Anthony Martin
1645 – 1650
A native of Galway, Anthony Martin, a former Fellow, was Bishop of Meath but expelled from his diocese by the rebels when appointed as Provost in February 1645. 1 He had been educated in Emmanuel College, the main focus of Cambridge Puritanism, but like most of his Trinity colleagues he was a man of moderate views who tried to steer a middle course between the more extreme claims of Royalists (supporters of King Charles I) and Roundheads (supporters of Parliament) during the English Civil War. When the rebellion broke out, Trinity’s income from its estates was cut off and its financial position became very precarious. Martin had to face a new horror when a serious outbreak of plague afflicted Dublin towards the end of 1649 and it was this, rather than the anarchy that ruled over the previous five years, which killed him in 1650.