arms, which they had persisted in keeping (although such had been forbidden, under pain of expulsion, by a decree of the Board, March 24, 1730), and they ran back to the playground. In the meanwhile one of the Scholars, who resided in the same house, seeing the danger in which Ford was placed, and knowing the character of the man, managed to get into his bedroom, and strongly urged him to remain in bed. Ford, with his characteristic obstinacy, would not listen to this advice, but went to the window in his nightdress, when the Students seeing him, fired at the window, and wounded him mortally. Poor Ford lingered in great agony for about two hours before he died. The Board immediately met and investigated the circumstances of the murder, and expelled Mr. Cotter, Mr. Crosby, Boyle, Scholes, and Davis, as being the authors of or participators in Mr. Ford’s murder. The Board employed Mr. Jones, an attorney, to prosecute them for murder at the Commission Court, at which trial, however, they were acquitted.
We learn from contemporary pamphlets that the feeling among the upper classes in Dublin was greatly excited about this affair. Many, especially ladies, strongly took the part of the young men—