The Book of Trinity College Dublin 1591-1891

by Ireland) Trinity College (Dublin

In February, 1836, the Provost and Senior Fellows, two only dissenting, agreed to join the Junior Fellows in an application to the Lord Lieutenant for a repeal of the obnoxious Statute, suggesting, however, that the six most Junior of the Fellows should be exempted from the permission to marry. The Earl of Mulgrave, then Viceroy, declined to recommend the change. At the end of 1838 a further memorial was presented to the representative of the Crown, praying that the Fellows above the lower nine of the body should be allowed to marry. The Provost and Senior Fellows concurred in the prayer of the memorial, stipulating, however, that the plan should be accompanied by such measures as would prevent the College livings from being declined by the whole body of Fellows. On the arrival of a new Viceroy (Lord Fortescue) in 1839, a memorial was presented to him by the College asking for a repeal of the Celibacy Statute. To this there was a considerable opposition on the part of the great body of the Scholars and prospective Fellowship candidates, on the ground that the existing Fellows would be settled for life in the College, and the vacancies for fresh elections would become very rare, and thus the highest mathematical and literary studies in the College would suffer. It was known, also, that the Archbishop of Armagh, Lord John George Beresford, who was then Vice-Chancellor, and who took a warm interest in the welfare of the College, was strongly opposed to the repeal of this Statute. In the end the Government was guided by the advice of Dr. Dickinson, afterwards Bishop of Meath, and in 1840 the Celibacy Statute was repealed; ten new Fellowships were added, one to be elected each year; the six junior of the Fellows were excluded from the emoluments of the tutors, and restricted to the statutable emoluments of a Junior Fellow (about £37 a-year, with rooms and dinner in the Hall); and the number of Tutor Fellows was increased from fifteen to nineteen, the average income of the tutors being thus diminished by 21 per cent.

It could scarcely be expected that an institution like Trinity College, which at that time had many political enemies, should escape a searching inquiry at the hands of a Royal Commission; and accordingly, in April, 1851, a full and minute investigation was made into the working of the College, the Commissioners being Archbishop Whately, Lord Chancellor Brady, the Earl of Rosse, the Bishop of Cork, Doctor Mountiford Longfield, and Edward J. Cooper, Esq. The Commissioners reported in April, 1853, and in a manner highly favourable to the College. They found “that numerous improvements of an important character have been from time to time introduced by the authorities of the College, and that the general state of the College is satisfactory. There is great activity and efficiency in the different departments, and the spirit of improvement has been especially shown in the changes which have been introduced in the course of education, to adapt it to the requirements of the age.” They ended in recommending some twenty-five changes. But they took care to add that these recommendations did not involve any great or fundamental alteration in the arrangements of the University, or in the system of education pursued in it. “From its present state,” they add, “and from what has already been effected by the authorities of the College, we do not believe such changes to be required.”

Most of these recommendations have since that time been carried out by Royal Statutes, which were obtained at the request of the Provost and Senior Fellows, and in the application for which they were strengthened by the report of the Commissioners. 1. The Statutes underwent a complete revision. 2. Senior Fellows ceased to hold Professorships. 3. The Board obtained power to vary, with the consent of the Visitors, the subjects prescribed for the Fellowship Examinations, and to regulate the mode in which the Examination should be conducted, so that any Junior Fellow who holds a Professorship may now be summoned to examine in the subject of his Professorship. 4. Each vacancy for Fellowship or Scholarship is now filled by a separate vote of the electors, and the successful candidates are placed in the order of merit. 5. The fees payable to the tutors are no longer divided irrespectively of the number of pupils of each tutor, but a proportion of the fees paid by each student is paid directly to his College tutor, and the remainder paid into a common fund, from which certain Professorships are endowed, which are tenable by Junior Fellows alone. 6. The general obligation to take Holy Orders is no longer imposed on the Fellows, the number of Lay Fellows being at first increased from three to five. 7. Ex-Fellows are now eligible for the Regius Professorship of Divinity. 8. The Professors of Modern Languages are now elected as other Professors, and these languages may now be selected by students of the Sophister Classes and for the B.A. degree in lieu of Greek and Latin. 9. The Board and Visitors have now the power of altering the subjects for the Scholarship Examination, and by a recent Statute the tenure of the Scholarship has been limited to five years. 10. Twenty Senior and twenty Junior Exhibitions of £25 each tenable for two years have been founded, and they are open to students without respect to creed. 11. No distinction is now made between Pensioners, Fellow Commoners, and Noblemen as to the course of education required for the B.A. degree. 12. The formal exercises then required for the different degrees have been discontinued, and (except the M.A. degree) all the higher degrees have been made real tests of merit. 13. Full power to admit readers to the College Library has been conferred upon the Provost and Senior Fellows. 14. An auditor of the College is now appointed by the Visitors, and an audited balance sheet and account of income and expenditure is annually presented to them, and is open to the inspection of all members of the Corporation. 15. The Bursar is now paid by salary and not by fees, and local land agents have been appointed in cases in which the occupying tenants hold directly from the College. 16. The College officers formerly paid by fees are now paid by salaries in proportion to the services performed by them. 17. There has been a gradual reduction in the number of Non-Tutor Fellows created by the Statute of 1840. These form the great majority of the recommendations of the Royal Commissioners.

In addition to these alterations some considerable improvements were effected by the Royal Statute of the 18th Victoria. The whole of the College Statutes were carefully revised, and the obsolete and injurious enactments were repealed. The power of assigning or of transferring pupils from one tutor to another, which Provost Hutchinson attempted to exercise in an arbitrary manner, was removed from the Provost and vested in the Board; and to the Board, with the consent of the Visitors, was given the power, which they had not before, of founding new Professorships and offices, and of assigning salaries to be paid to them from the revenues of the College.

Immediately after these powers had been granted by Letters Patent, the Board and Visitors acted in conformity with their new authority. In 1855 a decree was passed dividing the subjects of the Fellowship Examination into four—Mathematics, Classics (including Hebrew), Mental and Moral Sciences, and Experimental Physics; the time for the examination was greatly extended. Science scholarships were founded, and the number of days of examination, both for classical and science scholarships, increased; and in the same year a similar decree regulated the salary and duties of the Regius Professor of Greek, and founded new Professorships of Arabic and of English Literature. In 1856 certain salaries of College officers were fixed, and the salaries of the Professor of Geology and of Erasmus Smith’s Professor of Natural Philosophy (when held by a Junior Fellow) were regulated. In 1858 a decree was passed which transferred all fees hitherto payable to College officers to the general funds of the College, and assigned fixed salaries in lieu of them. Two Senior Tutorships, each with a salary of £800, were founded; the salary of the Examinerships held by Non-Tutor Fellows was raised to £100 per annum; Classical Honour Lectureships were instituted, and a Professorship of Sanscrit and Comparative Philology. In 1862 two Professorships of Modern Languages were established, the salaries of the holders being paid out of the funds of the College—the Act of Parliament 18 and 19 Victoria, cap. 82, having deprived the College of two annual sums of £92 6s. 2d. each, which had been granted by the 41 George III., cap. 32, out of the Consolidated Fund for this purpose. The same Act dispossessed the College of its earliest, and only, subvention from the State, which was granted by Queen Elizabeth—an annual charge of £358 16s. on the revenues of Ireland; the grounds assigned for this deprivation being the removal of the stamp duties on Degrees,[98] which had been imposed on the College only thirteen years before. These duties (which have long since been abolished in England) were £1 on matriculation, £3 for the degree of B.A., and £6 for any other degree.

The University—consisting of the Chancellor or Vice-Chancellor, Doctors in the several faculties, and Masters of Arts—having been governed for more than two hundred years by certain rules or Statutes which had, by lapse of time, become in many respects obsolete and unsuited to the present state of the University, and doubts having been raised as to whether the Provost and Senior Fellows of the College had the power to alter or amend these rules, Letters Patent were asked for and granted by the Crown (July 24, 1857), confirming all former powers, usages, and privileges, giving the Board power to make laws concerning the conferring of Degrees, provided that such laws should be afterwards confirmed by the University Senate, enacting that no “grace” should be proposed to that body which had not been first adopted by the Board; incorporating the University Senate under the name of the Chancellor, Masters, and Doctors of the University of Dublin, and giving the Senate power to elect the Chancellor from three names to be submitted to them by the Board, who relinquished their old right in this respect. Further Letters Patent were obtained in 1858, which enabled the Board to commute the fees of certain offices for lesser salaries, and to forego fees hitherto payable to them for Degrees which were in future to be applied to the benefit of the College; and out of the funds so transferred fourteen Studentships were founded, at a salary of £100 per annum for each, tenable for seven years, to be given every year at the Degree Examination; two new offices (Senior Tutorships), to be held by Junior Fellows, were created; two of the Non-Tutor Fellowships were merged among the Tutor Fellowships, and the remaining four were gradually discontinued. The Board was given power to sanction new rules for the distribution of the tutorial fees, and a clause was added enabling candidates for Fellowships to attend only on the days on which the courses in which they compete are examined in, and giving other powers to the Board.

In conformity with the powers granted to the Board by the Letters Patent of 1857, in December of the following year they remodelled, with the approval of the Senate, all the University rules with respect to Degrees. Further Letters Patent were obtained in 1865, rectifying defects in the existing Statutes, specially with respect to the examination for Fellowships, and in 1868 for the creation of a Regius Professor of Surgery. In 1870 the Provost and Senior Fellows founded a Professor of Latin, under the same regulations which prevailed with regard to the Professor of Greek; and at the same time they founded forty Exhibitions of £25 each, tenable for two years, twenty Senior and twenty Junior, to aid deserving students in the prosecution of their undergraduate course. In 1871 the Professorships of Ancient History and of Zoology were founded, and in 1872 a Professorship of Comparative Anatomy.

The Act of Parliament amending the law with regard to promissory oaths, and that of 1873 abolishing religious tests in the University of Dublin, necessitated further changes in the Royal Statutes of the College, and these were effected by Letters Patent of 1874, which also founded the Academic Council, and transferred to it, from the Provost and Senior Fellows, the nomination to Professorships, and gave to it, concurrently with the Board, the power to regulate the studies of the College.

This Council consists of sixteen members and the Provost—four elected by the Senior Fellows, four by the Junior, four by the Professors who are not Fellows, and four by the Senate at large (excluding those who are already represented). The representatives of each class hold office for four years, are elected at the same time, and vacate office in rotation. The electors can give all their votes to one candidate, or they may distribute them among the candidates as they think fit. The election to Professorships in the Divinity School, of Medical Professors founded by Act of Parliament, and of Professors of private foundation the appointment of which is by the wills of the founders vested in the Provost and Senior Fellows, remains with the Board.

In 1851 a very important Act of Parliament was passed, which extended the leasing powers of the College in respect to the estates belonging to the Corporation. Prior to that year it was precluded from giving leases of the lands belonging to the College for a longer period than twenty-one years, except in cities, where sites for building might be leased for forty years. The rent to be reserved should be equal to one-half of the true value of the lands, communibus annis, at the time of making the lease. The Provost and Senior Fellows, however, might grant leases for twenty-one years at a rent equal to that which was hitherto payable out of the lands, even though it was less than half the value. The custom was for the College to renew these leases when a few years had expired, on the payment of fines which were in some cases considerable, and which were divided among the members of the Governing Body of the College. These renewal fines formed the principal part of the incomes of the Senior Fellows. By the Act of 1851 (14 and 15 Victoria, cap. 128) additional powers of leasing were granted up to ninety-nine years without fines, reserving a minimum rent of three-fourths of the annual value; making, however, a reduction in respect to the tenant’s interest in an unexpired lease when it was surrendered. Also, powers of granting leases in perpetuity were given to the Board on the surrender by the tenants of the existing leases. These perpetuity rents were fixed by a regulation contained in the Statute, and were variable from time to time, at intervals of ten years, according to the changes in the prices of certain agricultural commodities. Renewal fines were abolished, and the Provost and Senior Fellows were compensated for the loss of them by a fixed annual sum of £800 paid to each of them out of the revenues of the College. Consequent upon the changes which have been indicated above, the Senior Fellows relinquished their claims to an annual sum, which, according to the Report of the University Commissioners, amounted to about £2,650, their official salaries being now fixed at sums according to the duties of the office; and, on the whole, the income of each Senior Fellow is on the average about £363 less than it was in 1851. The difference has been employed in the foundation of Studentships and Exhibitions, the annual charge for which is about £2,000.