[60] It is even more remarkable that this matter was not mentioned by Duigenan.
[61] In the petition of 1778 one of the points set forth was that Scholars and Fellows should be legal Protestants to entitle them to vote, whereas the Provost had received for his son and Yelverton the votes of some who were not Protestants at the time of their election.
[62] Catholics and Nonconformists were not excluded from Scholarship by the statutes or by any oath. They were, however, designedly, and in the main effectually, excluded by the statute that all scholars, students, and sizars should attend chapel and partake of Holy Communion as often as it was administered (see “History of University,” Coll. Cal., 1876, vol. ii. p. 9), and the “Heron Visitation” (Chartæ and Statuta, vol. ii., p. 3, 1862). Attendance on the Anglican Chapel service and Communicating were of course intended as tests and pledges of Conformity.
[63] Parliamentary Debates.
[64] William Conyngham, Lord, and Lord Chancellor Plunket was the son of the Rev. Thomas Plunket, minister of the Strand-street Unitarian Congregation, who died on the 18th Sept., 1776. There is a very eulogistic notice of him in the Freeman’s Journal of the date.
[65] Down to the alterations made in the Statutes by the Queen’s Letter of 1855, the words of the Lit. Pat. of Charles I. were:—“in quem vel quos major pars Sociorum Seniorum unâ cum Præposito, vel eo absente, Vice Præposito consensisse deprehendetur, is, vel illi pro electo vel electis habeantur, et mox pronunciabuntur a Præposito. Quod si primo, vel Secundo Scrutinio electorum major pars, cum Præposito, vel eo absente, Vice Præposito non consenserint, eo casu in tertio Scrutinio, is, vel illi pro electo, vel electis sunto, quem, vel quos, Præpositus, vel eo absente Vice Præpositus, nominabit.” [Caput xxv. De Elect. form. et temp.]
[66] See also “An Enquiry how far the Provost of Trinity College is invested with a negative on the Proceedings of the Senior Fellows” (1790), by Dr. Young, Ex-Fellow and afterwards Bishop of Clonfert. It takes the same view of the case as that put forward in Miller’s pamphlet.—[Halliday Collection.]
[67] Note A.
[68] Hutchinson had to say to three of these affairs of honour, and according to Duigenan he came badly out of all of them. Duigenan himself, it should be observed, once had a sham duel, in which he did not figure at all brilliantly, according to the orthodox interpretation of the code. He had insulted Sir Richard Borough so grossly that a meeting could not be evaded, and when the paces were measured Duigenan refused to take up the pistols, which in due form were laid at his feet. He then shouted to the “old rascal to fire away,” and when Borough thereon left the field Duigenan declined to fight with his second, because he “had too great a regard for him to kill him.”
[69] In George Faulkner’s “Epistle to Howard” (1771), contained in the Halliday Collection in the Royal Irish Academy, we have—