<p>On the death of the provost John Hely Hutchinson in 1794 the Marquess of Abercorn’s plan, hatched three years before by his adherents the brothers Thomas and George Knox, to assume the patronage of Trinity College went into operation.
<p>Despite its being a freeman-freeholder constituency Dublin had, in practice, a largely protestant freeman electorate. Of just over 3,000 electors in 1806, only 382 were freeholders and by 1820 the number had dropped to 138.<fn>Dublin SPO 522/913/9, ‘Contested elections for Dublin City, 1806 and 1820’.</fn> It is also significant that the majority of freeholders had freeholds worth £20 or more.
<p>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.<fn>This and the following paragraph are based on R.B. McDowell and D.A. Webb, <em>Trinity Coll.
<p>As befitted the long-standing ambiguity of the cultural status of the Irish capital, which was at once both constitutionally and economically dependent and socially and intellectually irrepressible, Dublin after the Union witnessed both the depths of electoral chicanery which marked out its politics as those of a colonial sewer and the heights of inspirational fervour which brought Ireland’s great causes into the heart of the imperial Parliament.<fn> T.C.