[CHAPTER IV.]
FROM 1758 TO THE CLOSE OF THE CENTURY.
Dedit ergo eis petitionem ipsorum,
Et misit tenuitatem in animam eorum.
Psalm cvi. 15.
Provost Andrews, a layman, but a Senior Fellow, and one of a distinguished group of lay Fellows then in the College, succeeded less than two years before George III. became king. His Provostship is perhaps the most brilliant in the annals of the College. He was a man of elegant tastes, of large acquaintance, of scholarship quite adequate to his position, and he consequently did more than any of his predecessors or successors to bring the Society over which he presided into contact with the best and greatest throughout Ireland. Even under the stricter and more academic Baldwin, we learn from the Register that a large number of the highest classes in Ireland had begun to frequent the College.[87] We may assume that under Andrews this tendency increased. It was only necessary to prove that the education of Dublin was equal to that of the older Universities, to induce men of property in Ireland to avoid the troubles and anxieties of sending their sons by the roads and boats of those days to Oxford and Cambridge; and thus we find that from the opening of the eighteenth century to the second decade of the nineteenth the great body of the Irish aristocracy was educated in Dublin. It would have been so, even into recent days, if the Senior Fellows of the latter period had thought earnestly about the dignity of the College.
The character of this Provost, according to his contemporaries and the historians of the College, was very different from that of Baldwin. He is indeed accused of good living, a great crime in a College Don, when it includes brilliant society and rich appointments; mere over-eating and drinking incur little censure. But Andrews could speak Latin with fluency and elegance, and we are glad to learn that in his day the Irish pronunciation did not make him incomprehensible in Italy or France. He built and occupied the noble Provost’s House,[88] which still remains one of the mansions that give to Dublin its metropolitan aspect. He entertained handsomely, both in the new Dining Hall and at his own House. He must have been the promoter and founder of the School of Music, which has produced a series of excellent Professors, and created a distinct school of composition, starting from that fortunate accident, a musical Peer—the Earl of Mornington, father of the great Duke of Wellington. The principal Parliamentary grants for building were during the extreme old age of Baldwin, so that I suspect the influence of Andrews, who was then a Senior Fellow, and a member of the Irish House, must have been the chief cause of this sudden liberality; for after the completion of the Library in 1724, there is a pause in the Parliamentary grants till 1751, and again they disappear after 1759, when Andrews became Provost, till 1787. But it is asserted in Duigenan’s pamphlet that the grants of Baldwin’s time were not exhausted during the whole of Andrews’ Provostship. I take it, then, that Andrews had ample funds for the fine buildings erected during his office.[89] Constant increase of the College rents and constant bequests made it possible to rebuild the Dining Hall in his time (1759-61), and no doubt much remained to be done in making the new front, finished in 1759, habitable. There was much hospitality, and good society was encouraged in the College. The greatest ceremony during his time was the installation of the Duke of Bedford as Chancellor, which is thus described by the Registrar:—
Friday, Sept. 9 [1768].—This day his Grace John Duke of Bedford was installed Chancellor of our University.
The Hall had been previously prepared by erecting a platform at the upper end, and a gallery for the musicians at the lower end. The platform was erected 2 feet 6 inches from the floor and railed in. At the back in the middle, under a canopy of green damask, and upon a semicircular step raised six inches above the level of the platform, was placed a chair for the Chancellor, on the right hand a chair for the Vice-Chancellor, and on the left another for the Provost. From these chairs on each side along the back and sides down to the rails were raised seats and forms, and on the right side, advanced before those seats, were placed two chairs of state for the Lord Lieutenant and his Lady. Over the door of the Hall, and eight feet above the floor, was erected the gallery for the musicians, and along the sides of the Hall, between the platform and gallery, were seats raised and forms placed, leaving a passage in the midst seven feet wide. On the right side, next to the platform, part of the seats were enclosed as a box for the reception of such ladies of quality whom the Chancellor should invite. The platform with its steps, the gallery and the seats, were covered with green broadcloth. The passage through the midst of the Hall was covered with carpeting, and the semicircular step under his Grace’s chair ornamented with a rich carpet.