Note C. Page [xxi].

DR. DUIGENAN.

Dr. Patrick Duigenan, more familiarly termed “Paddy,” was one of the most remarkable men enumerated in the list of the Fellows of Trinity College. He was the son of the Master of St. Bride’s Parish School, and, doubtless, he received his early education in the school which, in his father’s days, was kept first in Golden-lane and afterwards in Little Ship-street. In allusion to this, Watty Coxe’s Journal twits him with the diploma of “St. Bride’s College.” From St. Bride’s Parish School the lad Patrick was sent to St. Patrick’s Cathedral School, then presided over by Mr. Sheills (or Shiel), and thence in the year 1753 he entered Trinity College, as a Sizar. Whether he obtained the Sizarship by competition or by nomination we do not find recorded; but quocunque modo a sizar he entered, and next to him on the form sat another sizar stripling, Barry Yelverton, afterwards an usher in Buck’s School in North King-street, and subsequently Lord Chief Baron and Lord Avonmore.[104] In 1756, Duigenan obtained Scholarship; in 1761, Fellowship; and in 1776, he retired on the Professorship of Laws, having been, in fact, turned out by Provost Hutchinson. He was M.P. for Armagh, King’s Advocate-General, Privy Councillor, Vicar-General, and Judge of the Prerogative Court. He was a blustering and honest man; a fanatical anti-Catholic and a fierce Unionist, and he is accordingly hero-worshipped by Mr. Froude. He was a hanger-on, first of Philip Tisdall, and then of Lord Clare.

Wills, in his “Distinguished Irishmen,” says that Duigenan was the son of the parish clerk of St. Werburgh’s; and Dr. Madden, in his “United Irishmen,” gives a letter saying the same, and that the father died a Catholic. There is no foundation for either of these assertions. Hugh Duigenan, the father, died St. Bride’s parish schoolmaster, and he, as well as his wife Priscilla, was buried in St. Bride’s churchyard. It is said in the “Life of Curran” that Duigenan once avowed in the House of Commons that he was the son of a parish clerk, and if so the father must have held that office in Derry before he came to Dublin. Dr. Maddens contributor says that Duigenan was appointed to St. Bride’s School through the influence of Fitzgibbon, the father of Lord Clare. This is quite probable, as the Fitzgibbons lived in the parish—in Stephen-street, and many of the family were baptised in the church and buried in the graveyard. There may be truth in the tradition that the father was originally a Catholic and conformed. Grattan says that Duigenan was educated for the Roman Catholic priesthood; that he was a hanger-on of Tisdall: that his manner of speaking resembled that of a mob-man in the last stage of agony; and Curran said his “oratory was like the unrolling of a mummy, nothing but old bones and rotten rags,” and that he had a vicious way of “gnawing the names of papists.” He was employed by Castlereagh to administer the Union bribe of a million and a half, and in 1807 he was employed by Sir Arthur Wellesley, then Chief Secretary, to negotiate about the Charter Schools and the Irish Protestant bishops.[105] He was also one of the Public Record Commissioners.

His first wife was a Miss Cusack, a Catholic, and to her, in regard of religious matters he was most indulgent. This was the only instance of toleration that Duigenan was ever known to show. In 1799 he supported Toler’s (Lord Norbury) Indemnity Bill, freeing all who in 1798 had committed illegal acts against the people. It must have cost him some trouble of mind when, as Vicar-General in 1783, he had to license Dr. Betagh’s Catholic School in Fishamble-street, as well as some other Catholic Schools, in obedience to Gardiner’s Catholic Relief Act of the previous year. His second wife was the widow of Hepenstal, the “Walking Gallows.” Duigenan died at Sandymount in 1816, and bequeathed his fortune to his first wife’s nephew, Baron Smith. It was a brave thing of Duigenan when he had become a prominent man to go and reside in Chancery-lane amongst the lawyers, within a stone’s throw of the lane in which he was reared as a poor boy; and it was not less brave of him to be a liberal subscriber to St. Bride’s parish school. He was not ashamed to look back at the rock whence he was hewn. Very few parvenus have this sort of nobility.

Note D. Page [lxxiv].

The life-long competition between Fitzgibbon and Grattan was so individual and so keen, and commenced so early, that the following quotations from the College books, now for the first time given, will probably be interesting. Can any other University produce a corresponding record?

The two splendid rivals, it will be remembered, carried far into public life their early friendship. Fitzgibbon was as earnest as Grattan for Irish parliamentary independence. He was one of Grattan’s most fervid eulogists, and it was Grattan that got him made Attorney-General in 1785. Their first serious difference was on the Navigation Act in 1786; three years later they fell out finally on the Regency Bill.

EXTRACTS FROM THE MATRICULATION BOOK, T.C.D.
“1763.
“John Fitzgibbon, F.C., June 6th (next class). Educated by Mr. Ball.
Tutor—Mr. Law. Class begins July 8th, 1763.
“Brought over to this class, with five others, John Fitzgibbon, F.C.
“1763.
“Henry Grattan, F.C., Nov. 1st, 6 a.m. Educated by Dr. Campbell.
Tutor—Mr. Law.”

These entries show that Fitzgibbon and Grattan entered college the same year, under the same college tutor, and that they were in the same class. They graduated in the same Commencements. They were, moreover, in the same division, sitting within two of each other, Fitzgibbon, from his earlier entrance, sitting above Grattan in the hall. This proximity gives even a quicker interest to their neck and neck race, as detailed in the following record of their examination judgments:—