History
of Trinity College
The history of Trinity College can be conveniently
divided into three epochs—a century or so during which the foundations
were laid, a period of colourful expansion extending over the eighteenth
century, and a century and a half of strenuous adaptation to a rapidly
changing world. Trinity
was founded just before the Tudor monarchy had completed the task of
extending its authority over the whole of Ireland. The idea of an Irish
university had been in the air for some time, and in 1592 a small group
of Dublin citizens obtained a charter from Queen Elizabeth incorporating
Trinity College juxta Dublin. The Corporation of Dublin granted to the
new foundation the lands and dilapidated buildings of the monastery
of All Hallows, lying about a quarter of a mile south-east of the city
walls. Two years later a few Fellows and students began to work in the
new College, which then consisted of one small square. During the next
fifty years the community increased. Endowments, including considerable
landed estates, were secured, new fellowships were founded, the books
which formed the beginning of the great library were acquired, a curriculum
was devised and statutes were framed. The
second half-century of the College's history was a time of turmoil,
marked in Ireland by an interregnum and two civil wars. In 1641 the
Provost fled, and two years later the College had to pawn its plate;
some Fellows were expelled by the Commonwealth authorities, others were
excluded at the Restoration, and in 1689 all the Fellows and students
were expelled when the College was turned into a barrack for the soldiers
of James II. But the seventeenth century was also an age of ardent learning;
and Trinity men such as Ussher, a kindly polymath, Marsh, the orientalist,
Dodwell, the historian, Stearne, who founded the Irish College of Physicians,
and Molyneux, the correspondent of Locke, were typical of the adventurous
and wide-ranging scholarship of their day. These
buildings expressed the ordered vigour of the College's life. Unlike
the English universities Trinity took its duties seriously. The Fellows
were hard-worked, both as teachers and administrators. The curriculum
was kept up-to-date, there were quarterly examinations at which prizes
were granted to successful candidates, and the fellowship examination
was a Homeric contest. Most of the outstanding Irishmen of the eighteenth
century, including Swift, Berkeley, Burke, Goldsmith, Grattan and Tone,
were Trinity graduates, and the influence of their university is discernible
in their writings and speeches. Three
of the eighteenth century provosts were outstanding. Richard Baldwin
(1717-58) was a strong disciplinarian who strove to prevent the boisterous
high spirits that characterised contemporary Anglo-Irish society from
playing havoc with academic peace. His successor, Francis Andrews (1758-74),
was a member of parliament and a widely travelled and popular man of
the world, whose taste and social ambitions are reflected in the Provost's
House, erected in 1759. He provided in his will for the foundation of
a chair of astronomy and an observatory. He was succeeded by John Hely-Hutchinson
(1774-94), a barrister and an enlightened if self-interested politician.
Eager to widen the curriculum, he was responsible for the foundation
of chairs of modern languages, and he pushed forward the eighteenth
century building programme. His sometimes not over-scrupulous approach
to College problems involved him in wrangles with many of the Fellows,
and his provostship is the Dublin equivalent of Bentley's stormy and
litigious mastership of Trinity, Cambridge. So
far as Trinity was concerned, the nineteenth century began only when
Bartholomew Lloyd became Provost in 1831. A determined if conciliatory
reformer, his provostship was marked by a number of important changes,
of which the most significant was the introduction of the modern system
of honor studies in 1833. Until then there had been only one course
for the degree of B.A., the ordinary or general course in arts embracing
classics, mathematics, a little science and some philosophy. It became
possible for an undergraduate to specialise when in 1834 examinations
for degrees with honors, or moderatorships, were established in mathematics,
in ethics and logics, and in classics. In 1851 a moderatorship in experimental
science was added; this at first included physics, chemistry and mineralogy,
and was later expanded to comprise geology, zoology and botany. In 1871
it was divided into two, moderatorships being given in natural science
and in experimental science. This arrangement was maintained till 1955,
when the two groups were again combined in a moderatorship in natural
sciences. In 1856 a moderatorship was founded in history and English
literature, which continued till 1873, when separate moderatorships
were instituted in history and political science and in modern literature.
In 1961 a moderatorship in English literature and language was introduced.
The introduction of these moderatorship examinations was accompanied
by the development of honor courses and of a system of 'honor privileges'
which eventually enabled honor students to substitute honor for ordinary
lectures, and honor for all ordinary examinations except the Final Freshman
examination, or 'Little-go'. The abolition in 1959 of 'Little-go' for
honor students completed the separation of the honor from the ordinary
curriculum; since then the ordinary course in arts has undergone several
revisions and was finally discontinued in 1978. Two-subject moderatorship
courses, instituted in that year, now offer alternatives to the single
honor more specialised courses. The
nineteenth century was also marked by important developments in the
professional schools. Divinity had been taught from the foundation of
the College, and in the nineteenth century its teaching was systematised.
The Law School was reorganised after the middle of the century. Medical
teaching had been given in the College since 1711, but it was only after
the establishment of the school on a sound basis by legislation in 1800
and under the inspiration of Macartney, the brilliant and quarrelsome
anatomist, that it was in a position to play its full part, with such
teachers as Graves and Stokes, in the great age of Dublin medicine.
The Engineering School was established in 1842 and was one of the first
of its kind in the British Isles. The School of Commerce was established
in 1925, and the School of Social Studies in 1934. In 1962 the School
of Commerce and the School of Social Studies amalgamated to form the
School of Business and Social Studies. The School of Pharmacy was established
in 1977. In 1969 the several schools and departments were grouped into
Faculties as follows: Arts (Humanities and Letters); Business, Economic
and Social Studies; Engineering and Systems Sciences; Health Sciences
(since October 1977 all undergraduate teaching in dental science in
the Dublin area has been located in Trinity College); Science. In 1977
the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine was transferred to University College,
Dublin. This
expansion of the College's activities had an outward sign in the buildings
erected after 1800. Just after the middle of the century, the New Square
was completed by the erection of the Museum Building; and new buildings
at the east end of the College Park expressed the increasing importance
of the natural sciences and of medicine in the life of the College.
Between
1830 and 1900 twenty new chairs were founded, and Trinity scholarship
displayed to the full the versatility, the industry and the self-confidence
of the Victorian age. The Trinity tradition, which, even in an age of
increasing specialisation favoured a wide range of interests, had a
stimulating effect on members of the College. Towards the end of the
nineteenth century the School of Classics could boast not only classical
scholars like Palmer and Purser, but also men such as Tyrrell and Mahaffy,
whose interests ranged from ancient Egypt to Georgian Ireland, and Bury,
whose Byzantine studies straddled the classical and modern eras. In
mathematics and science there were Rowan Hamilton, Humphrey Lloyd, Salmon,
Fitzgerald and Joly. In English there was Dowden, a sensitive critic
and an irascible politician, and in economics Ingram, the most outstanding
of the Irish positivists. It
would be a mistake to picture these men and their colleagues as working
in an undisturbed academic calm. Momentous changes were taking place
in Ireland, and these were reflected in the controversies that raged
round the government's Irish university policy. Between 1873 and 1908
schemes were proposed by the government of the day which would have
made the College a member of a federated university, in which several
other Irish academic bodies would have been included. These schemes
were strenuously and effectively resisted by Trinity as threats to its
independence. On the other hand the College progressively abandoned
the exclusive religious character that, in common with Oxford and Cambridge,
it had hitherto borne. As early as 1793 Roman Catholics had been permitted
to enter and to take degrees in Trinity. In 1854 non-foundation scholarships,
open to candidates of all denominations, were instituted. In 1873 all
religious tests, except those connected with the Divinity School, were
abolished. In
the government of the College the last century has witnessed far-reaching
changes. The creation in 1874 of the University Council, a representative
body, gave control over the shaping of courses and appointments to the
teaching departments. From 1900, as can be seen from the evidence given
before the royal commission of 1906, the composition of the Board was
being strongly criticised by important sections of College opinion,
and in 1911 the constitution was modified by the addition of two representatives
of the Junior Fellows and two representatives of the non-fellow Professors
to the Board. The representation of the Junior Fellows was increased
to four members in 1958. At the same time the Statutes were altered
to require that half of the professors should be Fellows. Strange
to say, one innovation of far-reaching significance aroused relatively
little controversy. In 1904 women were admitted to the University and
by 1914 they already amounted to 16 per cent of the students on the
College books. In 1908 a women's hall of residence, Trinity Hall, was
founded. In 1934 the first woman professor was appointed and women continue
to play an increasing part in many spheres of College life. In 1968
women were elected to Fellowship. From 1972 men and women students have
resided in the College and at Trinity Hall. The
Great War of 1914-18 marks in more than one way the end of an epoch
for Trinity College. When conditions again became settled Ireland had
undergone a constitutional revolution and the College found itself in
a divided Ireland outside the United Kingdom. Moreover, at a time when
the newer universities in the British Isles were growing in strength
and prestige, Trinity College found itself lacking in the resources
required to maintain its position in the new age. In 1920 a royal commission
recommended that the College needed both a large capital grant and an
annual subsidy. But the change of regime occurred before its recommendations
could be implemented, and it was not until 1947 that the College secured
an annual grant from the State. The grant now represents approximately
53 per cent of total recurrent income (excluding research grants and
contracts). Between 1900 and 1999 ninety-four new chairs have been created.
In recent
years student numbers have risen well above what had come to be considered
the norm. In 1998-9 they stood at 13,700 as compared with 1,500 in 1939.
The increase in numbers has brought greater diversity, with students
coming from as many as 70 countries and often spread over all six continents.
Demand for places from Irish applicants has progressively reduced the
vacancies available to non-Irish students. In 1998-9 the undergraduate
intake was about 90 per cent Irish: the proportion of non-Irish students
to be admitted in the future will not, it is hoped, fall below 10 per
cent of the total annual admissions. There is no restriction on the
number of postgraduate or one-year students subject to availability
of places in certain areas. This change in the composition of the student
body has been accompanied by a similar change in the composition of
the academic staff. Until the nineteen-thirties, the great majority
of the holders of academic posts in Trinity College were doubly indigenous,
being Irishmen and Dublin University graduates. But since 1945 many
of those appointed to the staff have come from other universities. Probably
this is one of the factors which accounts for the accelerated pace of
change, which has been a striking characteristic of the period since
the end of the war—change reflected in an increase of the representative
element on the Board, in a radical recasting of the arts curriculum,
in the erection of new buildings and the adaptation of old buildings
to new needs, in the improvement of College rooms and the provision
of new amenities for undergraduates, in the extension to women of those
privileges previously reserved to men, and in the institution of joint
student-staff advisory committees covering most aspects of College life.
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