Part 7

The names of the Provost and of his son Richard are on the roll of the Irish M.P.'s (1783-90) which Dr. Ingram has had framed and hung up in the Fagel wing of the College Library.

The present Lord Donoughmore, who is sixth in descent from the Provost, was one of the European Commission for organising Eastern Roumelia under the Berlin Treaty, and he is also the originator of the Lords' Committee of inquiry on the Irish Land Act. His lordship's father, in 1854, moved the second reading of Lord Dufferin's Liberal "Leasing Powers, and Landlord and Tenant Bills;" and in 1865 he made an able speech in the House of Lords on the grievances of the officers of the East India Company's army. He had previously served as a soldier with distinction in the East, and was always listened to with deserved attention by the peers.--[Lord Dufferin's Speeches and Addresses.]

NOTE B. Page xxi.

DR. LELAND.

DUIGENAN'S disparaging mention of Dr. Leland is one of the most spiteful and unjust of his utterances. There does not seem to be any proof that Leland was guilty of any Academic disloyalty in being or becoming friendly to the Provost, and outside this indictment the celebrity of his varied intellectual distinctions added greatly to the lustre and dignity of the College. He was probably the best classical scholar of the country; he was an eloquent and popular preacher, constantly advocating the charities of the city, and although he did not contribute to either Baratariana or Pranceriana he was the most learned Irish author of the period. Dr. Thomas Leland was born in Dublin in 1722, and was educated in Sheridan's famous school in Capel-street. He entered College in 1737, got Scholarship in 1741, and Fellowship in 1746. In 1746 he was appointed Southwell lecturer in St. Werburgh's Church. He was Erasmus Smith Professor of Oratory and Modern History in the University, Librarian, Chaplain to Lord Lieutenant Townshend, Prebendary of St. Patrick's Cathedral, and Rector of Rathmichael, which living he exchanged for St. Anne's, Dublin, with the Vicar, Dr. Benjamin Domville Barrington. In 1781 he resigned his Senior Fellowship and retired on Ardstraw, which he held by dispensation along with St. Anne's until his death, in 1785. He was a vehement opposer of pluralists until he became himself a pluralist. He published a "Translation of Demosthenes," "The History of Philip of Macedon," and "The History of Ireland" in three volumes, quarto. This last-named history is really a work of very superior merit. Leland supported the English in the spirit of Primate Boulter; and like Delany, he may have hunted for a bishopric from the English Government; but as a historian, he gave an honest and able record. No one need set out more fairly and forcibly the rapacity of our Irish Reformationists, the frauds of Strafford, and the barbarities of Cromwell. His book was furthermore quite a novelty in regard of fresh material, and would be almost worth re-editing. After Leland's death three volumes of his sermons were published, by subscription, by M'Kenzie of Dame-street, and the list of subscribers contains the names of Provost Hutchinson, the Vice-Provost, many of the Fellows, the Library, bishops, judges, peers, members of parliament, and most of the celebrities of the day, but it does not contain the name of Patrick Duigenan.

Concerning the "History of Ireland," Leland's greatest work, we see by the recently-issued Historical Manuscripts Commission Report, that it was Charles O'Connor of Belanagare, the then most capable recordist of Ireland, who moved him (1767) to undertake it "because he has abilities and philosophy equal to the task." O'Connor writes again, that "we undoubtedly have [in Trinity College Library], by Dr. Leland's care, the best collection of old annals now in these islands. That learned and worthy gentleman has made me free of the College Library." In another letter O'Connor says: "Dr. Leland is now librarian, and promises me a warm room and all the liberty I can require relative to the College MSS., which are now a noble collection, indeed." It was Charles O'Connor who made Lord Lyttleton and Dr. Leland acquainted with each other, and we do not find it recorded that the English peer was of any service to the Irish scholar, although Dr. Leland generously supplied his lordship with valuable historical information for his history of Henry II.; and that, when he himself was engaged in describing the same events in his own work.--[See Life prefixed to Sermons, and vol. viii. of Hist. Man. Com. Reports, 1881, p. 486.]

Dr. Johnston had a high regard for Dr. Leland, and he wrote to him a letter of personal thanks for the Dublin University's honorary LL.D. in 1765. Johnston complained to O'Connor that Leland "begins his history too late," and that he should have been more exact in regard of "the times, for such there were, when Ireland was the school of the West, the quiet habitation of sanctity and literature." It was the chance mention of Leland's history that drew from Johnston the indignant exclamation "The Irish are in a most unnatural state, for we see there the minority prevailing over the majority. There is no instance, even in the ten persecutions, of such severity as that which the Protestants of Ireland have exercised against the Catholics."--[Boswell.]

In the Anthologia Hibernica for March, 1793, vol. i., p. 165, there is a notice of Leland which sharply disparages his "History of Ireland." The notice is otherwise friendly and appreciative, and it quotes Dr. Parr's eulogy on Dr. Leland.

His "History of Ireland" closes with the surrender of Limerick in 1691, and Hutchinson was correct in stating ("Letter 3," p. 23, ante) that Ireland had no professed historian of its own since that era, and that history furnished very imperfect and often partial views of her affairs.

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. 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. 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:--

EXTRACTS FROM THE EXAMINATION BOOK, T.C.D.

"1764.

"Hilary Term--Junior Freshmen.

"1st Division--Mr. Stock, Examiner.