Royal Hospital

**

SECTION VI** *

The Royal Hospital, Kilmainham *

The broken soldier, kindly bade to stay,

Sat by his fire, and talked the night away,

Wept o’er his wounds, or, tales of sorrow done,

Shouldered his crutch and showed bow fields were won.”

Goldsmith. *

royalhosp2.gif (24563 bytes)The Royal Hospital lies about two miles west of College Green. Dame Street is the commencement of a long chain of thoroughfares with a variety of names, Cork Hill, Christ Church Place, Cormarket, Thomas and James’s Streets, which joint into one another to form the backbone of old Dublin. At the further extremity of this line is Kilmainham.

The entrance of the Royal Hospital is on the South Circular Road between Kilmainham and the Liffey. The castellated gateway once adorned the quays of the city, but was removed to its present position in 1846, as it obstructed the rising traffic from Kingsbridge along the south bank of the river. From here a fine old avenue, nearly half a mile in length, leads directly to the main building. On the left is an old disused cemetery, known by the curious name of Bully’s Acre. It is by far the oldest burying ground in Dublin. Here stood for many centuries the great cross of Kilmainham, of the same type as the lofty and beautiful memorial crosses of Monasterboice and Clonmacnoise. The shaft is still standing, but the decorated upper portion is gone.

Popular tradition identifies the spot with the place of interment of Murrough, son of Brian Boru, killed at Clontarf. The Irish camp before the battle was at Kilmainham, so that the story is not improbable. Antiquity and hallowed association endear certain graveyards to the Irish heart, though, in course of time, frequent and continuous burials render them hopelessly insanitary. So it was with Bully’s Acre. Fierce riots foiled an attempt to close it in the 18th century. Subsequently an epidemic of cholera crowded it to such an extent, that the populace, in a revulsion of feeling, gladly acquiesced in the proposal, which they had formerly resisted.

At the head of the avenue the west front of the Royal Hospital becomes visible. The building was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and is characteristic of that architectural genius in his less classic moods. It is a quadrangle surmounted by a light and graceful tower rising from the middle of one face. Numerous dormer windows give a touch of picturesque irregularity to its lines. The outlook here is very pretty, across the tranquil Liffey to the swelling uplands and wooded copses of the Phoenix Park. The Royal Hospital was established as a home for military pensioners of Irish nationality, and is also used, at present, as an official residence for the Commander of the Forces in Ireland.

All through its history this site has had either military or monastic associations. The monks began when Maignend, a Celtic saint, set up his church there. Kilmainham means “the church of Maignend.” The Normans introduced a blend of both elements. The lands were given to the Knights Hospitallers, a strange order, who were vowed to win Jerusalem from the infidels, and spent the intervals of campaigning in monastic seclusion, where their time was divided between prayers, psalms, and warlike exercises.

The soldier-monks failed to drive out the Saracens from the Holy Land, but waxed very rich and powerful in their own country. Their Priory was splendid enough for a royal residence. The headship of the order carried with it a seat in the Irish Parliament. In 1418** the Prior of Kilmainham led i6oo Irish warriors to assist Henry V. in France. Wealth in a religious community breeds luxury and spiritual decay among the members, while it arouses the greed of a host of powerful enemies. Henry VIII. suppressed the Hospitallers in 1541. **The last Prior tamely surrendered his charge to the King, and was rewarded for his subservience by the title of Viscount Clontarf. The buildings were derelict for a while, but were used as an occasional residence by the viceroys of Elizabeth and James I. After 1617 they were allowed to go to utter ruin.

In 1679 Charles II., whose kindness to old soldiers and sailors is an admirable trait in a complex character, authorised the erection of an hospital, or rather, as we should say, a retreat, for worn-out veterans in Dublin. His great model, Louis XIV. of France, had recently founded the “Invalides” in Paris for the same purpose. The site of Kilmainham Priory was utilised, and the new institution was called the Royal Hospital, a curious title, which seems to recall the Hospitallers and their hospitals, or guesthouses, in which they entertained soldier and pilgrim on their way to the Holy City.

The rest of the pensioners has been very little disturbed by the storms of Irish politics. In 1688 the viceroy, Tyrconnell, sought to annul the charter and resume possession of the ancient church lands, and so frightened the registrar that he sought safety in flight, taking the precious document with him. It was lost for 160 years, but was recovered in 1848 by an officer, who found it among some family papers, and restored it to the institution.

After the battle of the Boyne the Royal Hospital was used as an hospital in the modern sense of the term, for the sick and wounded of William’s army were received there until the close of the campaign. Since 1691** **the quiet quadrangle has known no stir, no wave breaking into its seclusion from the troubled seas around.

royalhosp3.gif (30623 bytes)The building is designed in the manner usually associated with old colleges. It is a rectangle, enclosing in the centre a wide space of grassy lawn, intersected by paths. A covered arcade or cloister runs around three of the sides, providing a walk for the inmates in wet weather. Under an old sundial is the door giving access to the Hall (pictured, left). This is, perhaps, the most picturesque interior in Dublin, with its roof supported by great beams, and its walls lined with beautiful carved oak and covered with old armour, flags, and trophies of every kind, Spanish helmets from the Armada, strange Mahratta shields with pistol barrels projecting from their centres, regimental colours, modern hand grenades, mediaeval instruments of torture.

In a glass case is the flag that was carried by the Inniskilling Dragoons at the Boyne. This regiment, like its fellow infantry battalion, the Inniskilling Fusiliers, was formed from the inhabitants of Enniskillen in County Fermanagh. James II. had marched to besiege their town, but they met his troops on the way and inflicted on them a decisive defeat. On the arrival of William III. they were incorporated into his army, the mounted citizens becoming dragoons and the foot an ordinary infantry regiment. Their old flag is now a mere “moth-eaten rag on a worm-eaten pole,” but the old Inniskillings have gone far and suffered much since the days when it was new. Dettingen, Minden, Albuera, Waterloo, Balaclava are but a few of the honoured names that now adorn their colours.

Curiously enough, there is here no memorial of the territorial regiment of Dublin, the Dublin Fusiliers. The reason is that this corps was, until 1858, a European regiment in the East India Company’s service. It was so full of Irishmen that, when the Imperial authorities took over the Company’s forces after the Mutiny, they thought well to associate the regiment definitely with some district of Ireland. Its record is fine, though, of course, exclusively Indian, including the famous victory of Plassey, which won for Great Britain a new dependency at a single stroke. It took its rise somewhere about the time when young Clive led out a small corps of white volunteers to avenge the cruelties of the Black Hole of Calcutta. The Bengal Tiger is still one of the regimental emblems.

There are some interesting portraits on the walls of the great Hall. Among those on the north side are William III. and his queen Mary, also his successor, the commonplace Anne, and her equally undistinguished consort Prince George of Denmark. On the east are Archbishop Marsh, who founded Marsh’s Library, near S. Patrick’s Cathedral, and James, the great Duke of Ormond, the virtual founder of the Royal Hospital. He was viceroy for quite half of his political life, and conferred many benefits on Dublin. The most notable person depicted on the western wall is King Charles II. himself.

A fine wrought-iron gate gives access to the Chapel, which is remarkable for its splendid wood carvings from the hands of Grinling Gibbons, and for a most beautiful and elaborate ceiling in stucco designed by Cipriani. The latter is perhaps the richest example of this form of art to be found in Dublin, although there is an abundance of such work in the older houses of the city.

The east window is the only surviving portion of the priory of the Hospitallers. Its stone tracery served the same purpose in the chapel of the soldier-monks that it now does for the more humble pensioners. The upper panes still contain the ancient stained glass, remarkable, as always, for its indescribable richness of hue. The walls here are also adorned with the colours of various regiments, mostly English and Scotch. The soldier, like the sailor, has no abiding city anywhere during his term of service. He leaves memorials of his presence all over the world, sometimes far from his native soil. Not always does he return to a quiet retreat such as this, where his wearied frame, enfeebled by wounds or by tropical fevers and agues, may find rest for a while. Indeed some of the pensioners, under the careful and regular regime of the Hospital, have attained great ages. In the Hall there is a picture of one who died here aged 106.

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