Protestant character of the college.
A Puritan provost.
The Scotch element.
From the first, Trinity College was under Protestant management, and was intended to counteract the influence of the seminaries at Salamanca and other places abroad. And in Ireland, since the masses adhered to Rome, Protestantism has ever naturally tended to the Puritan rather than to the Anglican side. Loftus himself had been a friend of Cartwright. Dr. Travers, the second provost, is claimed by the Presbyterians, and he was certainly a strenuous opponent of Richard Hooker. James Fullerton and James Hamilton, the first elected fellows, were Scotchmen; and seem to have been educated at St Andrews, under Andrew Melville, to whose opinions they may very probably have inclined. Fullerton and Hamilton, while enjoying some portion of Elizabeth’s favour, were James VI.’s secret agents, and it is supposed that Cecil sometimes sent through them letters, which it might have been dangerous to trust to the ordinary channels. The two Scots kept a school in Ship Street, Dublin, and had the honour of teaching James Ussher from his ninth to his fourteenth year. The first buildings were erected by public subscription, and some of the subscribers were Roman Catholics, but Archer the Jesuit was collecting about the same time for the Salamanca seminary. The danger was understood from the first, and a petition to the Pope calls attention to a ‘certain splendid college near Dublin, the capital of Ireland, where the youths of Ireland are instructed in heresy by English teachers.’ In 1609 Trinity is officially called ‘the fanatics’ college’ by the Irish Jesuits.[448]
Irish seminaries abroad.
Trinity College being out of the question, the Irish priesthood continued to be educated abroad, and O’Sullivan gives a list of towns where they had seminaries of their own, or, at least, special facilities. At Salamanca, Compostella, and Lisbon these institutions came into Jesuit hands; and there was a fourth at Seville. The Irish Franciscans had great privileges at Louvain, and there were Irish seminaries at Antwerp, Douai, and Tournai. Those who preferred the dominions of the Most Christian to those of the Most Catholic King, might find classes ready to receive them at Bordeaux, Toulouse, and Paris. In 1624 the famous Rothe and four other Irish prelates declared that the Parisian seminary had supplied many men distinguished in virtue, doctrine, and zeal, for the work of the Church in Ireland. ‘And so,’ says O’Sullivan, ‘crowds of Irish priests inundate Ireland, some educated in convents, some in seminaries, and some at the expense of their parents, and they partly, if not altogether, repair the damage which the English have done by upsetting the religious houses and seats of holy learning.’[449]
Books and printing.
The Prayer Book.
Irish types.
The Bible in Irish.