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‘And so the pillar lived to fall another day…’

The role of Trinity College Dublin during the Easter Rising has been well documented, and during the course of the commemorations, numerous personal experiences of this period have been brought to public attention.  An eye-witness account by alumnus James Alexander Glen was presented to the Manuscripts & Archives Research Library just over 50 years after the events of 1916, and it is a record of his involvement in the protection of the College (TCD MS 4456). We know from other manuscript sources that JA Glen, the son of a farmer, was born in Newtowncunningham, County Donegal, and entered College in October 1911, aged 17 years. He received his early education at Foyle College, Derry. In 1914 he was awarded a scholarship in classics, graduating with a BA in Winter 1915 and MA in Summer 1919. He joined the TCD Officer Training Corps (OTC) in his second year as an undergraduate. He was a recipient of a silver cup, one of a number of replicas of the two original cups that were presented to the College by local business who had benefited from OTC actions during the Rebellion.

TCD MS 4456 fol. 1
TCD MS 4456 fol. 1

At the outbreak of trouble, a uniformed Glen and a fellow artillery officer, with whom he had enjoying an outing to the Phoenix Park, made a cautious journey to TCD after their tram was halted in O’Connell Street. They met with a group of Australian and South African soldiers en route, who subsequently volunteered to act as lookouts on a portion of the College roof. Under the direction of AA Luce and EH Alton (both OTC captains and College professors), operations began to protect the College from within the walls. The gates were closed, ammunition distributed and sentries were posted at various locations.

As events unfolded during Easter Week, Glen was ordered to follow a colonel to an attic window in one of the College buildings that overlooked Westmoreland Street and O’Connell Street. The ‘red-tabled and red-hatted senior officer’ was considering a possible plan to demolish Nelson’s Pillar, and enquired of Glen about the type of artillery that would be required for such an operation. The pillar was seen to act as a shelter for the rebels as they moved between Clery’s department store and the General Post Office. As Glen himself recognised, even with his limited knowledge of firearms, this method would not have been a success even with the most powerful of guns. While parts of central Dublin were destroyed during Easter week, the pillar remained standing until 8 March 1966 when, fifty years after the events of 1916, it was severely damaged by explosives planted by the Irish Republican Army. The remnants were later removed.

TCD MS 4456 fol. 2
TCD MS 4456 fol. 2

The manuscript is in very good condition, consists of five sheets written in the author’s hand, and can be consulted in the Manuscripts & Archives Research Library.

Aisling Lockhart

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Trinity College Dublin and Rebellion in Ireland

Among the many commemorations that coincided with the hundredth anniversary of the Easter Rising were articles that reflected on Trinity’s role. Described in one newspaper as ‘a bulwark of Empire,’ the College was a crucial staging ground for the British army in its effort to subdue the insurgents. It occupied a strategic point between the General Post Office and St. Stephen’s Green, both held by Irish Volunteers.

Petition of Provost etc. to Lords Justices and Council, 25 November 1641 (TCD MUN P/1/329)
Petition of Provost etc. to Lords Justices and Council, 25 November 1641 (TCD MUN P/1/329)

As an early modernist examining the history of Trinity during the mid-seventeenth century British Civil Wars, I was struck by some parallels between Trinity’s role in 1916 and its place in the 1641 Rebellion. Founded fifty years earlier, by 1641 Trinity had largely failed in some aspects of its mission, namely to train a native clergy and spread Protestantism in Ireland. It catered increasingly to settlers that had arrived during the Elizabethan and Jacobean plantations. However, with the outbreak of rebellion in 1641, Trinity assumed a role as an English military outpost—and it nearly drove the University into dissolution.

A series of manuscripts in the College Archives highlight the extent to which the rebellion left Trinity destitute, with the Provost fleeing to England and the College losing access to revenues from its lands in Ulster, the epicentre of the rising. Trinity also quartered soldiers during the rebellion. While meant to aid in the defense of Dublin and the Pale, the presence of troops represented another financial drain on the University, which was supposed to pay the soldiers out of its own dwindling finances. This prompted the Vice-Provost, Fellows and Scholars to petition the Lords Justices and Council asking for recoupment of expenses (TCD MUN P/1/329). Students were also pushed to the brink of starvation in holding a continuous watch for the safety of the University. Their plight was outlined in another petition (TCD MUN P/1/334). The College’s petitions to Dublin Castle did not go unheeded. The government recognized that while the rebellion required defensive measures be taken, it could not risk the closure of the University, which was still viewed as central to the Crown’s rule of Ireland.

Petition from the students to the Lords Justices and Council, [? June 1642] (TCD MUN P/1/334)
Petition from the students to the Lords Justices and Council, [? June 1642] (TCD MUN P/1/334)

Trinity thus played comparable roles in the risings of 1641 and 1916. Both times the College quartered troops in an effort to subdue rebels, and both times the welfare of the College was considered crucial to the governing of Ireland and indeed, the preservation of imperial designs.

Salvatore Cipriano, Jr.
Ph.D. Candidate
History Department
Fordham University

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Film of Trinity War Memorial

On 26 September this year a ceremony was held during which a memorial stone was unveiled outside the Hall of Honour, in Front Square. A short film about the project was commissioned by the Hall of Honour Memorial Stone Committee and has just been posted on the College YouTube channel. The support of the TCD Association and Trust for the making of this film is gratefully acknowledged.

Continue reading “Film of Trinity War Memorial”

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Catalóg Lámhscríbhínní na hÉireann ar líne / Medieval Irish Manuscripts Online Cataloguing Project

Since 2013 work has been underway in M&ARL to make available online the full catalogue of Trinity College Library’s significant medieval to early modern Irish language manuscripts. The catalogue, previously only available in the 1921 published format (Catalogue of Irish Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College Dublin TK Abbott & EJ Gwynn, Dublin: 1921), is expected to be complete in 2016 and will greatly enhance how scholars and students can search for, and access, catalogue information to these manuscripts. Continue reading “Catalóg Lámhscríbhínní na hÉireann ar líne / Medieval Irish Manuscripts Online Cataloguing Project”

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It’s that time again.

Ah, exam time – when the air becomes sweeter, the sun becomes warmer and every element in the created universe cries out to be enjoyed. But not by the harried student.

T’was ever thus.

Here, from the archives, we present the study timetable, from May 1826, of Hugh Edward Prior who entered Trinity College Dublin in the 1820s and who won ‘schol’ in 1825. His father was Thomas Prior, the professor of Greek and lecturer in divinity (and a man who referred to the provost, Thomas Elrington, in his diary, as a ‘tyrannical knave’).

Young Mr Prior was preparing for his final examinations; he was eventually to graduate BA 1827, MA 1831.

MUN-P-1-1535_3r

The subjects upon which Matthew was spending his days were astronomy, Greek and Joseph Butler’s philosophical work  Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed (1736).

It is clear that Matthew Prior had a healthy attitude to work-life balance, so necessary for the stressed student. Not only did he regularly – almost daily – dine with friends, he also scheduled time to go to Chapel; his first recorded period dedicated to his Greek studies saw him read 630 lines of text ‘notwithstanding dancing &c’. Even more importantly, like a good son, he recorded  time spent ‘walking about with Mother’.

This little record is part of the evidence for the influence of Methodism in Ireland generally and in Trinity specifically in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The systematic approach to doing the right thing, in the right way, to become a person likely to be of service to one’s community was a characteristic of this branch of evangelical Protestantism. A near contemporary of Prior’s in TCD, Matthew Maine Fox, kept a commonplace book between the years 1820-1825, which reveals the same religious influence and which includes ‘rules for the regulation of Mr Fox’s time to be adopted by him with the Divine Assistance’; this remains in private hands but a copy was presented to the Library in 2006.

Jane Maxwell