As to Dr. Whitley Stokes, the Visitors decided that because he had confessed that he had some intercourse with the heads of the conspiracy he should be precluded from acting as College Tutor, and should for three years be disqualified from sitting as a member of the Board, and from being co-opted to a Senior Fellowship.
These sentences were confirmed on the 1st of May, 1798, by the Duke of Gloucester, as Chancellor of the University.
This drastic treatment, whether just or not, seems to have enabled the College to tide over the crisis of 1798, and to emerge after the Union into that period when it reflects the dulness and prosperity of the country. The last Provost of the century, Kearney, is the type of his day. “This Provost,” says Taylor, with unconscious naiveté, “was always remarkable for his close attention to whatever might be considered for his improvement.” His only notable act was to refuse, with tears in his eyes, the resignation offered him, on the ground of religious difficulties, by the pious John Walker, and to expel him publicly next day. The same man connived at a number of his Fellows being married, in formal violation of their oath. Over against these unwholesome features, and the stagnation in the publishing of solid intellectual work, must be set the undoubted fact that there were men of sound learning and research among the Fellows. Mat. Young, Barrett, Thos. Elrington, Rich. Graves, Geo. Miller, were all men of respectable attainments in their day; and if the classical school produced no compeer of the expelled John Walker, it was at this apparently obscure period that the University of Dublin exchanged its reputation as a school of theology, of eloquence, and of style, for the reputation in Mathematics and Physics which was its only distinction in this century up to the reformations of Bartholomew Lloyd.
FOOTNOTES:
[87] Cf. Stubbs, p. 161.
[88] Dunton speaks in 1699 of the Provost’s House as a fine structure in process of construction. This, if he reports correctly, must have been some residence intermediate between the old “Provost’s lodgings,” on the south side of the original quadrangle, and the present house. But there is no other allusion to such a house.
[89] He obtained from the Trust of Erasmus Smith, of which he was one of the administrators, large sums for the founding of new Chairs—nearly £800 per annum, which was distributed in salaries of £100 to £250.
[90] I conclude this from the last chapter (27) of the Statutes, which ordains that three authentic copies shall be deposited (1) as safely as possible in the archives of the College, (2) with the Lord Deputy of Ireland, (3) with the Chancellor of the University. The copy held by Strafford when Lord Deputy is now in private hands in Dublin. What has become of Laud’s copy we do not know; perhaps it is at Lambeth. There is no provision for taking any other copy from these; nay, rather, the opening sentence of the chapter ordains that lost any should offend against them from ignorance, they shall be read out publicly in the Chapel at the beginning of each Term by the Deans, in the presence of the whole College.
[91] So have Mornington’s Te Deum and Jubilate, composed for the service on the following Sunday. The March, however, a trifling composition, survives.