Hutchinson had the College estates surveyed, and Duigenan makes a grievous complaint of this proceeding. He says the survey cost the College two thousand pounds, and that it was an iniquitous device for raising the College rents upon improvements that had been effected by the tenants.[31] He declares that from the rent-raising there resulted beggary, discontent, and emigration. The renewal fines were divided into nine parts, of which two went to the Provost, and one to each of the seven seniors. In the year 1850, the fines were transferred to the College account, and the Senior Fellows were compensated out of the “Cista communis.”[32]
The “Lachrymæ” tells how the Provost got the large old college plate melted down, and turned into a modern service, destroying the engraved coats-of-arms and names of the donors, at an expense to the college of £400.[33] He soon after had it moved out to Palmerston House, and Duigenan does not seem to feel at all sure about its honest return. Most of the Fellows were in the Provost’s power by being married, and Duigenan says that he used the power tyrannically.[34] A Fellow going out on a living was allowed only five months’ benefit of salary.[35]
Duigenan seems to hold the Provost responsible for the “mean and decayed” condition of the chapel, and he more than once rails at him for being of mean parentage.[36] He finds that since the time of Charles I. no Provost, except Hutchinson and his predecessor, had ever sat in the House of Commons. He is obliged to admit that Dr. Andrews’ conduct in private life was somewhat too loose and unguarded for a Provost; but still he was better than Hutchinson, though he was told that the latter was a good husband and father. Mr. Hutchinson might be a good husband and father, “but no one would think the better of a wolf because the beast was kind to its mate and cubs.” Hutchinson had destroyed the seclusion and retirement of the college by infesting its walks and gardens with his wife, adult daughters, infant children with nurses and go-carts, and military officers on prancing horses. He had endeavoured to institute a riding-school and a professorship of horsemanship after the example of Oxford, and he had desecrated the Convocation or Senate Hall by making it a fencing-school. Duelling had become the fashion among the students under the influence of the Provost’s evil example, and the college park was made the ground for pistol practice.[37]
We are told further by Duigenan that the number of students then on the college books was 598, of whom 228 were intern.[38] We see by the Liber Munerum Hiberniæ that by 1792 the number of students had so much increased, consequently on the liberal education spirit of Grattan’s parliament, that a King’s Letter was obtained raising the quarterly examination days from two to four. In the following year was the King’s Letter directing the admission of Catholics to degrees on taking the oath of Abjuration and Allegiance, in accordance with the Act of the Irish Parliament, and in 1794 appears the first “R. C.” entry (Thomas Fitzgerald, of Limerick) on the College Matriculation Books. From that date onward the religious denomination of pupils has always been recorded.
“Pranceriana,” i.e., probably Duigenan, asserts that the Provost, on the eve of the second election in which his son was returned, offered to supply to a voter amongst the candidates for Fellowship a copy of the questions which he was to give in Moral Science for the ensuing examinations;[39] and Duigenan openly says that the Provost was determined that no one should be elected a Scholar who would not previously promise to vote as he should direct him.
He kept an electioneering agent inside the walls, a spy and a corrupter,—“in short, the Blacquiere of Mr. Hutchison.” Duigenan gives a long list of the Provost’s insolences to himself and to other members of the body. He resisted marriage dispensations to the Fellows who were his opponents, while he procured them for his creatures—Leland and Dabzac.
On the death of Shewbridge the Fellow, which was attributed to Hutchison’s refusing him leave to go to the country for change of air, the students defied the Provost’s order for a private interment at 6 o’clock in the morning. They had the bell rung, had a night burial and a torchlight procession, attended the funeral in mourning, and afterwards broke into the Provost’s house.
In the first year of his office the Provost dispersed a meeting of the Scholars and some of the Fellows that was held by advertisement at Ryan’s in Fownes-street, “the principal tavern in the city,” for the purpose of nominating candidates for the representation of the University against the Provost’s nominees.
Duigenan goes on to relate how Hutchinson discharged the various duties of the high office which he had acquired by the traffic above stated. He made an exhibition of his ignorance at a Fellowship Examination by suggesting that Alexander the Great died in the time of the Peloponessian War; but ridiculous a figure as he made in the Scholarship and Fellowship Examinations, he would not withdraw from them, because unless he examined he could not vote or nominate at the election of the Scholars and Fellows. This nomination power was with him a darling object in the execution of his electioneering projects of making the College a family borough, and he abstained from no methods to effectuate his scheme.
We are told at length how the Provost, with the consent of a majority of the Board, deprived Berwick of his Scholarship for absence, because Berwick would not vote for his son, and how the Visitors, on appeal, restored him.[40] How he deprived Mr. Gamble of the buttery clerkship, and replaced him, on the threat of an appeal, suggested and drawn up by Duigenan. How the Provost refused Mr. FitzGerald, a Fellow, leave to accompany his sick wife to the country, and tried to provoke FitzGerald’s hot temper. The Provost’s cruelties and injuries to Duigenan himself knew no limits. He says, that for the purpose of keeping him from being co-opted, the Provost had the Board Registry falsified, that he set the porters to watch him, that he persecuted him, and mulcted him in the buttery books, for sleeping out of college without leave. He relates that he was attacked by the Provost’s gang, and was obliged in consequence to wear arms; and that, finally, Hutchinson compelled him to go out on the Laws’ Professorship on a salary which was raised to £460 a year.[41]