Dublin University

Trinity College, which was established by Elizabeth I in 1592 and enfranchised by James I in 1613, was the alma mater of the Protestant Ascendancy, its spiritual bedrock and political forcing ground.This and the following paragraph are based on R.B. McDowell and D.A. Webb, Trinity Coll. Dublin, 74-159. Set opposite the former Parliament on College Green, at one of the hubs of the metropolis, its fine courts and magnificent library proclaimed an elegance and solidity that by the early nineteenth century was no longer fully matched by its intellectual standing and theological supremacy. Following the death in 1794 of the prominent provost and grandee John Hely Hutchinson, who mostly sat for Cork during a long parliamentary career, the conservative College suffered a severe decline and, in the aftermath of the Union and the Napoleonic Wars, was not immune to the prevailing pressures for reform. S. Lewis, Top. Dict. of Ireland (1837), i. 552-3. Although there were some improvements in this period, notably in James Macartney’s School of Medicine, whose new building was opened in 1825, Trinity was routinely criticized, including in petitions to the Commons, for being wealthy, exclusive, indolent and outmoded. The Times, 13 Dec. 1821; Freeman’s Jnl. 2 Jan. 1827; Dublin Morning Post, 13, 17, 25, 27 May 1831; CJ, lxxxvi. 768; lxxxvii. 432. Nevertheless, its representation, which was reduced to one seat in 1801, was just as sought after for the kudos it conferred as that of its counterparts at Oxford and Cambridge. Curiously, given its status as Ireland’s only Protestant university, its Members, who were almost always alumni, were latterly often supporters of Catholic emancipation. Hist. Irish Parl. ii. 231-4; HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 651-2.

The staunch churchmanship of the university, whose sole constituent college was Trinity, was embodied in its figureheads, the duke of Cumberland, the chancellor, and chief justice William (later Lord) Downes, the vice-chancellor and joint visitor (with the archbishop of Dublin, who from 1822 was the former fellow William Magee). But control of the College, including the management of its vast yet surprisingly unremunerative estates, Its nearly 200,000 acres brought in only about £17,500 p.a. 1817-20 (R.B. MacCarthy, Trinity Coll. Estates, 1, 75, 230). was completely in the hands of the almost entirely Tory board, which consisted of the provost and the seven senior fellows. Since 1811 the provost, who had a salary of £3,000, had been Thomas Elrington, whom Lord Cloncurry described as ‘a learned man, but stupid and blockish, and thoroughly imbued with the narrowest bigotries of his class and position’. Personal Recollections of Lord Cloncurry, 9. Typical of his colleagues were Francis Hodgkinson, one of the few laymen, who neglected his duties as regius professor of civil law and Erasmus Smith professor of modern history, and Dr. Thomas Prior, who vented his disappointments and frustrations in his caustic diary. Dr. Bartholomew Lloyd, a rare example of a genuine academic, and Dr. Franc Sadleir, a venerable though pluralist College office-holder, were the only committed Whigs. They were also in a minority among the junior fellows, 18 in number since 1808, who were elected as vacancies arose (on average about once a year in this period) through a system of rigorous examination. W.B.S. Taylor, Hist. Univ. of Dublin (1845), 286. It was on these younger men that the main burden of tutorial teaching fell, but the fellowship as a whole was ageing and static in character, partly because the detested celibacy statute had often been circumvented in practice (at least until 1812) and partly because retirement to one of the mostly far from lucrative College livings (all of which were in Ulster) was an increasingly unattractive prospect. By contrast, there was a rapid turnover of the up to 70 scholars, about a fifth of whom were elected each year from among the third-year students (junior sophisters), in place of those who had taken their MAs (or, at least, had by then resided long enough to be eligible to do so). As the franchise was in the provost (who was also the returning officer), 25 fellows and 70 scholars, the last element in the electorate had a clear majority (comprising 73 per cent of the total number of electors when the full complement of 96 was made up, though there were usually some minors among the scholars). PP (1829), xxii. 11. It was sometimes felt that this injected an unstable and unfair element into the choice of representative, but many scholars would probably have felt beholden to their sponsors among the influential senior fellows, to whom some of them were related. Oldfield, Rep. Hist. (1816) vi. 231-2; ‘Dublin Univ.’ Blackwood’s Edinburgh Mag. xxvi (1829), 153-77. The tutors and professors who were not on the foundation were excluded from participation in parliamentary elections, as were the rapidly expanding number of students (over 400 were admitted each year, about a tenth of them Catholics who were permitted to take degrees but not to join the foundation), except insofar as they contributed to the unruliness which invariably attended university contests. Add. 40402, f. 106; McDowell and Webb, 499-501. Charles Lever’s novel Charles O’Malley (1841) is said to give a plausible account of the high spirited social life of the College at this time.

The eminent pro-Catholic Dublin barrister and Grenvillite former Irish law officer William Conyngham Plunket, a friend of Elrington and Magee, finally fulfilled his ambition to represent the university at the general election of 1812. In 1818, when he was refused permission to hold an unprecedented canvassing meeting and raised complaints about the recent ex-scholars rather than the newly elected ones being allowed to vote, Plunket was challenged by another lawyer of local origin, his long-standing rival John Wilson Croker, the secretary to the admiralty. Croker, whose champion was Lloyd, successfully persuaded the previous Member John Leslie Foster* that he had no chance and calculated that he himself had a possible 31 votes against 25 for Plunket, out of a total of 67 electors. But the Liverpool administration, which could not openly disavow Croker and privately gave him its tacit support, wanted to appease its potential allies the Grenvillites and not even Croker’s claim that he could secure the repeal of the celibacy statute, which was echoed by his opponent, could prevent his defeat by 34-30 after a bitter contest. TCD, Trinity mun. TCD/MUN/P/1/1413, 1420; NLW, Coedymaen mss 1042; R. Irish Acad. Foster mss 23 G 39/4; Add. 40298, f. 16; HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 652-3. In December 1819 Lord Grenville intervened with Lord Liverpool to try to relieve Plunket, who dreaded another lengthy and exhausting canvass in the face of the personal influence wielded against him by ministers, from the threat of another contest. This was partially successful and, after the death of George III in January 1820 had precipitated a dissolution, Croker with great reluctance communicated to Lloyd his intention of not disturbing Plunket, although he noted in his diary that this was ‘a great sacrifice ... and I should not have consented but that I did not wish to commit my friends against the government’. Plunket, who continued to apprehend a last minute challenge, ‘which might annoy me, though not endanger me, on the day of election’, begged for the further reassurances which he deemed necessary in order to extract promises from Croker’s partisans. Add. 58963, f. 36; Coedymaen mss 576, 1043; Croker Pprs. i. 157. In the end, with Elrington’s support and slightingly referred to as the ‘court candidate’, he was returned unopposed at the general election, when, as was the usual practice, he was proposed by a senior fellow and seconded by a senior scholar. Dublin Evening Post, 3 Feb.; Dublin Weekly Reg. 12 Feb., 18 Mar.; Dublin Jnl. 17 Mar. 1820.

A vacancy occurred for the provostship on Elrington’s appointment as bishop of Limerick in the autumn of 1820; he was translated to Ferns two years later. The Irish administration passed over his natural successor Lloyd in favour of Samuel Kyle, a fellow since 1798, evidently because the latter could be relied on to be solid yet also discreet - vital in view of Plunket’s sensibilities - in his promotion of the College’s anti-Catholic stance. Add. 52467, f. 158; Mr. Gregory’s Letter Box ed. Lady Gregory, 139-40. Although he was a nonentity and Prior later venomously recorded that ‘it was by a tissue of falsehoods and low cunning he attained his present situation’, Kyle largely avoided controversy by smothering internal dissent with his habitual bland innocuousness. TCD, Prior mss 3368, p. 106; McDowell and Webb, 79, 98. Apart from overseeing the board’s approval of a loyal address to George IV in December 1820, the only distinction he enjoyed during his period as provost was when he presented the Trinity address to the king in Dublin, 17 Aug., and hosted the College dinner in his honour, 27 Aug. 1821. Trinity mun. V/5/6, pp. 292-3, 307-11; Taylor, 127-35; Dublin Weekly Reg. 25 Aug., 1 Sept. 1821. Before the by-election necessitated by Plunket’s reappointment as Irish attorney-general, Croker apparently pledged that ‘against him while connected with government I never will exert or countenance any opposition’; Plunket was duly returned unopposed in February 1822, when, in the spirit of conciliation, Prior congratulated the electors on having a representative able to attract Tory and Whig, Protestant and Catholic support. Add. 52471, f. 82; Prior mss 3376/1-6; Dublin Evening Post, 16 Feb. 1822. In December 1822 Kyle, with Lloyd and Sadleir, drew up what Prior described as ‘a very long and very stupid’ address congratulating the lord lieutenant Lord Wellesley on escaping unharmed from the Dublin Orange theatre riot, but Trinity itself became a target for violence the following February, when, at the end of the new county Member Henry White’s chairing, anti-Orange demonstrators smashed many of the windows fronting College Green. Prior mss 3368, pp. 55, 62-63; Dublin Evening Post, 21 Dec. 1822, 13, 15 Feb. 1823. Although the students were prohibited from joining political organizations, in July 1824 Daniel O’Connell* allowed them to attend meetings of the Catholic Association, at which they exhibited their customary rowdiness. Procs. of Catholic Association (1825), 461-2, 633-4. In January 1825 Kyle, despite his own sympathies, ruthlessly suppressed an anti-Catholic petition which was in course of signature among the student Orangemen. Prior mss 3368, p. 141; Dublin Evening Post, 29 Jan., 1 Feb. 1825.

Rumours circulated that Plunket would be faced by an opponent of Catholic relief at the next opportunity, his most likely challenger being the obscure Dublin barrister George Moore*. Dublin Evening Post, 23 Mar. 1824, 1 Feb., 8 Aug. 1825; Dublin Evening Mail, 29 Mar., 7 Apr. 1826. But in the spring of 1826, when it was supposed that Plunket would be appointed to the Irish chancellorship, it was the pro-Catholic Croker, desperately seeking ministerial endorsement, and a like-minded Irish barrister of long-standing pretensions John Henry North* who restaked their claims. Add. 37304, f. 115; 40319, f. 167; 40332, f. 30; Dublin Evening Post, 23 Mar., 1 Apr. 1826. On 2 Apr. Croker reported to Peel, the home secretary, whom he persuaded to write to influential figures on his behalf, that

they say that my election is certain, but, though all looks well, I am not yet so confident. If I were an unbounded Protestant it might be so, but the Protestant candidate will diminish the number of those whom I could have relied on. 35 never was beaten and I have already 28 promises and I do not think Mr. Moore can have more than eight or nine though he talks of 16 on the Protestant interest and North about as many, on his combined personal and political principles and the Leslie Foster [his relation] interest; but North will undoubtedly have a more considerable support by and bye ... A day or two however will clear our way. Add. 40319, ff. 171, 177-82.

Doubts about his judicial promotion caused Plunket to renew his offer at the dissolution that summer, so Croker was again obliged to bide his time, although, with up to 46 promises (by one account), he was deemed likely to inherit the reversion to the College’s pro-Catholic representation at some future date. Add. 38301, f. 164; 40319, f. 184; The Times, 31 May; Dublin Evening Post, 8 June 1826. Moore, who came in for the city, did not enter and Plunket, proposed by Dr. Thomas Phipps, was returned unopposed at the general election of 1826, when Prior privately noted the Member’s hypocrisy in making no observation on the fact that his seconder’s scholarship had expired. Plunket, who had spoken for Catholic relief, was, however, violently manhandled during his abortive chairing and Orange outrages were perpetrated by the students for several days. Dublin Evening Post, 13, 15, 17 June 1826; Prior mss 3368, p. 187. In March 1827, when Hodgkinson (vice-provost since 1821), four other fellows, about 30 scholars and nearly 900 undergraduates signed the Dublin anti-Catholic petition, he was attacked by ‘Academicus’ for failing to represent university opinion and was burnt in effigy by the students in protest at his part in the recent Catholic motion in the Commons. Dublin Evening Mail, 7, 12, 14 Mar.; The Times, 23 Mar. 1827.

In the spring of 1827 Plunket, who accepted a peerage as an earnest of future advancement from the in-coming Canning administration, announced his retirement from the College, which he advised to continue acting in a temperate and non-partisan manner. D. Plunket, Life of Lord Plunket, ii. 247. Croker immediately offered and although Peel, who had seceded from government with the other anti-Catholics, now backed the Protestant stalwart Thomas Langlois Lefroy, the Irish first serjeant, the pro-Catholic Canning did all he could to divert North from standing, even offering him a seat free of expense elsewhere. Croker was reckoned to have over 40 previous promises and his sponsors in the liberal press insisted that these could not now be broken, though, for instance, the Rev. Charles Boyton, an active Orangeman and fellow, believed (wrongly) that the bishop of Ferns’s son Dr. Charles Richard Elrington could be won over, as he was ‘a gentleman of a very accommodating conscience, when he sees the direction in which his interest lies’. Dublin Evening Post, 21, 24 Apr., 1, 3, 8 May; Freeman’s Jnl. 25, 26 Apr. 1827; Add. 40394, ff. 69-73, 116; Croker Pprs. i. 372. The tumult in the examination hall, 15 May, was so great that Croker (nominated by Lloyd), Lefroy (by Hodgkinson) and North (by Sadleir) all declined to speak and, once Croker (with the votes of seven fellows and 31 scholars) had defeated North (11 and 18) and Lefroy (seven and 15), there was a clash, in which North got caught up, between Orange and Catholic mobs outside the College. Compared to the final poll list, the prior survey printed in the Dublin Evening Mail, which had predicted an seven-eight-seven split among the fellows, proved very accurate, although North picked up one promised vote, that of Dr. Henry Wray, from Lefroy and three from the ‘doubtful’ category, while another fellow, Dr. Charles William Wall, as usual abstained. In all, 89 voted (two scholars were absent and four under age) and, as was confirmed by a legal opinion from the Irish solicitor-general Joy, the votes of the ex-scholars (those who were eligible to have taken their MAs at the recent spring commencement) were rejected. Dublin Evening Mail, 2 May; Dublin Evening Post, 15 May; Freeman’s Jnl. 16, 21 May 1827; Prior mss 3369, p. 24; Trinity mun. P/1/1569; P/47/1. The result, which was hailed as strengthening the Catholic cause and the Canning ministry, was of course condemned by the High Church Protestants; North, who was the object of particular opprobrium, was thought to have refused to back down in order to prevent his friends drifting over to Lefroy, and this suspicion seemed to be confirmed when the cabinet minister Lord Anglesey brought him in for Milborne Port in July 1827. Dublin Evening Post, 17, 19 May; Dublin Evening Mail, 23 May, 13 July 1827. Taking the chance to canvass the new fellow and scholars, Croker visited the College at the end of May 1828, when, had he as he wished been appointed Irish secretary, he would have resigned the seat to North and sought a less sensitive constituency. Dublin Evening Post, 29, 31 May 1828; PRO NI, Anglesey mss D619/32A/2/61.

Allegations later that year that Trinity was rife with Orangeism were vindicated when, at the instigation of Boyton and Moore, the graduates formed a Brunswick Club, 7 Nov. 1828, with Cumberland as patron, Hodgkinson as president and Henry Maxwell, Member for Cavan, as secretary. Dublin Evening Post, 19 Aug., 21 Oct., 1 Nov.; Dublin Evening Mail, 29 Oct., 10, 24 Nov., 12 Dec. 1828. But, as one anonymous correspondent argued in the Dublin Evening Post, it was not so much that the current members of the College were overwhelmingly hostile to the Catholics as that the provost and board, despite the urgings of Lloyd and Wray, refused to discountenance the extreme activities of the vociferous minority. Indeed, the indisposed Kyle, who on 2 Feb. 1829 wrote to Dr. John Jebb, bishop of Limerick, that ‘we are all in sad consternation since the late disclosure of the [duke of Wellington’s] designs’ in favour of Catholic emancipation, now woefully exposed his own weakness. Prior commented in his diary, 21 Feb., when there was a bitter debate at the board on Sadleir’s unsuccessful motion ‘that the registrar should be instructed to inform our representative in Parliament that the petition of the Dublin university graduates is not the petition of this College’, that ‘I can not acquit our provost of very gross neglect of duty, indeed complete abandonment of his high station, in secreting himself in this awful period from the board’. Dublin Evening Post, 15 Nov.; The Times, 12 Dec. 1828; Prior mss 3369, pp. 69, 71, 82-83; TCD, Jebb mss 6397/327; McDowell and Webb, 525. Having attracted over a thousand signatures, the petition was brought up in the Lords by Cumberland, 19 Mar., and in the Commons by Maxwell, 23 Mar. 1829, when (as they had done on the 13th, on Moore claiming that 400 or 500 undergraduates had signed the city’s hostile petition) both Croker and North denied that it embodied the real state of opinion there. LJ, lxi. 225; CJ, lxxxiv. 160. At least the disheartened Protestants could take some comfort that year from the appointment of their champion Primate Beresford, the archbishop of Armagh, as vice-chancellor in place of Lord Manners, who had held the office since 1826.

Croker, who in June 1829 was said to have cut a sorry figure in making a canvassing visit with North and Lefroy, was still confident of retaining his seat against Lefroy (provided North stood aside) for the College in February 1830, when, had he become treasurer of the navy, he would have had to seek re-election. Warder, 20 June 1829; Add. 40320, f. 148; PRO NI T2534/2. His ministerial position created difficulties for him that session as the board instructed him to oppose the Irish ecclesiastical leases bill (from which Trinity was finally omitted) and newspapers called on him to oppose the higher Irish stamp duties as a tax on learning and literature. Prior mss 3369, pp. 131-7; TCD ms 3995 (5); Warder, 8 May 1830. At the general election that summer, Croker, who demanded and largely received the level of government protection which had formerly been accorded to Plunket, was again challenged by North, whose quixotic conduct in forlornly offering for the university while at the same time seeming to withdraw so as to fight a contest in Drogheda was by some considered a trick to ensure Croker’s return. But whatever the effect of this tactic in 1827, the withholding of North’s ‘flying squadron’ now only served to bolster the cause of Lefroy, a committed Brunswicker, who ran with the tacit backing of the embarrassed Kyle, the open support of Orangemen such as Boyton and Cumberland and the active intervention of the Ultra leaders on the city corporation, including the lord mayor Jacob West. Add. 40320, ff. 154-6, 161-8; 40338, ff. 223, 245; Wellington mss WP1/1120/7; 1122/40; 1126/11; 1127/2; 1128/2; 1129/21; 1130/51; 1131/17, 39; 1132/21; NAI, Leveson Gower letter bks. Leveson Gower to Singleton, 15 June, 30, 31 July; Dublin Evening Post, 22 June, 29 July; Warder, 28, 31 July 1830. On the hustings, Lefroy (proposed by Hodgkinson) asserted his credentials to represent the principles of the senior fellows, Croker (by Lloyd) vindicated his conduct towards the Catholics and North (by Dr. Richard MacDonnell) blithely conceded that he had travelled overnight from Drogheda despite having no hope of winning at the university. As Croker soon bitterly realized, he was pushed just into second place by Lefroy because the trailing North, who nevertheless won a seat at Drogheda and was appointed to a judgeship in the Irish admiralty court, unaccountably (unless, as was suspected, it was in collusion with Lefroy) deprived him of four crucial votes and so ensured a result which, although personally creditable to Croker, was mortifying to government and exhilarating for its Ultra opponents. Dublin Evening Post, 5 Aug.; Warder, 7 Aug. 1830; Prior mss 3369, p. 150; Add. 40320, ff. 170, 172; 40327, f. 194; Wellington mss WP1/1132/28; 1133/4, 5; 1137/1, 2. Each candidate received votes from eight fellows (another two did not vote), but Lefroy (25) outvoted Croker (22) and North (eight) among the 55 scholars who polled (another five were absent and 10 under age, while nine were disqualified as ex-scholars). Fewer than 10 of the scholars had polled at the previous contest, but of the 21 fellows who had voted in 1827, Croker (to whom five, including Lloyd and his son Humphrey, remained loyal) lost one (John Darley) to Lefroy (who retained his other six, including Kyle, Hodgkinson, Prior and Boyton), but gained one (Sadleir) from North (whose eight, including MacDonnell, had all stayed with him since the by-election). Freeman’s Jnl. 5 Aug.; Dublin Morning Post, 6 Aug. 1830; Trinity mun. P/1/1676.

Lefroy, who remained in Dublin that winter, was an opponent of the Grey ministry, whose Irish solicitor-general, Philip Cecil Crampton* issued a speculative address in January 1831 to the College, where he had once been a fellow and still held the regius chair of common law (although he now employed a deputy). At this, Croker, who had found a berth at Aldeburgh and had left office with Wellington, was advised to cultivate his interest if he intended to offer again, since Boyton and his cronies were whispering that he had departed for good. TCD ms 3995 (2). Amid the mounting criticism of the College, which that month addressed Anglesey on his reappointment as lord lieutenant, O’Connell condemned it as a ‘nest of bigotry, ignorance and intolerance’. Dublin Evening Mail, 12 Jan. 1831. In February the Irish government decided to rid itself of Kyle, who was named bishop of Cork, for the purpose of installing (on 9 Apr.) Lloyd, who quickly revitalized the learning and reformed the organization of the College. Lefroy, who feared the position would go to Crampton’s patron Sadleir (who, in fact, succeeded on Lloyd’s death in 1837), had strenuously advocated the claims of an embittered Prior, whom he described as being of ‘steady sound principles’, ‘a perfect academician’ and ‘a man of real piety’, but Anglesey quipped that he, ‘though unobjectionable as to character, has no pretensions, except on the score of priority’. McDowell and Webb, 152-76; Prior mss 3369, pp. 177-85, 193; NLI, Farnham mss 18611 (1), Lefroy to Farnham, 15, 22 Jan. 1831; Anglesey mss 28C, pp. 69-71. A call was made for the franchise to be extended to all masters of arts, on the Oxford and Cambridge model, by a ‘graduate of ten years’ standing’, possibly one Frank Hewson, whose petition to this effect was presented to the Commons by Rice, Whig Member for Limerick, 22 Mar. Dublin Evening Post, 8 Jan. 1831; CJ, lxxxvi. 419. However, as Smith Stanley, the Irish secretary, related to Anglesey that day, ministers

have extended the right of voting, not to all the graduates, but (a much better thing in all ways) to all the scholars, and we have given two Members. The old charter gives the right of voting to all scholars, but makes no mention of masters, and Plunket [now lord chancellor of Ireland], who is delighted with the alteration, says that we are only reverting to the true interpretation of the existing charter. Besides, the scholars are all Protestants: the masters have a great admixture of Roman Catholics, and I think this, as a Protestant sop, may do much to counteract the fear of the preponderating influence given to O’Connell and co. by the admission of the £10 householders in towns. Anglesey mss 31D/35.

With the assistance of Crampton, who had drafted the Irish bill, Smith Stanley announced these changes in the House, 24 Mar., when O’Connell objected to the continuation of the effective exclusion of the Catholics and Sir Charles Wetherell, the former attorney-general, criticized the giving of extra seats to the university and Galway (in addition to the three others already proposed for Ireland). Trinity graduates met in London, 30 Mar., and Dublin, 4 Apr., to complain of their omission, although the former scholars welcomed their enfranchisement at their own gathering, 11 Apr. 1831, while a College petition against the reform bill was apparently got up later that month. Dublin Evening Post, 2, 5 Apr.; Dublin Evening Mail, 6, 8, 13, 15, 20 Apr. 1831; Prior mss 3369, pp. 196-7.

As expected, Croker found he had too little support to warrant renewing his candidacy at the general election of 1831, and Lefroy, whose friends considered him secure on the constitutional interest, was challenged only by an anxious Crampton, who had the grudging support of Lloyd and was reckoned to be level pegging (with 35 promises); John Denis Browne, who was returned for Mayo at this time, briefly offered in order to draw attention to the corrupt nature of the electorate. Derby mss 920 Der (14) 121/2, Gosset to Smith Stanley, 24 Apr.; Freeman’s Jnl. 26 Apr., 2-4 May; Dublin Evening Mail, 27 Apr. 1831; Anglesey mss 28C, pp. 105-12. Amid unrest in the hall, Lefroy (proposed by Hodgkinson) condemned reform for the damage it would do to the established church and traded jibes with Crampton (introduced by Sadleir), who defended the bill on the ground of necessity and justified the intended College franchise. As there were eight absentees, six minors and two vacant fellowships, there were only 80 electors, who split 44-36 in favour of Lefroy, whose anti-liberal triumph was considered by some to have brought even greater ignominy upon the College. Dublin Evening Post, 7, 10, 12 May; Dublin Evening Mail, 9 May; Dublin Morning Post, 9, 13 May 1831; Prior mss 3369, p. 200. Crucially, Lefroy received the votes of 14 fellows to Crampton’s six, both candidates receiving the votes of 30 scholars. In addition to the seven who had voted for Lefroy in 1830 (his eighth fellow then being the now ineligible Kyle), he gained four from Croker and three from North of the fellows who had voted at the previous contest; by contrast, Crampton received the votes of four of Croker’s (including Lloyd) and one of North’s former voters, while his sixth fellow (Wray) had abstained in 1830 but voted for North in 1827. Of the 55 scholars who can be identified as having polled in both 1830 and 1831, 21 remained loyal to Lefroy, who gained six from Croker and North, while 25 of Croker and North’s former voters now voted for Crampton, who drew away only three of Lefroy’s. Freeman’s Jnl. 9, 10 May; Morning Reg. 9 May 1831; Prior mss 3376/14; Trinity mun. P/47/2.

The board naturally wished the College franchise to remain unchanged, but at its meetings on 11 and 18 June 1831 it agreed, with two dissentients, that if reform was unavoidable, it would be preferable to petition for the realistic alteration of assimilating the right of voting to that of Oxford and Cambridge. As Wall explained to the bishop of Limerick, the advantage was that

the great majority of masters of arts are clergymen, whereas the majority of those to whom Crampton’s bill would transfer the elective franchise are laymen and if the College is to lose the return of the Member or Members (for the bait held out to us is the addition of a second Member) it will be some consolation to us if the church gets this return in our place. Prior mss 3369, pp. 210, 213; Trinity mun. P/1/1691; Jebb mss 6397/441.

The petition was presented to the Lords, 23 June, by the bishop of Ferns, who brought up a similar one from the junior fellows on 1 July, and to the Commons, 30 June, by Lefroy. LJ, lxiii. 735, 778; CJ, lxxxvi. 592. The bishops of Ferns and Cork both voted by proxy in the majority against the second reading of the reform bill, 7 Oct. On 18 Dec. 1831 the board decided to petition again for assimilation of the franchise, although on 21 Jan. 1832 a letter was read from the new archbishop of Dublin, Richard Whately, that this was certain to be unacceptable to ministers because it would result in the return of two Tories; Prior privately favoured ‘the next best thing, viz. fellows and scholars during life and making honorary scholars in addition, half Protestant, half Catholic’. According to Wall, it was at the instigation of Crampton, who knew that his proposal for a limited franchise had made him unpopular, that the fellows memorialized the king that month for repeal of the celibacy statute: it was ‘to remove this hostility that he has contrived this method of bribing them with private advantage at the expense of the general interests of the College’. Prior mss 3369, pp. 233, 235; TCD, Beresford mss 2770/49, 464; TCD ms 3995 (1).

Croker suggested enfranchising the masters of arts when Smith Stanley reintroduced the Irish reform bill, 19 Jan. 1832, and during the subsequent debates complaints were aired against giving an extra seat to such a small constituency rather than to a large town; for instance on 23 May, when O’Connell alleged that ‘I do not think there has been more corruption, or more shocking scenes of perjury exhibited at any election, than such as have disgraced some of those for this university’. Heron, Member for Peterborough, unsuccessfully moved for the College to be restricted to one seat, 13 June, when Crampton argued that the approximately 600 expected ex-scholars made the granting of an additional Member a viable proposition; but at the end of a difficult debate, during which Lefroy and Croker had to defend the university from the stinging attacks of several Irish radicals, Smith Stanley indicated that ministers were prepared to reconsider. On 9 July Jephson, Member for Mallow, moved to extend the franchise to the holders of MAs and (at Croker’s hint) of higher degrees, arguing that this would increase the number of potential voters to possibly 1,500 and end the anomaly of sectarian exclusiveness. Croker, despite his reservation that this would drown out the current foundation, declared himself persuaded of the case for adopting the virtues of the Oxford and Cambridge system, and was backed by Lefroy, who withheld his own opinion but showed that, of the existing College members, only the scholars were hostile to the assimilation of the franchise. Except for Crampton, who angrily resisted giving up his plan for restoring the intentions of the original charter, and O’Connell, who provocatively urged the total abolition of the College’s representation, the House was largely in favour of the motion, which, on the chancellor of the exchequer Lord Althorp’s acquiescence, was agreed without a division. N. Gash, Politics in Age of Peel, 57-60. Petitions calling for the vote to be in the MAs from the board, junior fellows and graduates, which were entrusted to but apparently not presented by Lefroy, were brought up in the Lords by the archbishop of Armagh and Cumberland, 23 July 1832. LJ, lxiv. 399-400.

Private lobbying and parliamentary wrangling continued over the details of the new franchise, but under the Irish Reform Act, which duly bestowed an additional seat (clause 11) and enfranchised the holders of masters degrees and above (clause 60), all former members were allowed six months to have their names re-entered in the books of the College on the payment of £2 and thereafter of the annual fee of £1 (clause 61); from 1842, this fee was compounded to a single payment of £5 (5 & 6 Vic., c. 74). Special commencements were held to permit those who had previously had no interest in continuing their association with the College to register, and by the end of the year over 2,000 had been admitted, many being financially supported by the Conservatives’ central organization in London. Derby mss 130/4, Wilmot to Smith Stanley, 13 July 1832; Jebb mss 6397/474; Trinity mun. V/4/4; V/5/7, p. 45; K. T. Hoppen, Elections, Politics and Society in Ireland, 299-300. Croker, who stated that he would have felt obliged to offer for the College if he had been formally requisitioned, retired from Parliament in disgust at the general election of 1832, when the Liberals Crampton and Lord Grey’s brother-in-law George Ponsonby*, neither of whom ever sat again, were defeated in an ugly contest by the Conservatives Lefroy and Frederick Shaw*, who transferred from Dublin borough. Ironically, given the hopes that had been expressed about extending the vote to the potentially more liberal masters of arts, the Whig coalition’s Act effectively converted the university representation into two safe seats for the Conservative and Protestant interest. Croker Pprs. ii. 183-4; Dublin Evening Post, 19 July, 13, 20 Dec. 1832; Dublin Univ. Pollbook (1832); McDowell and Webb, 532.