The Skinner's-row - St. Nicholas'-street - Kennedy's Court.

CHAPTER V.

The Skinner’s-row - St. Nicholas’-Street - Kennedy’s Court.

Skinners’-Row, styled in old records “Vicus pellipariorum,” or the street of the curriers, was, as its name denotes, the locality chiefly inhabited at an early period by those citizens who traded in hides and leather, large quantities of which were shipped from Dublin to the Continent previous to the Anglo-Norman descent, and their exportation continued for many centuries to form one of the staple branches of Irish commerce. The annals record that Skinners’-row was burnt in 1284 by certain Scotchmen, in retaliation for some injuries inflicted upon them by the citizens.

The names of “the Skynners’-lane” and the “Bothe-street,” were also occasionally applied to Skinners’-row, which originally extended from the Pillory at the western end of Castle-street to the Tholsel or City Hall at the eastern corner of Nicholas’-street. Punishment by pillory appears to have been coeval with the establishment of the Anglo-Normans in Dublin, as among the complaints of the citizens in 1223 against Henri de Loundres, their Archbishop and Justiciary, was a charge of having levelled one of the King’s pillories, styled in the royal letter “quoddam pillore in chemino nostro.”

In later times it became customary to erect temporary pillories in such localities as were determined on by the authorities for the punishment of offenders; from an unpublished inquisition it appears that a house near the Pillory in St. Werburgh’s parish was used in 1642 for a court of guard, and subsequently as a store for the King’s use.

The Tholsel in Skinners’-row appears to have been erected early in the reign of Edward II., as the MS. charter-book of the Corporation of Dublin records that in 1311 Thomas de Coventre granted to Robert Burnel six shops with their appendages, under the new Tholsel in the high street which shops lay in breadth between the said Tholsel on the eastern side and the high way on the western side; and extended in length from the aforesaid Tholsel in the front to the cemetery of St. Nicholas in the rere. In ancient records this building is styled “Tolcetum,” “Le Tholsey,” but more general]y “Theolonium,” the latter of which names was, in the case of the King against the city of Waterford, A.D. 1608, declared to mean a toll or petty duty payable by purchasers in markets and fairs. Camden, in the 16th century, describes the Tholsel as built of hewn stone. Among the Patent Rolls of Richard II. is recorded a grant in 1395 to Gerard van Raes of the office of keeper of the Tholsel, or gaoler to the King, in the city of Dublin; granting him also both the upper and lower gaol in the aforesaid Tholsel; and from the following entry in Pembridge’s Annals it would appear that the judges occasionally sat here at an early period:

“A.D. 1328. David O’Tothill, a stout marauder, an enemy to the King, a burner of churches, and a destroyer of the people, was led from the Castle of Dublin to the Tholsel of the city before Nicholas Fastoll and Elias Ashbourne, Justices of the King’s Bench, who there gave sentence that he should be drawn at the tails of horses through the middle of the city as far as the gallows, and afterwards hanged upon a gibbet, which was performed accordingly.”

The Mayor of Dublin was generally chosen in the Tholsel on Michaelmas day, and a penalty of £10 was decreed against any resident of Dublin who sued another citizen in any court but that of the Tholsel. This enactment, which formed portion of the ancient French laws of the city, is recited as follows in an unpublished Statute Roll of the years 1473-4 (12, 13 Ed. IV.):

“Et auxi la cite de Dyvelyn ad fait une ley q’ quiconq home q’demeure en Divelin qu’ sue une ault’ home q’ demeure en Divelin en ascun ault’ courte q’ en le Tolsell de Divelin q’ il q’ sue contraire a cele ley perder’ x li dargent au’ Maior et Bailiffs de Divelin et son fraunchese.”

The meetings of the citizens usually were held in the Tholsel, at which a public clock was set up in 1560, and “in Easter holidays, 1590, Adam Loftus, Lord Archbishop of Dublin, and Lord Chancellor of Ireland, with others of the clergy, met the Mayor and aldermen and commons of the city, at the Tholsel, where he made a speech to them; setting forth, how advantageous it would be to have a nursery of learning founded here; and how kindly her Majesty would take it, if they would bestow that old decayed monastery of All-hallows (which her father, King Henry the Eighth, had, at the dissolution of the abbeys, given them) for the erecting such a structure; whereupon the Mayor, aldermen, and commons, unanimously granted his request. Within a week after, Henry Ussher, Archdeacon of Dublin, went over into England to the Queen, to procure a license for the said foundation; which being obtained, the Archbishop went a second time to the Tholsel, and returned them thanks, not only from the clergy, but also from her Majesty, whose letter he showed them for their satisfaction.”

At their midsummer assembly in 1611, the Corporation determined that £100 paid by John Fagan, of Feltrim, to obtain his discharge from the office of sheriff, should be allocated for the “making of a substantial platform, covered with lead, over the Tholsel, which,” adds the record, “is to be done forthwith, in respect the roof and walls thereof are much ruinated and decayed.” In the succeeding year, 1612, when the disputes ran high between the Roman Catholic or “Recusant” party of the citizens and the Protestants and English colonists, a writ was directed to the Mayor, Sir James Carrol, and to the sheriffs, for the election of members for the city the Mayor being absent from town, the sheriffs, with certain aldermen and citizens, repaired to the Tholsel, and there elected Francis Taylor and Thomas Allen, two eminent Roman Catholic Aldermen, to represent the city in parliament: “but this election was judged to be done by an indirect course, and, therefore, the Mayor intended the next morning to make another election in his own presence, wherein the voices of the citizens and town dwellers, as well English as Irish, should he allowed: so there assembled to the Tholsel the next morning all the whole city, as well English as Irish. But those of the Recusant faction would not suffer any Englishman, or any other, to speak, but such as they knew to be Recusants; whereupon was raised in the Tholsel a great tumult and mutiny, and the people Recusants being the greatest number, quickly thrust all the Englishmen with violence out of the door. And there was one Nicholas Stephens, a merchant of the city, that would have rung the alarum with the Tholsel bell, if he could have found the key: and others offered to lay hands upon the King’s sword, that was before the Mayor; but the Mayor in this hurly burly took the sword in his own hand, and went unto the Lord Deputy to complain: and so there was no other election made that day. Now the Lord Deputy gave a most heavy check to the two sheriffs of the city, for chusing the burgesses before the Mayor came home; also he committed the said Nicholas Stephens to the Castle of Dublin.”

On the commencement of the disturbances of 1641, the Puritanic Lords Justices, desirous of proroguing Parliament, objected to its meeting within the Castle of Dublin: the two Houses, however, having assembled, Patrick Darcy, an eminent Roman Catholic lawyer, and an active member of the Commons, gave his opinion that “either the Four Courts or St. Patrick’s Church were the fittest place: but St. Patrick’s Church, in the Convocation-room, he conceived to be a good place, and that it might be made up with deal bars with little cost.” Mr. Nicholas Plunket, another member, observed, that, “as the Lords Justices do not hold fit to continue the Parliament, that therefore they desire that the Lords would appoint the place.”

On the 11th of the following January the Parliament assembled at the Tholsel, where it continued to meet till 1648. By an order of Government, dated 7th June, 1653, a Committee was appointed to sit once in a week, or oftener, as occasion required, at the Tholsel-hall, to consider and execute means to provide for the poor, and for persons afflicted with the plague; to distribute all monies collected for those purposes; to erect pest-houses where necessary; and to “do all other acts and things as they or any three of them shall judge necessary, in order to the prevention of the increase of the contagion.” Parliamentary Committees met in the Tholsel occasionally during the reign of Charles II.; but the building having fallen to decay, a new City Hall was erected in 1683 on the same site, enlarged 18 feet on the eastern side by the addition of the ground of a house granted by Charles II. to the Incumbent of the church of St. Nicholas. The new Tholsel presented its principal front to Skinners’-row, and another to Nicholas’-street. “To the eastward it joined the adjacent houses, while on the south a yard only a few feet in breadth formed a partial separation between it and the church of St. Nicholas: the form was nearly a square, being 62 feet in front, by 68 in depth, two stories high, built of hewn stone, and supported on arches to the north and west, which were not destitute of elegance. In the centre of the principal front two massive columns of the Tuscan order supported a vestibule of a very robust appearance, but in a style bold and singular; over this vestibule, which was decorated with the city arms, was a window with niches on either side, in which stood the statues of Charles II., and of his brother, James Duke of York; and over these the royal arms, supported by scrolls, formed a kind of angular pediment: the statues, which are in the costume of the day, in robes and great periwigs, stand at present in the side aisle of Christ Church they are in good preservation, and, together with the other ornaments of this building, have been considered by some as in a masterly style. A spacious open hall, decorated with four massive columns similar to those of the vestibule, and supporting the floor of the upper story, comprehended the entire of the ground floor, with the exception of the space occupied by the stair-case, and its south-eastern angle, which was appropriated to the Recorder’s Court. In this Court delinquents were tried in the presence of the Lord Mayor even for capital offences, murder and treason excepted; and here, by the Civil Bill Act, all debts, where the sum litigated did not exceed £20, were determinable in a summary way, and at a trifling expense. On the upper floor, and in apartments appropriated to the purpose, the Lord Mayor, aldermen, commons, and sheriffs; used to meet to transact city business; and the spacious room, above 60 feet in length, which occupied the western front, might be considered as the Guildhall Of Dublin, as here the merchants used to assemble before the erection of the Royal Exchange on Cork-hill.”

The two statues above referred to were executed by William Dc Keysar, and in the Acts of Assembly for 1684 appears his petition for payment of “£29, due him on contract for cutting the statues set upon the front of the Tholsel, and for finishing the pedestals under the said statues.”

The Exchange of Dublin was transferred in 1683 from Cork House to the Tholsel; and a Williamite writer tells us that, by the rudeness of the Jacobites in the times of James II., the Exchange was entirely ruined; “neither buyers nor sellers being able to keep in it, by reason of the insolencies of the new Popish officers, who walked in it, affronted or assaulted every body, or extorted their goods from them for nothing, the shopkeepers not daring to refuse to trust them.” These statements must, however, be received with caution, as James II., by proclamation, dated from the Castle, 24th November, 1689, decreed death against “any soldiers or others of the army” guilty of ” any manner of waste, spoyl, or destruction whatsoever, in the city or liberties of Dublin.”

“I asked,” says Dunton in 1697, “whether there was not some eminence in the city from whence I might survey it, and was told that from the top of the Tholsel the whole city might be seen. So we went to the Tholsel, where we ascended about half a score stairs from the street, which brought us into a spacious room, supported by great pillars, and flagged (as they term it here) with free-stone, with open balustrades on each side towards the street; its figure is rather an oblong than a square. This is the place they call the ‘Change,’ where the merchants meet every day, as in the Royal Exchange in London. In a corner at the south-east part is a court of judicature, where they keep their public sessions for the city. Having viewed the lower part, we went up a large pair of stairs into a public room, which had a large balcony looking into Skinner-row; and from this balcony I spoke with my friend Mr. George Larkin, who was then at Mr. Ray’s printing house, over against it. I went up with my friends to the Tholsel, and there had a view of the whole city.”

On the eastern side of the building was located the grandest and largest apartment; in which the city feasts were usually held, and where a banquet to General Ginkle was given in November, 1691, which “concluded with a ball and most excellent fire-works.” On this occasion the following chronogram of the year 1691 was deciphered in the banqueting-room, “in gold and silver letters, upon a tablet, adorned with wreaths of laurel:”-

“chronicon :

fortVnatVs gInkLe

ter. Io! VIVat

strenVVs hIbernIae DebeLLator

trIVMphet

ers magna est, quos per te sit devictus hibernus :

si nunc evertas lilia, major erit.

[This is all in small capital letters with the occasional uppercase, I can’t reproduce it. KF]

An entertainment given here in 1703 by the city to the second Duke of Ormond, then Lord Lieutenant, is described as follows:-

“About three of the clock the Sheriffs conducted his Grace to the Tholsell, where he was received by the Lord Mayor, Recorder, and aldermen: the Lord Mayor surrendered the sword to his Grace, which he was pleased to return to his Lordship, who carried the same before him through a guard of militia granadiers to the apartment appointed for his Grace s reception; the stewards, viz., Alderman John Eccles, Alderman James Barlow, Mr. Thomas Bolton, Mr. Henry Glegg, Mr. Thomas Kilpatrick, and Mr. Luke Bourne, with their staves, walking before them, the kettle-drums beating and the trumpets sounding. Her Grace the Dutchess of Ormond soon after came to the Tholsell, attended by the Lady Mayoress and several ladies of quality, and the aldermen’s wives, where she was received by the Lord Mayor. Several tables were plentifully covered in the state-room and in the Guildhall: my Lord Lieutenant and Dutchess were conducted to the former, being attended by the Lord Primate, Lord Chancellor, and most of the nobility, ladies of quality, judges, officers, and gentry, then in town. The entertainment was splendid, and in great order. The Duke was served at table by the sheriffs, her Grace by the Lord Mayor’s son, and the rest of the company by members of the Common Council. While the dinner lasted their Graces were entertained with vocal and instrumental music. Dinner concluded with her Majesty’s health, at which their Graces and all the company stood up; his Royal Highness’s health was also drank, the drums beating and trumpets sounding at both. Their Graces retired afterwards to their several apartments till all things were prepared for a ball, which was begun about eight of the clock by Lady Mary Butler and the Earl of Abercorne, and ended in a very handsome banquet of sweetmeats. Their Graces were pleased to express their great satisfaction for the whole days solemnity, which was attended with all possible demonstrations of this city’s duty and loyalty to her Majesty, in the highest respect for his Grace’s person and government.”

After the battle of the Boyne, the Roman Catholic citizens were obliged, by proclamation, to deposit their arms in the Tholsel, where, in 1691, meetings of the Corporation for the Promotion of the Linen Manufacture in Ireland were held, and in which the judges sat during the rebuilding of the Law Courts in 1695. At the election of Members of Parliament for the city held at the Tholsel in 1713, a violent riot, in which some lives were lost, occurred, in consequence of the measures taken by the Recorder, Foster, one of the Whig candidates, to fill the building with his own adherents, thus excluding the constituents of the proposed Tory Members, Sir William Fownes and Martin Tucker. The escutcheon of the Duke of Ormond, which had been placed on the Tholsel, was taken down by the city in 1716, after his expatriation. In 1718 some unknown persons having broken by night into the Tholsel, there defaced and cut the portrait of George I., and succeeded in escaping, although a reward of £1,000 was offered for their detection. The quarter sessions were always held in the Tholsel, and opened in state by a procession of the Mayor and aldermen; and all the municipal business of the city was transacted in the building, where also the Lords Justices were generally sworn into office. Incorrigible malefactors or offenders were usually sentenced in the Lord Mayor’s Court to be whipped at a cart’s tail from the Tholsel to the Parliament House, to be placed in the stocks, or to be scourged at the “whipping post” erected here for the purpose. Libellous publications condemned by Parliament, gaming tables, and fraudulent goods seized by the Lord Mayor, were publicly burned at the Tholsel; and public notices, particulars of private Bills, and of protections granted by Parliament to individuals, were ordered to be posted in a conspicuous part of the building.

After the year 1730, the great bell of the Tholsel was tolled daily for seven minutes before 12, at which time the Exchange began, and business continued until about five minutes before two, when the porter rang a small bell, which was the signal for closing the gates. Public banquets were frequently given in the Tholsel by political clubs to the Lords Justices or Lord Lieutenant on anniversary days. At a dinner of the Hanover Club here on the 5th of November, 1739, 300 dishes were served; and Lord Chesterfield and other Lords Lieutenant were frequently entertained in the Tholsel in as sumptuous a style by similar societies; on such occasions the exterior of the building was illuminated with wax lights, and severals barrels of ale were distributed to the populace, who regaled themselves outside around great bonfires. At a public meeting held here on the occasion of the reduction of the gold coin in 1736, Swift made one of his last appearances in public life by publicly protesting against that measure, which was carried in opposition to him by Primate Boulter. “The Drapier,” says Mrs. Whiteway, in a letter written at the time, “went this day to the Tholsel as a merchant, to sign a petition to the Government against lowering the gold, where we hear he made a long speech, for which he will be reckoned a Jacobite.” During the political excitement of 1753, the Earl of Kildare gave a series of dinners here to his political partisans, no tavern in Dublin being large enough to accommodate the number of his constituents, who joined in drinking the “Patriots’” then standing toast of “Exportation of rotten (Primate) Stone, duty free.”

In 1779 the meeting, at which the non-importation of English manufactures was resolved upon, was held at the Tholsel on the 26th of April; the chair was taken by the high sheriffs, and the resolutions agreed to, were drawn up by a committee appointed on the spot, and composed of James Napper Tandy, Counsellor Sheridan, Alderman Horan, Counsellor Hunt, John Binns, John Locker, and Jeremiah D’Olier.

At a public meeting of the freemen and freeholders of the city of Dublin, at the Tholsel, in March, 1782, James Campbell and David Dick, high sheriffs, in the chair, the citizens passed a resolution requiring the city Members, “as their trustees, to exert themselves in the most strenuous manner to procure an unequivocal declaration, That the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland are the only power competent to make laws to bind this country;” the meeting pledging itself in the most solemn manner “to support the representatives of the people at the risque of their lives and fortunes, in every constitutional measure which might be pursued for the attainment of this great national object.”

The election of members for the city was held at the Tholsel in May, 1790, in a style of unusual grandeur, the freemen of the various guilds having marched in procession from the Rotunda to the polling place to register their votes for Henry Grattan and Lord Henry Fitzgerald, the popular candidates of the day.

Towards the close of the century the Tholsel began to fall to decay, in consequence, as was supposed, of the marshy nature of the ground on which it had been erected; a new Sessions House was, therefore, erected in Green-street, and opened for business in 1797; the meetings of the Corporation were likewise transferred to William-street; the Court of Conscience, however, continued to be held in a portion of the Tholsel, until the edifice, having become ruinous, was taken down about the year 1809, and its site is now occupied by the houses No. 1, 2, and 3, Christ Church-place. The Ordnance Survey of Ireland, in one of their maps, have placed the Tholsel in High-street, instead of at the south-western corner of Skinners’-row.

On the southern side of Skinners’-row, not far from the Tholsel, stood a large edifice, known as the “Carbrie House,” which, in the early part of the 16th century, was occupied by Gerald, ninth Earl of Kildare, who, during his Viceroyalty, did great service against the native clans, notwithstanding which he was accused of various offences in 1519; but having cleared himself of the crimes laid to his charge, he accompanied Henry VIII. to France, and was present at the famous conference at the “Field of Cloth of Gold.” In 1524 he was again appointed Lord Deputy, and was shortly after committed to the Tower of London for levying war on the Butlers and other liege subjects, and for neglecting to capture his kinsman, James, 11th Earl of Desmond, who had entered into communication with foreign powers.

After his return to Dublin as Lord Deputy in 1532, we are told that the Earl of Kildare, with the object of chagrining Skeffington, his predecessor in office, permitted him “who was late Governour, now like a meane privat person, to danse attendance among suters in his house at Dublin, named the Carbrie.” Having been soon again summoned to appear before the King, he left as deputy in Dublin his son Thomas, surnamed *an t-sioda, *or “of the silk,” who, on a false report of the Earl’s death, took up arms in 1534, and waged war against the English Pale, but was finally reduced, and executed with five of his uncles at Tyburn in 1535, his father, the Earl Gerald, having died in the Tower in 1534. On the attainder of the Geraldines, Henry VIII., by letters patent, granted “the large stone messuage, with the garden annexed, commonly called Carberry House, in Skinner-row,” to Sir Pierce Butler, ninth Earl of Ormond, whence it acquired the name of “Ormond Hall,” and continued in the possession of the Butler family until late in the next century, although it does not appear to have been used by them as a residence after the reign of James I. Having become dilapidated, it was divided in 1631 into two houses, one occupied by Michael Browne, the other in the tenure of Robert Arthur.

Towards the end of the reign of Charles II., a portion of “the great house” in Skinners’-row was converted into a coffee-house by Richard Pue, a printer, from whom it acquired the name of “Dick’s Coffee-house,” and soon became one of the most frequented establishments of its kind in the city. Richard Wild and William Norman, two Dublin booksellers, established book auctions at Dick’s; the back room of which was hired for the same purpose by John Dunton, the eccentric London publisher, who brought a large collection of books and manuscripts for sale to Dublin in 1698, and engaged Richard Wild as his auctioneer. After the conclusion of the second auction, Patrick Campbell, a Scotch bookseller, resident in Skinners’-row, privately contracted with Pue for the sale-room occupied by Dunton, who transferred his third auction to Patt’s Coffee-house in High-street; and, considering himself to have been unfairly circumvented, issued an advertisement against Campbell, who replied in the “Flying Post,” and prevented the publication of a statement drawn up by Dunton, which the latter consequently had transcribed and suspended in the public room at Patt’s Coffee-house. Dunton left Dublin in December, 1698, his auctions having been patronised by the chief noblemen, clergymen, and scholars in Dublin. Campbell, however, having rejected all offers of conciliation, Dunton, in 1699, published an account of the controversy between them, under the title of “The Dublin Scuffle: being a Challenge sent by John Dunton, Citizen of London, to Patrick Campbell, Bookseller in Dublin.” “Dick,” says Dunton, “is a witty and ingenious man, makes the best coffee in Dublin, and is very civil and obliging to all his customers; of an open and generous nature; has a peculiar knack at bantering, and will make rhymes to anything. He is of a cheerful, facetious temper, and, generally speaking, fair in his dealing; and had not Patrick Campbell assaulted him with the temptation of a double price, he and I should never have quarrelled. And yet, for all that, I must do him the justice to say, he carried it civilly to me to the very last; and was so kind as to come, with my friend Mr. Dell, to give me a farewell when I left Ireland. Thus much for Dick. As for his wife, I shall say this, she is an industrious woman, handsome enough, one that knows her duty to her husband, and how to respect her customers, and, in a word, is what a wife ought to be; and I must own, though her husband and I scuffled, she treated me always with much respect.”

About 1700 Pue commenced the publication of a newspaper styled “Pue’s Occurrences,” and in 1703 his residence in Skinners’-row is described as “a moiety of a timber house (called Carberry house) divided into two tenements. One hath two cellars, and on the first floor two shops and two kitchens. On the second floor three rooms (two of them wainscotted). On the third, two rooms, and on the fourth, two garrets. The other part has a cellar under the front. On the first floor one shop and two kitchens, and on the second, third, and fourth, three rooms each, with the moiety of a small timber house in the backside.” Like most of the other coffee-houses in Dublin, Dick’s was located on the drawing-room floor, one of the shops underneath being occupied by Thomas Cotter, bookseller and publisher, and another by the “Hoop” eating-house; while at the rere was the establishment of Aaron Rhames, publisher in 1709 of a Saturday periodical called the “Diverting Post.”

The principal auctions of books, lands, and property, were generally held at Dick’s, the patrons of which in 1740 are noticed as follows in the “humble petition of Tom Geraghty to all the worthy gentlemen who frequent Pue’s Coffee-house:”

“Ye citizens, gentlemen, lawyers, and squires,

Who summer and winter surround our great fires,

Ye quidnuncs! who frequently come into Pue’s,

To live upon politicks, coffee, and news;

Ye adepts, ye criticks, and orators nice!

Ye grave connoisseurs at the drafts and the dice,

Who draw up your men like soldiers in battle,

While the dice and the boxes like drums loudly rattle;

Like Walpoles and Fleurys demurely you sit,

To practice your politicks, judgment, and wit;

Now Kings ye set up, and with fury attack,

Till one or the other be laid on his back.

Thus you are diverted and kept long awake,

Your feet are at rest, and your elbows do shake,

While thus you are warring, ‘tis at no great cost,

It is seldom a groat, or a teaster at most,

And sometimes there’s nothing on either side lost.

Poor Tom daily serves you, and carries your letters

Unto the Post-office, wherefore you stand debtors;

For three times a week he must carry a pack

Well cramm’d with epistles, on shoulder and back,

He snuffs all your candles, and nothing denies you,

With pen, ink, and wafers, he, gratis, supplies you.”

After continuing for nearly a century one of the chief coffee-houses in Dublin, Dick’s, having fallen to decay, was demolished about the year 1780, and on its site now stand the houses known as Nos. 6, 7, and 8, Christ-Church-place, in the lower stories of which still exist some of the old oaken beams of the “Carbrie house,” which have by age acquired an almost incredible degree of hardness.

“Pue’s Occurrences,” published at Dick’s Coffee-house, was originally a Tory paper, as noticed in Swift’s verses written in 1723 on Chief Baron Rochfort

“But now, since I have gone so far on,

A word or two of Lord Chief Baron;

And tell how little weight he sets

On all Whig papers and gazettes;

But for the politics of Pue,

Thinks every syllable is true.”

Its first shape was quarto, from which it gradually grew to a large folio size. Richard Pue died in 1758, and was succeeded by his nephew, James Pue, after whose death in 1762, the paper was published by Sarah Pue, commencing with vol. LIX., No.101; from the thirty-first number of the next volume it was printed at the same place by John Roe, who prefixed his own name to the title. “Pue’s Occurrenees” subsequently came into the possession of Sarah Roe and David Gibbal, from whom, in June, 1776, it was purchased by John Hillary, bookseller, of No. 54, Castle-street; and its career terminated about 1792.

“Bow’s Coffee-house” was located in Skinners’-row 1692, and early in the succeeding century “Darby’s Coffee house” was opened here by Darby, who had previously been a waiter in Dick’s establishment,

On the south side of Skinners’-row was the residence of Sir Robert Dixon, Mayor of Dublin A. D. 1634, in which year he was knighted at his own house here by the Lord Deputy Wentworth. This house had been originally set by the parish of St. Werburgh to Captain William Meares of Dublin, by a lease dated 28th February, 1604, in which it is described as “one house and garden with the appurtenances, lying in length from the King’s pavement or street called Skinners’-row, in the north to Curryer’s lane, that leadeth thence to St. Nicholas’ Church in the south, and from All Hallows’ ground on the east side to Caddell’s ground, late in the tenure of John Murphy, on the west, for 75 years, at 19s. 8d. annual rent.” Dixon was returned Member of Parliament for Banagher in 1645, his country residence at the time being Barretstown Castle, near Baile mor Eustace. He had received large grants of land from Charles I. for military services, Henry VIII. having previously granted his family the Carmelite friary at Cloncurry, Kildare, for their successful inroads upon the clan of O’Reilly. In 1662 the house in Skinners’-row came into the possession of Sir Robert’s heir, Sir William Dixon, Knight, who in 1661 took from the Mayor and Sheriffs “one garden, plott of ground and backside, situate in the backside of the dwelling house of the said Sir William Dixon in Skinners’-row, being part of Sutor’s-lane, otherwise called Hoyne’s-lane, for 61 years, at the annual rent of nine pence sterling, with capons to the Mayor.” Skinners’-row continued to be the town residence of the Dixon family until early in the 18th century, when Colonel Robert Dixon, in 1719, let his grandfather’s house, then occupied by George Tufnell, wigmaker, to Thomas Parsons, sword-cutler, for £22 yearly, together with the house adjoining, then described as “formerly the Old Dolphin,” for £30 per annum. These houses, supposed to have stood on the sites of those now known as Nos. 12 and 13, Christ Church-place, were bounded on the west by Darby’s coffee-house, and on the east by the shop of Robert Owen, bookseller. Colonel Dixon having died with out issue, the property of his family devolved upon his relative, Sir Kildare Borrowes, great grandfather of the present Baronet, Sir Erasmus Dixon Borrowes, who has lately restored the old family seat of Barretstown Castle. Viscount Conway resided in Skinners’-row in 1662; and tokens were issued in the same century by the following residents of this locality: Isaac Taylor (1657); Alexander Aickin, merchant (1668); Henry Martyn (1668); John Partington, “gouldsmith, at the Kinge’s head;” Roger Halley, “artizan and skinner;” William Hill, at the “Pestill and mortar;” William Taylor, merchant; William Colbys (1666); and Mary Drinkwater, with reference to whose house, Dr. Mossom, writing to Primate Bramhall in 1661, relative to hiring lodgings for him in Dublin, says: “There is at Drinkwater’s, in Skinners’-row, a very pleasant garden, good conveniences of dining room, and lodging; but she put me off till Monday for her resolution to let them. Yet besides she has no garret for servants, but must provide for them at the next house. As for dining room and three lodging rooms, better is not in Dublin, and the conveniences for lower rooms, as kitchen, &c., is tolerably good I crave your Grace’s mind to be signified by Monday’s post whether of these two places you best approve; that if haply Mrs. Drinkwater give a fair resolve, I may, for her garden’s sake especially, strike a bargain with her.”

Sir Patrick Dun, physician to the army during the wars of 1688, and on whose bequest Dun’s hospital was founded, resided here in 1690. The following specimen of Dun’s prescriptions appears in an unpublished letter, written by him in 1691, to General Ginkle’s Secretary at War in the camp at Connacht: “Six on Monday last, I sent from Dublin a box containing two dozen of bottles of the best claret I could gut in Dublin, and two dozen bottles of Chester ale;” then, after noting that “this box hath a lock and key,” and mentioning the person to whom he had forwarded the latter by letter from Athlone, he adds: “At the same time, I sent a lesser box, in which there is a dozen and a half potted chickens in an earthen pot; and in another pot, fowre green geese. This,” continues the doctor, “is the physic I advise you to take; I hope it will not be nauseous or disagreeable to your stomach - a little of it upon a march.”

Among the residents in Skinners’-row were David King, goldsmith, at whose house a large quantity of records was secreted during the wars of 1689; and Thomas Quin, apothecary, Lord Mayor of Dublin in 1697. Spranger Barry, the afterwards famous actor, was born in Skinners’-row in 1717, and having succeeded his father as a silversmith, continued to carry on that business here till he went on the stage about the year 1744.

At the sign of the “Leather bottle” in Skinners’-row (1685-1718) was the shop of Robert Thornton, bookseller, appointed King’s stationer in 1692, being the first who held that office; he is described as “a very obliging person, having sense enough for a privy councillor, and good nature enough for a primitive Christian.”

Thornton issued the first newspaper published in Dublin, which was styled “The Dublin News Letter,” printed in 1685 by “Joseph Ray in College-green for Robert Thornton at the Leather Bottle in Skinner-row;” it consisted of a single leaf of small folio size, printed on both sides, and written in the form of a letter, each number being dated, and commencing with the word, Sir. The existence of this publication was totally unknown to former writers, who universally alleged that “Pue’s Occurrences” was the first Dublin newspaper.

Alderman James Malone, appointed, with Richard Malone, King’s Printer, in January, 1689, by James II., also resided in Skinners’-row. In his official capacity he issued various publications emanating from the Jacobite Government, which, after the Williamites had regained power, were industriously sought out and destroyed, with a view of falsifying contemporary history to suit the purposes of party. Amongst those publications was a very important tract entitled, “A relation of what most remarkably happened during the last campaign in Ireland, betwixt his Majesty’s army royal, and the forces of the Prince of Orange, sent to joyn the rebels under the Count de Schomberg. Published by authority. Dublin: printed by Alderman James Malone, bookseller, in Skinner-row, 1689.” This pamphlet appears to have been rigidly suppressed by the Williamites, as it threw much light on Schomberg’s disastrous campaign in the north of Ireland, where, notwithstanding the immense superiority of his army, amounting to 35,000 men, his progress was checked by a miserably armed force of 22,000 Jacobites, and his loss at the termination of the season was found to amount to 15,000 men, more than double the number of those who perished at Walcheren in 1809; a fact, however, studiously suppressed in the works hitherto received as histories of that period. By the Williamites Malone was dismissed from the office of Printer to the State; and it appears from the Exchequer re cords, that in 1707 he, together with Luke Dowling, another Roman Catholic bookseller, was tried in the Queen’s Bench for selling and publishing a book entitled “A Manuall of devout prayers;” and having been convicted, they were sentenced to pay fines of 300 marks each, and committed to close imprisonment. They thereupon petitioned the Commissioners of Reducements, declaring that “they had noe seditious or evill intent or meaneing in exposing to sale the said book, whereof severall parcels and editions were for above 20 years last past continually and publickly sold by all or most Protestant and Popish booksellers, as was sworn on their tryall by four Protestant credible witnesses, without having been taken notice of by the Government.” Justices Coote and M’Cartney, two judges of the Queen’s Bench, before whom Malone and Dowling were tried, stated in a report, that “a great many of the said Manualls, wherein were contained several prayers for the late King James and his Queen, and also for the Pretender, were sold and dispersed much about the time of the late invasion intended to be made by the French King on north Brittaine, which the said Justices were apprehensive were then printed, with an intent to be dispersed in order to influence and incourage the Papists in this kingdom to rise and make disturbance here in favour of the Pretender; but no proof of such intention by the said Malone and Dowling appeared before them, nevertheless it induced the said justices to impose a greater fine on them than perhaps they would have done at another time, to terrifie others from being guilty of the like practices hereafter. It appearing to the Court that Malone and Dowling were persons of little substance, with large families, and upon their taking the oath of abjuration in open court, the fines were reduced to five marks each, and they were released from confinement.” Alderman Malone long survived this prosecution, and was one of the original founders of the Charitable Musical Society, who built the Music-hall in Fishamble-street, as detailed in our account of that locality.

Opposite to the Tholsel was the printing house of Joseph Bay (1690), one of the most eminent booksellers in the city, and publisher, in 1698, of the first edition of that celebrated work, “The Case of Ireland’s being bound by Acts of Parliament in England, stated, by William Molyneux, of Dublin,” which, as advocating the doctrine of Irish independence, was ordered by the English Parliament to be burned by the common hangman. “Mr. Ray,” says a writer of the time, “is slender in body; his head rather big than little; his face thin, and of a moderate size; a smooth tongue, a voice neither deep nor shrill. His countenance is ever intermixed with joy and sweetness. He is a courteous man in his shop; and, being both printer and bookseller, has got a good estate in a few years. He is the best situated of any bookseller in Dublin.”

Three other publishers in Skinners’-row in the reign of William and Mary are described as follows by Dunton: “I shall first begin with Mr. Brent, who I think, is the oldest partner. He’s a scrupulous, honest, conscientious man, and I do think a true Nathaniel. He’s perfect innocence, yet a man of letters; he knows no harm, and therefore contrives none; he’s what we may truly call a religious printer, and (I was “going to say) he hates vice almost by nature as grace; and this I think is his true character. As to Mr. Powel (the second partner) his person is handsome (I do not know whether he knows it or no) and his mind has as many charms. He’s the very life and spirit of the company where he comes, and ‘tis impossible to be sad if he sets upon it; he is a man of a great deal of wit and sense (and I hope of as much honesty) and his repartees are so quaint, apposite, and genteel, ‘tis pleasure to observe how handsomely he acquits himself; in the mean time, he’s neither scurrilous nor profane, but a good man, and a good printer, as well as a good companion. I come next to honest Brocas, the third partner, and with him, if he’s returned from Holland, take leave of my three printers. Mr. Brocas is much of a gentlemen; he gave me a noble welcome to Dublin, and never grew less obliging. He’s one that loves his friend as his life, and I may say, without offence to the printers of Dublin, that no man in the universe better understands the ‘noble art and mystery of printing’ than John Brocas in Skinner-row.”

The other booksellers and publishers in Skinners’-row were John North (1681); Samuel Lee (1694); John Foster, at the “Dolphin” (1695); Patrick Campbdl, at the “Bible” (1696); Sylvanus and Jeremiah Pepyat (1710); D. Roche (1725); Thomas Walsh, at Dick’s Coffee-house, publisher in 1727 of “Walsh’s Dublin Weekly Impartial News Letter,” issued on Wednesdays, and of “Walsh’s Dublin Post-Boy,” 1729; James Hoey (1731), “at the pamphlet shop in Skinners’-row;” Samuel Fairbrother, opposite the Tholsel, printer to the city, appointed King’s stationer in 1723, and satirized by Sheridan for pirating Faulkner’s edition of Swift; Robert Owen, Captain of the Lord Mayor’s regiment of militia, “a most facetious and joyous companion,” who died in 1747; Oliver Nelson, at “Milton’s Head” (1740), publisher of the “Dublin Courant;” W. Powel (1745), at the corner of Christ Church-lane, opposite to the Tholsel; Alexander Mac Culloh, publisher in 1754 of the “General Advertiser,” and in 1756 of the “Dublin Evening Post;” Peter Hoey, at the sign of “Mercury” (1770), next to the Tholsel, publisher of the “Publick Journal;” John Milliken (1769); William Kidd (1779); and Elizabeth Lynch, law bookseller.

The original breadth of Skinners’-row did not exceed 17 feet, which was so diminished by projecting shop fronts and cellars, that in the middle of the street a space of little more than 12 feet was left for vehicles to pass, so that when two or three carriages met here the thoroughfare was completely stopped. The old footpath, still discernible on the south side of Christ Church-place, was about one foot broad, and when viewed from Castle-street, the whole line of Skinners’-row presented the appearance of a narrow and sombre alley. Many wealthy traders, jewellers, gold and silversmiths, had their shops in this street; and, as the great thoroughfare from the eastern side of the city to the Law Courts, Tholsel, Corn-market, canal, and Liberties, it was constantly filled, especially during term time, sessions, and market-days, by a throng of busy passengers; and the pavement being composed of large, hard Arklow stones, rendered it one of the most noisy streets in Dublin. The decline of its prosperity was initiated by the removal of the Sessions to Green-street; the opening of the new Law Courts; and, finally, the transfer of the Corn-market, completed the depreciation in the value of houses in this neighbourhood, and afforded the Commissioners of Wide Streets, about 35 years ago, an opportunity for carrying out their plans for the opening of the locality, as proposed by them in 1802. In the process of these alterations, which were completed in 1821, the entire of the north side of Skinners’-row was swept away, together with the buildings known as Christ Church-yard. The old Four Courts, Cock-hill, Christ Church-lane, with other buildings at the southern extremity of Winetavern-street, were also demolished; the name of Skinners’-row was likewise changed to “Christ Church-place,” thus completing the alteration effected in the original features of this quarter of the city.

Nicholas’-street received its name from the church erected there, and dedicated to St. Nicholas, by Donogh, Bishop of Dublin, founder of the convent of the Holy Trinity; and the street appears to have been known by its present appellation so early as the 12th century. Edward IV., in the 19th year of his reign (1479), granted a patent to John, Earl of Worcester, Elizabeth his wife, Sir Thomas Bath, Knight, John Chevir, Thomas Birmingham, Stephen Botiller, and John West, merchants, to found a chantry of one or two chaplains in honour of God and the Virgin Mary in the church of St. Nicholas, near the High Cross of the city, to celebrate divine service for the benefit of the souls of the founders, and for those of all the faithful departed; and, notwithstanding the Statute of Mortmain, they were licensed to endow the chantry with lands, tenements, rents, &c., to the clear yearly value of £13 6s. 8d. This chapel, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, was located on the south side of the church, next to Kennedy’s-court, and contained in length, from the east wall westward, 26 feet and six inches; and from north to south, 17 feet. Archbishop Alan, in the reign of Henry VIII., mentions that the church of St. Nicholas was then in an impoverished condition; and the south wall of the edifice is recorded to have been rebuilt in 1578. A report of the year 1630 states that “the church and chancell are in good repair and decencie; the most of the parishioners are Papists; there are many Protestants who frequent that church in the tyme of divine service and sermon; there is only in that parish the greate howse built by the Jesuits, which is seysed upon for his Majesty; Mr. John Hyde, Master of Arts, is curate there, his meanes there being worth xxx. lib. besides casualties.” During the Protectorate, Dr. Samuel Winter, Provost of Trinity College, used to preach in St. Nicholas’ Church on every Sunday morning at seven o’clock, and his lectures here were frequented “by the Commissioners, city magistrates, and many others, so that he had a very frequent congregation; and to encourage poor people to come to church, he caused some white loaves to be distributed among them always when the sermon was ended.” in 1656 Dr. Samuel Mather, an eminent Presbyterian divine, was appointed co-pastor of this Church with Dr. Winter; and subsequently Dr Thomas Seele, afterwards Dean of St. Patrick’s, officiated here till he was silenced by Henry Cromwell and the Council in 1658.

A portion of the ancient cemetery of this church was covered with the offices of the Tholsel when that edifice was rebuilt in 1683, and for which an annual rent is still paid by the Corporation of Dublin. Dr. King, in a letter written in 1693, remarks of Henry Price, then rector of this church, that “before he came to the parish of St. Nicholas it had the thinnest congregation in Dublin:” and adds, “I reckoned one Sunday when there were only 13 and the minister; but since he came he has built two galleries, and yet wants room, which is due to his care, piety, and diligence.” The old church was taken down and its rebuilding completed in 1707; the front of the new edifice was of hewn stone, with a great arched door-case in the centre, over which, in the first story, was a large arched window, with a smaller arched window on each side; in the second story was another arched window, over which was a square belfry rising about 12 feet above the roof, with openings on each side.

The chapel of St. Mary in the new church is described as extending in front to the Lord Mayor’s seat, and in breadth to the middle of the church; and a gate in the western wall of the church is still called the “Priest’s-gate.” Among the chaplains appointed to this chantry in the last century was the Rev. Patrick Delany, who resigned his office here in 1746.

The church of St. Nicholas, having become ruinous, was unroofed in 1835 by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, under whose superintendence the vaults were covered with a singular roofing of large flags. Portions of the walls of the church are still standing, but the only old monument here is a small mural slab to the memory of Edward Trotter, Esq., who died in 1769.

The revenue of the chapel of St. Mary, in St. Nicholas’ Church, originally limited to £13 6s. 8d. per annum, now produces annually above £300; the present chaplain is the Rev. Tresham D. Gregg, appointed by the parish in 1840, and restrained from officiating there by the Archbishop of Dublin in 1847. This parish, styled that of “St. Nicholas within the walls,” is the smallest in Dublin, its area being only five acres and 11 perches, containing, in 1851, 127 houses and 1,199 inhabitants.

Nicholas’-street was originally separated from Patrick’s-street by a gate in the city wall, styled St. Nicholas-gate, which is described as follows:-” St. Nicholas-gate have towe rounde towres withowt and sqware within, and the said gate placed betwixte bothe the towres, every towre three heightes, whereof two loftes, and fowre lowpes in every towre; the wall five foote thicke, thirty-nine foote in lengthe one waye, and eighteen foote brode the other waye, and the towre forty-fyve foot hie, with a perculles [portcullis] for the same gate.”

On the summit of this gate the Parliamentarians impaled the head of Luke O’Tuathal, of Castlekevin, lord of Fer Tire, county of Wicklow, head of the clan of O’Tuathail, and the first gentleman who levied troops in Leinster to defend Charles I. against the Puritans.

Nicholas’-gate continued in existence till after the middle of the last century; and from the city rental of 1763, we find that Robert Rochford then paid an annual rent of four pounds for a “building over St. Nicholas’-gate.” Among the archives of Christ Church is preserved a deed of the year 1283, by which the Prior, in consideration of the grant of the reversion of a plot of ground, with buildings on it, in St. Nicholas’-street, from a maiden named Scolastica, covenanted to give her every day, from the convent cellar, one white loaf, one flagon of the best ale, and one dish from the kitchen of the monks; also to supply her maid-servant with one loaf of second quality bread, and one pottle of second quality ale.

Humphrey Powell, the first Dublin typographer of whom we have any record, resided in St. Nicholas’-street in 1566, where he published, - “A Brefe Declaration of certein principall articles of Religion: set out by order and aucthoritie as well of the right Honorable Sir Henry Sidney Knight of the most noble order. Lord president of the Councel in the Principallitie of Wales and Marches of the same; and general deputie of this Realme of Ireland, as by Tharchebyshops, and Byshopes and other her majesties Hygh Commissioners for causes Ecclesiasticall in the same realme. Imprynted at Dublin by Humfrey Powell the 20 of January, 1566.”

At its conclusion, the book is stated to be “Imprynted at Dublin in Saint Nycolas Street, by Humfrey Powell, Prynter appoynted for the Realme of Irelande.” This small volume, and an edition of the Book of Common Prayer, hereafter noticed, are the only known specimens extant of Powel’s typography.

The first King’s Printer in Ireland whose patent is enrolled was John Frankton or Francton, gent., who was appointed to the office in 1604 by James I., and continued the principal publisher in Dublin until about the year 1617, when a patent was granted to Felix Kingston, Mathew Lownes, and Bartholomew Downes, stationers and citizens of London, who in 1618 erected “a factory for books, and a press,” in Dublin, under the superintendance of Felix Kingston, and commenced their labours by the publication of an edition of the Irish Statutes. The first Latin book printed in Dublin was Sir James Ware’s “Lives of the Archbishops of Cashel and Tuam,” a small quarto volume of 81 pages, issued in 1621, “Ex officinia Societatis Bibliopolarum.” The “Company of Stationers” continued to publish in Dublin until 1641, when their business was checked by the civil wars, the effect of which upon literature is illustrated by the following document

“John Crooke and Richard Sergier, of Dublin, stationers, duly sworn, depose as followeth:-

“That having for this five years last past and upwards, within this city, kept a stationer’s shop, well furnished with merchandise and English books, for and at such rates as formerly this kingdom was not supplied withall, and having by that means ministers and customers of all professions through the kingdom of good worth and ability before these late troubles. ‘They have to severall persons (whereof some few were Papists now in action of rebellion) and other Protestants who by their loss of all through this insurrection are utterly disabled to make satisfaction for severall parcells of books which they were indebted unto John Crooke and Richard Sergier aforesayd, in all amounting to the sum of £600 and upwards. The loss whereof they have sustained by this present rebellion, besides the utter decay of their trade to their undoing, and the further loss they must needs suffer in the stock of books now lying dead on their hands. Jurat Martii 10mo coram nobis John Watson, William Aldrich. - John Crooke, Richard Sergier. And the said John Crooke, being deposed, further saith, that the summer before this rebellion divers times and very frequently the priests, fryars, and others that resorted to his shop to buy books inquired very earnestly for a book called Mariana, which he had not, and that since the beginning of this rebellion one Higgins, a doctor of physic, well known in this city, told this deponent as a reason of the present rebellion that it was impossible that Papists and Protestants could live in one kingdom together. John Crook. Jur’. ut sup.”

The book here alluded to appears to have been John Mariana’s Treatise, “De Rege et Regis Institutione,” originally published in 1599, and suppressed in Spain at the solicitation of the Court of France. John Crooke, one of the parties to the above deposition, was appointed King’s printer general in and throughout all Ireland in 1660. After the Restoration, the number of printers in Dublin rapidly increased, and in the middle of the last century the city could boast of many respectable and wealthy publishers; but since the Union the amount of works printed in the metropolis of Ireland has decreased by about 80 per cent.

Primate James Ussher, son of Arnold Ussher, one of the Six Clerks in Chancery, was born in St. Nicholas’ parish on the 4th of January, 1580; and during the 17th and earlier part of the 18th centuries, Nicholas-street was inhabited by persons of distinction: as Richard Kennedy, Baron of the Exchequer (1670); Joshua, second Viscount Allan; Cornelius O’Callaghan, a very eminent lawyer, who died here in 1741, and next to whose house resided Eaton Stannard, subsequently Recorder of Dublin.

The most notorious of the residents in this street in the last century was Dr. John Whalley, the chief quack and astrologer of his time in the city. This strange character, born on the 29th of April, 1653, was originally a shoemaker, and came, in 1682, to Dublin, where, having established himself as a compiler of prophetic almanacs, and compounder of medicines to cure all diseases, he gained such a reputation for necromancy, that he was constantly consulted by the credulous people of the city, as noticed by a rhymer of the day:-

“Whalley bred up to end and awl,

To work in garret or in stall,

Who had more skill in cutting leather,

Than in foretelling wind or weather,

Forsook the trade of mending shoes,

To deal in politicks and news,

Commenc’d astrologer and quack,

To raise the Devil in a crack,

Told fortunes, and could cure all ills,

By his Elixir and his pills,

Poor petty servants to their cost,

Flock’d to him for all things they lost,

He pump’d out all they had to say,

And getting all they had to pay,

The thief he shew’d them in a glass;

And if she were a pretty lass,

He told her fortune must be great;

If ugly, ah! how hard her fate,

A hundred pretty tales invented,

To send the wenches off contented.”

In 1688 he was placed in the pillory for some political offence, and while there received from the mob a plentiful unction of antique eggs and other unsavoury missiles. Having rendered himself eminently obnoxious to the native Irish, by his perpetual fanatical railings against them and the Roman Catholic religion, he deemed it prudent to withdraw to England during the Jacobite regime in Dublin, about which period Ferdoragli O’Daly composed a satire of 21 stanzas upon him, in retaliation for his having caused the bard’s brother to be prosecuted and hanged. In this, which is one of the bitterest satires in the Irish language, the poet first describes the wicked practices of the astrologer, whom he declares to be in league with the Devil, and who, since he began to view the moon and planets, had, with his basilisk eye, so destroyed their benign influence that the corn fields, the fruit trees, and the grass, had ceased to grow; the birds had forgotten their songs, except the ominous birds of night; and the young of animals were destroyed in the womb. He then commences to wither the astrologer with imprecations, prays that various violent diseases may attack him, and calls down upon Whalley the curses of God, the angels, the saints, and of all good men.” During his sojourn in England, Dr. Whalley became a coffee-house keeper. After the conclusion of the wars in Ireland, however, he returned to Dublin, and located himself at the “Blew posts, next door to the Wheel of Fortune, on the west side of St. Stephen’s Green,” where he resumed his practice in “physick and mathematicks,” and regularly published his astrological almanacks, styled “Advice from the stars.” About 1698 Whalley removed to Nicholas’-street, next door to the “Fleece Tavern,” where he continued his former avocations, and published, in 1701, “Ptolemy’s Quadripartite, or four books, concerning the influences of the stars, faithfully rendered into English from Leo Allatius, with notes, explaining the most difficult and obscure passages,” which was reprinted in 1786. He also issued here the following work, containing 78 pages 12mo, the preface of which is dated, “from my house in Nicholas’-street, Dublin, January, 1701:” - “A Treatise of Eclipses; in which is shewed: 1. What an eclipse is, and how to know when an eclipse shall happen. 2. The errors of several authors conceiving the longitude, and the astrological handling of eclipses and mundane revolutions in general; and how the same may be rectified and amended. 3. The undoubted certainty of the Ptolomeian astrology; and how thereby to judge of eclipses, and the revolutions of the years of the world in general. 4. An astrological judgment of the great eclipse of the sun, the 13th of September, 1699: and another as great, which will happen the first of May, 1706. And on the conjunction of Saturn and Mars, December, 1700: and how far they are like to affect England, Ireland, Scotland, Holland, France, Spain, Germany, and several other parts of Europe. 5. How by the riseing; setting and colours of the sun, moon, and other stars, comets and meteors, to judge of the weather, litterally from Ptolemy, translation excepted. The whole subject is new, and full of variety, and never before by any so copiously handled as here it is. By John Whalley, professor of physick and astrology. Dublin; Printed and sold by the author John Whalley, next door to the Fleece in Nicholas-street; and also by John Foster in Skinner Row, and Matthew Gun in Essex street, booksellers.”

We find Whalley in 1709 exercising the trades of printer and publisher, “at the Blew Ball, Arundal-court, just without St. Nicholas’-gate;” this court received its name from Robert Arundal, who rented it from the Corporation, and a portion of it is now occupied by the market, erected in 1783 by Sir Thomas Blackball. In 1711, John Mercer, an extensive dealer in coals, commenced a prosecution against Whalley for having, upon the application of several poor inhabitants of Dublin, printed their case, addressed to Parliament for relief against Mercer as an engrosser or forestaller of coals; whereupon Whalley petitioned the House of Commons, which exonerated him, and directed proceedings to be taken against Mercer “as a common and notorious cheat, for selling and retailing coals in the city of Dublin by false and deceitful measures.” In 1714 the Doctor started a newspaper, styled “Whalley’s News Letter, containing a full and particular account of foreign and domestick news;” and in 1718 he published “An account of the great eclipse of the Moon, which will be total and visible at Dublin, and to all Ireland, Great Britain, &c., this day, being Fryday, the 29th of August, 1718.” Whalley carried on perpetual warfare with the other astrologers and almanack compilers of his day, the principal of whom were Andrew Cumpsty, John Coats, of Cork, who styled himself “Urania’s servant,” and John Knapp, “at the sign of the Dyal in Meath-strect.” To his “Advice from the stars, or Almanac for the year of Christ, 1700,” Whalley added an appendix “concerning the Pope’s supremacy; and the picture of a mathemaggoty monster, to be seen at the (sign of the) Royal Exchange on the Wood-quay, Dublin, or Andrew Cumpsty drawn to the life.” The gravest offender against Whalley was Coats, who, in his almanack for 1723, predicted that the former would certaiuly die in February of that year, or at the longest in two or three months after, which not proving correct, afforded Whalley, in his next publication, an opportunity of venting his choler upon the false diviner, whom he styled “a scandal to astrology,” the “most obdurate and incorrigible of impostors,” a “baboon,” and “a hardened villain,” concluding with the following professional jargon:- ” But thirdly, to put this whole dispute in yet a much clearer light. The doating numskull placed 9 of Cancer on the cusp of the ascendant, and 19 of the same sign on the second, and thereby makes the whole ascendant to be possest by, and contain only 10 degrees of Cancer. And when that is told, how Jupiter in 16 degrees of Aquary, in the 9th, and the moon in 26 of Libra, 18 degrees from the cusp in the 5th (as he has given them), can be said to be in trine with the ascendant; and whether that can consist of only so few degrees, I refer to you who are proper judges to consider, till my next.”

Whalley’s last almanack was published in 1724, which lie styled the “year of darkness,” on account of an expected eclipse; his death took place in Dublin, on the 17th of January in the same year, upon which the following lines, as his epitaph, were circulated through the city

“Here five foot deep, lies on his back

A cobbler, starmonger, and quack,

Who to the stars in pure good will

Does to his best look upward still.

Weep all ye customers that use

His pills, his almanacks, or shoes.

And you that did your fortunes seek,

Step to his grave but once a week,

This earth which bears his body’s print,

You’ll find has so much virtue in’t,

That I durst pawn my ears ‘twill tell

What e’er concerns you, full as well

In physick, stolen goods, or love,

As he himself could when above.”

After Whalley’s death, his widow, Mary Whalley, continued for some time to publish his almanacks, in Bell-alley, off Golden-lane, under the title of “Whalley’s successor’s almanack;” and “Whalley’s head” was, for some years, used as a shop-sign in the city.

Necromancy and astrology, we may observe, were practised by some natives of Ireland before the era of Dr. Whalley. Sir John Harrington, in the reign of Elizabeth, states that the English soldiers were much daunted by the belief that the Irish possessed various magical powers; and he adds, that it was a great practice in Ireland to “charme girdles and the like, persuading men, that while they wear them, they cannot be hurt with any weapon.” Edward Kelly, seer to the famous Dr. Dee, was admitted to be the second Rosicrucian in the 16th century, in recognition of which he was knighted at Prague by the Emperor Rodolph, who, with the King of Poland, was frequently present at his incantations. The physician of Charles II. tells us that when that prince was at Cologne in 1654, the Bishop of Avignon “sent him out of France a scheme calculated by one O’Neal, a mathematician, wherein he predicted, that in the year 1660, the King should certainly enter England in a triumphant manner; which, since to our wonder, adds this writer, “we have seen fulfilled, all the people triumphantly rejoycing.” Harvey, “the famous Conjurer of Dublin,” is stated to have possessed “the art of conjuring in Dublin, longer, and with greater credit than any other conjurer in any part of the earth. He was tall in stature, round shoulder’d, pale visaged, ferret-eyed, and never laughed.” His costume is described as follows by a writer in 1728:- “He was unalterable in regard of dress, and would have died, rather than change his old fashion, though it were to prevent either a plague or a famine. On his head was a broad slouching hat, and white cap. About his neck was tied a broad baud with tassells hanging down. He wore a long, dangling coat, of good broad cloth, close breasted and buttoned from top to bottom. No skirts. No sleeves. No waistcoat. A pair of trouse-breeches, down to his ancles; broad-toed, low-heeled shooes, which were a novelty in his time, and the latchets tied, with two packthreads. A long black stick, no gloves; and thus, bending near double, he trudg’d slowly along the streets, with downcast eyes, minding nobody, but still muttering something to himself.”

Copper tokens were issued in Nicholas’-street, in the 17th century, by James Kelley and William Eves, merchants; the “Sun,” the “Fountain,” and the “Fleece” taverns were located here in the same century, and continued for many years to be much frequented by the lawyers and others connected with the old Four Courts. Edward Ledwich, the *pseudo *Irish antiquary, was born in Nicholas’-street in 1739; and the Prerogative office was held here till the year 1748.

George Barrett, the distinguished landscape-painter, was, in his youth, employed in colouring engravings for Thomas Silcock, a print-seller in Nicholas’-street; Edward Sprat, Secretary to the Grand Lodge, and editor of “The new book of the constitutions of the most antient and honourable fraternity of Free and accepted Masons,” 8vo, 1751, also resided in this street, which, from the middle of the last century till about 1815, was chiefly occupied by wealthy silk mercers.

On the eastern side of Nicholas’-street, stands “Kennedy’s-court,” so called from having been built about the reign of James I. by the family of *O’Ceinneide, *or *O’Cineide, *who, from the 12th to the 16th century, were chiefs of Ormond, in Munster, whence a branch of the clan removed to Dublin, where some of them became eminent merchants, and others attained distinction at the Bar. In 1591, 1601, 1631, and 1683, members of this family were sheriffs of the city; by patent dated 3rd October, 1625, the office of Chief Remembrancer was granted to Robert Kennedy and John Kennedy, Esqrs., which they held till 1634; and in 1660 this office was again granted to Sir Richard Kennedy and Thomas Kennedy, by whom it was retained till 1673. Sir Richard, who had acted as Counsel for Sir Felim O’Neil in 1652, was appointed Baron of the Exchequer in 1660, and obtained considerable grants of land, including 4,571 acres in the county of Carlow, 802 in the county of Kilkenny, and 262 acres in Wicklow, where the name of the family is still preserved in Newtown-mount-Kennedy, which gave the title of Baronet to Sir Richard, who died in 1681, and left two sons, Sir William, attainted of high treason in 1702, and Sir Robert Kennedy, Baronet, who married Frances, daughter of Ralph Howard of Shelton, County Wicklow, by whom he had two sons, Richard and Howard: the latter died without issue, and the former married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Francis Blake, Baronet, of Oxfordshire, and had an only daughter, Elizabeth Kennedy, who married Sir William Dudley, Baronet, of Clopton, Northamptonshire. Sir Richard Kennedy, who was Sheriff of the county of Dublin in 1709, having been killed in a duel with Mr. Dormer, his widow re-married with Lord Frederic Howard, son of Thomas Duke of Norfolk. A suit at law was subsequently commenced for the Mount Kennedy estate between those in remainder, and Lady Dudley, as only daughter of Sir Richard Kennedy, obtained on it a rent charge of £500 per annum, in satisfaction of her portion.

In Kennedy’s-court, during the years immediately succeeding the Restoration, was the residence of Father Peter Walsh, the learned Irish Franciscan, at whose chambers here was drawn up and signed the circular letter summoning the national assembly of the Roman Catholic Clergy to meet at Dublin in June, 1666. Walsh was constantly consulted by the most eminent persons connected with Irish politics at that period, and at his residence in Kennedy’s-court was transacted much important business connected with the affairs of the Irish Roman Catholics, and the differences which at that period existed among their clergy concerning their political relations with the Pope and the King of England.

The Rev. Peter Talbot, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, and the violent political opponent of Walsh, as leader of the Roman Catholic Clergy who adopted the Remonstrance of loyalty to Charles II., tells us that Friar Walsh distinguished himselfbyhis fine dress and ribands; and adds, that a certain lady inquired of him whether his patron St. Francis “ever wore such cloathes?” Dr.Talbot further impugning Walsh, says - “Call you suffering to see your spiritual children (the Remonstrants) return home to you with money in your purses, and treat you and your Commissary (Father Redmond Caron) very splendidly at the sign of the Harp and Crown in Dublin, almost every night, with good cheer, dancing, and danes (dána), or Irish Cronans; especially the famous Maquillemone, which was styled in a letter to Rome, ‘Cantio barbara et agrestis;’ and called by the soldiers of the guard in Dublin (hearing it every night at midnight) FriarWalsh and Friar N. singing of psalms? Call you suffering to see your grave Remonstrants dance giggs and countrey dances, to recreat yourself and the Commissary, who was as ready and nimble at it as any of his collectors? but indeed it’s said you danc’t with a better grace than any of the company.”

A more noted character was, however, at the same period connected with Kennedy’s-lane in the person of James O’Finachty, a native of Connacht, styled “the wonder-working priest.” Mac Firbis states that in ancient times O’Finachty was the Royal Chieftain of Clan-Conway, and had 48 bailes or townlands about the river Suca or Suck, before the English invasion; but the Dc Burghs drove him from his patrimonial inheritance, so that, adds the chronicler in 1650, there liveth not of the family of Finaghty, at this time, any one more illustrious than the blessed and miraculous priest, Seamus, or James, whose brothers are William and Redmond sons of Cathal, son of Donogh, son of Hugh son of Rory, son of Cahal, son of Teig Og, son of Teig, son of Cahal.

Finachty was originally a servant to “one Father Moor an old venerable Jesuit, and skilful exorcist, from whom he acquired a knowledge of exorcising or driving out evil spirits from persons supposed to be tormented by them, according to the ceremonies prescribed in the rituals and in the “Flagellum Daemonum,” and other works on demonology. Having entered the priesthood, he was intrusted with the care of a parish in the diocese of Tuam; but becoming imbued with a strong belief that God had endowed him with the power of curing diseases by exorcism, he began to practise publicly about the year 1657; and it having been reported that he enjoyed miraculous powers of dispossessing devils, and healing all sorts of maladies, “he drew the world after him, not only Catholic but Protestants; in so much, that he had often a thousand, sometimes fifteen hundred, nay, two or three thousand, who followed him, even through bogs, woods, mountains, and rocks, and desert places whither soever the people heard him to have fled from the persecution of Cromwell’s troops or governors; that priests enough could not be had (though many accompanied him of purpose) to hear the confessions of the great multitude drawn to repentance and resolutions of a new life, by the example of his life, and wonder of his works.” These proceedings were, however, regarded with suspicion by several “grave and judicious churchmen,” and a general disbelief in Finachty’s miraculous powers was entertained by the more eminent and respectable of the Roman Catholic Clergy both in England and Ireland.

Notwithstanding Finachty’s reputed success, his advocates were unable to prove any cure actually effected by him. Geoffrey Brown and Sir Richard Beling, two eminent Roman Catholics, firmly believed in his miraculous powers, and, although he failed to cure Beling of the gout, the latter applied to the Duke of Ormond to grant him permission to practise in Dublin, but ceased to urge his request when the Lord Lieutenant represented to him the contempt likely to be brought upon his religion in the event of failure; adding, “If Father Finachty come to Dublin, and do but one miracle only of all the incredible numbers reported, he shall lye even in my own bed here within the King’s Castle, and be as safe and free as I, to come and go at his pleasure.”

Meanwhile the reports of Finachty’s proceedings having reached England, he was, through the medium of the Queen’s Chaplains, Dr. Hughes and Father Teig Mac Eochuy, alias “Captain Power,” afterwards Bishop of Clonfert, brought to London to operate upon a blind Portuguese Countess, then at the English Court. Although his attempts to restore the lady’s sight were a complete failure, he confidently requested Lord Aubigny, the Queen’s Almoner, to obtain leave for him to demonstrate his powers by publicly curing any number of invalids that might be collected for that purpose. This offer having been declined, Finachty returned to Dublin, where he again failed to relieve a supposed demoniac whom he had expressly brought to exhibit his skill upon at Lord Fingal’s house; and although he was said to have performed cures at Lady White’s in Leixlip, Lady Dongan’s at Castletown, and at Sir Andrew Aylmer’s at Donadea, the Roman Catholic priests of those places declared him to be an impostor, an opinion which very generally prevailed among the clergy, who were incensed at discovering that he was carrying on intrigue at Rome to obtain the Bishopric of Elphin. Others were disgusted by his avarice, for he received “all was offered him in any place by some well meaning but deluded people, both rich and poor, viz., horses, watches, gold, silver, pieces of woollen and linen cloth, &c., which, said they, argued him not to be a man of so much as ordinary either grace or virtue, much less of extraordinary holiness, or miraculous gifts.”

Large numbers of people, however, continued to follow Finachty, and to throng to him from the country, to be cured; in consequence of which it was at one period contemplated by the Protestant divines to have him tried in the Ecclesiastical Court “for a wizard or an impostor;” and at a meeting of the Roman Catholic clergy in Dublin it was proposed to prohibit his practising in the city, and “to command him away as an impostor, or at least a brain-sick man.” Shortly afterwards, Father Walsh obtained an interview with Finachty, in compliance with the instructions of the Lord Lieutenant, and found him sufficiently satisfied with his own miraculous powers to request permission from the Duke of Ormond to make a public exhibition of curing any number of diseased persons. The Lord Lieutenant being then absent, the desired license could not be immediately obtained; meantime Finachty continued his proceedings in Dublin, in the manner described as follows by the Reverend Father Walsh:- “His prayer and exorcism was very short, and said without book. His crosses he began first in the limb that ailed; thence having driven the pain (as he said, or they answered) to other parts, he followed it thither with crossing, and praying, and conjuring, till after some two attempts, commonly two or three at most, the patient, when put the question by him, answered at last, he or she was cured. Which being answered, he bid such party go on the other side of the room, and give God thanks on beaded knees. In the mean time he fell to another, and so to all one after another, as many as he could dispatch. The difference I perceived in his manner of curing, or pretending to cure, was, that besides exorcising, praying, and crossing, he used to blow very long and very strong into the ears of such who complained of deafness, or pain in that organ, laying his mouth on the affected ear, and blowing so vehemently hard thereinto, that it must have been both painful to himself, and naturally (i.e., without any miracle at all) in some measure effectual to work in that affected organ some alteration. But whether so or no, I was not much concerned, because I could not perceive anything or sign of the deafness, or other evil of their ears who complained of them, as neither of the cure done to them or others, whose neither disease or cure was visible to, or perceivable by any third person.”

The Lord Lieutenant, on his return to Dublin, was informed of Finachty’s request for permission to cure publicly any number of invalids that might be produced, to which the Duke was pressed to accede, that the priest’s miraculous powers might be finally tested. Ormond, after some hesitation, agreed to grant the required license, and on Finachty re-asserting his readiness to cure, indiscriminately, persons afflicted with every variety of disease, his Excellency promised that everything should be prepared for the public trial in two or three days

“Much about that same time,” continues Walsh “Father Finachty sent and came also himself to let me know, he had now stayed six whole weeks in town expecting that licence, and occasion; adding, that he could stay no longer for it (but would depart to Connacht) if not suddenly granted. He withal soon after, and early in the morning sends me word, that he would say mass privately in my lodging, and accordingly comes, and says in a private oratory I had there, myself serving him at mass. When he had done, and was come down and sat at a fire (for it was winter and cold weather) ready to drink his morning’s draught with a toast, which was preparing for him there, he complaining of weakness, and drowth, by reason of the continual sweat every night, whereunto he had been for some days before and then subject, in comes to that same room, unexpectedly, Sir William Petty, Knight, a learned acute physitian, and great traveller, and with him another ingenious young gentleman, Mr. Robert Southwel, likewise for some years a traveller in other parts of Europe, both of them Protestants, and both of my acquaintance. I, having known nothing of their coming or cause thereof, did think they only came to see myself, as at least Mr. Southwel used sometimes to do. But it appeared after, that Sir William Petty was commanded by the Lord Lieutenant to go together with one doctor Yarner another Protestant physitian, and find me out, and tell me how the sick persons were now in town, and all other matters ready of their side, and bid me therefore give notice thereof to Father Finachty that he might fix his day, his place, and company he would have present of his side. Now because Sir William would not meet then with Doctor Yarner, he brought along with him Mr Southwel, who both could shew him the way to my lodgings, and was willing enough to come upon such an occasion, which suspended the thoughts of many. This was the cause of their coming, as my Lord Lieutenant told me after at night; for they did not, as being surprised with a sudden curiosity, when they saw one with me, and that to their question asking me aside, who it was? I answered, he was a person they would perhaps desire to be acquainted with, even the famed wonder-working priest Father James Finachty. For I had no sooner told them so, then without any further reply or ceremony, they both go to the fire where he sate, and sitting down by him (who seemed at first to take no great notice of them) Sir William Petty being next him begins to speak to him in this manner, or at least (I am sure) to this purpose: Father, I have of a long time heard much of you, and lately much more than formerly. For my own part, I am on this ocasion, and for what concerns religion, as a piece of white paper. You may write in my soul what you please as to the way of worshipping God, if you attest that way by plain miracle. And therefore if you do by your prayer remove this wart which you see on my finger (and thereupon showed that finger of his hand, and the wart thereon) I will presently declare myself of your religion. So soon as I heard Sir William out, I thought it high time for me to interpose, as knowing his acuteness in philosophy, and Father Finachty’s dulness even in matters of divinity. And therefore I desired Sir William to consider better of what he proposed; and how unsutable it was to the ordinary custom we read of saints invoking God, and applying themselves immediately to him for a favour above nature to such as desired their intercession. - Which being over, he recollects himself again; and attacks anew Father Finachty, telling him, that he had in truth an infirmity which was very troublesome to him. I am purblind, Father (says he) I can read at such or such a distance very near my eyes; but cannot a word at any other wherein others do. If you will cure me of this troublesome infirmity, I shall humbly and religiously acknowledge, as I ought, God’s both merciful and wonderful hand therein. I had by chance walked over towards the window on the other side of the room, when, and as soon as Sir William had ended these few words of his later proposal. But sooner than I was half way returned back, I saw Father Finachty first standing up, then saying to Sir William, ‘Let us try;’ and then also immediately advancing a few steps and kneeling, his back being turned to them, and his face to the wall; and consequently by private prayer to God, preparing himself to his other exercise, viz., both of praying audibly over, and visibly crossing Sir William’s eyes, and invoking God to cure him there in all our presence. I was truly much perplexed at the suddenness of the Father’s resolution; but had no time to consider when the foresaid two gentlemen Sir William and Mr. Southwel came where I stood, asking me very concernedly, what they should do? What (said I) other than to lay yourselves likewise to your knees reverently behind him, and pray heartily, but first preparing yourselves inwardly with a lively faith and hope and love of God, and consequently, with a true and full repentance of all your sins, and effectual resolutions of a new life, and then beg of God, that for the passion of his own beloved our Saviour Christ, your incredulity or other sins, may not obstruct his mercy or his grace to be shown (said I to you Sir William) by the ministry of that good man, who now prepares to practise on, and invoke God over you. Whereupon the two gentlemen laid themselves immediately to their knees, and I also with them on mine, praying devoutly. As soon as Father Finachty rose, I gave him a priestly stole to put about his neck, and the Aspersorium to sprinkle them first with holy water; both which he used, as the manner is. Then having placed Sir William standing betwixt him and the light of the window, he himself also standing, falls a crossing both the purblind eyes, and saying loud in all our hearing a short Latin prayer, and a prayer too proper only for eyes. And then having done his whole exercise over (I know not whether once onely, or oftener) he bid Sir William take the Bible, and try whether he could read it in the same distance other men do commonly. Sir William takes the book very readily and was so desirous and hopeful too of amendment (as himself said presently) that at the first opening of the book he thought his sight mightily mended; but then immediately finding his own errour, and that he could not read but as before, he tells Father Finachty, how it was Whereupon all the former method of crossing and praying was repeated the second time by the Father; and the second time also was Sir William desired by him to try again whether he could read the book otherwise than before. But upon Sir William trying so the second time, and then answering, he could not, Father Finachty, without further attempt or ceremony, or word spoken by him, turns aside, pulls off his stole, puts on his hat, goes over to, and takes his former seat at the fire with his back turned to us, even as unconcernedly as might be. Sir William perceiving there was no more to be expected, puts on also his hat, comes to me at the window, and asks whether I had ever read any thing in necromancy? I answered, I had not. Truly (says he) no more have I in all my life until within these two days, when by meer chance, going to a certain house in town, I lighted on a book which I am now to show you, and withal therein to a word, the very prayer that Father Finachty hath now prayed over my eves. For in my reading so lately this book through, I remember that very form of prayer amongst others to be therein. Which having said, he draws out of his pocket a thick octavo Latin book, in a fair writing Italian or Roman hand, the title thereof pretending it to have been written by Frater Petrus Lombardus minor in civitate magna Alexandriae, and the subject altogether necromancy; as by turning it over and looking on the schemes and prayers, and other matters, I could not myself but presently see; as neither can I deny, that the very same prayer of Father Finachty was immediately turned to by Sir William, and showed to me before I looked further into that book: only, to my best remembrance there was some little alteration of some few words; but an alteration I confess that was nothing material.”

Petty then offered to wager £100 in gold, that he could cure as many as Finachty out of a given number, and entered into a discourse to prove that the supposed cures performed by the priest were purely effected by the imagination; that his object in collecting large numbers together was a reliance on the probability that some of these individuals might, at the time, be actually recovering from previous sickness, which was never reflected upon by the vulgar, who ascribed their restoration to the miraculous agency of the operator. “And so,” adds our author, “leaving me the foresaid book of necromancy for a day or two, to peruse it through at my leisure, he and Mr. Southwell parted without so much as saluting, or bidding good morrow to, or taking at all further notice of Father Finachty, though sitting still at the fire in the same room, but, in truth, regarding them as little, or at least seeming not to regard them, nor be at all concerned in them, or their talk, for he could not but hear every word.” On the night succeeding this incident, the Lord Lieutenant informed Walsh that arrangements had been made for Finachty to perform publicly on the following day, the selection of the place being left to himself; Drs. Yarner and Petty undertaking to produce the necessary number of invalids. When this was communicated to Finachty, he seemed much troubled, stated that his health was then too much impaired to permit him to go through the exorcisms, and added that the trial should be deferred until he had returned from Connacht, whither he intended to journey on the following day, there being then in town “some horses returning that way, which, as belonging to friends of his, were offered to him whereby to save charges.” in reply to this, Walsh pointed out to Finachty the inconsistency of thus shrinking from the public trial which he had so long solicited, and offered, moreover, to be himself at the expense of his journey to Connacht, saying in conclusion, “You shall have, for as long as you will, this chamber, and that closet with the books in it, and the private oratory above your head, and a servant to attend you, and meat and drink (and physick, too, if you please), and whatever else even company or loneliness, until you find yourself recruited perfectly wherein you think yourself decayed; and I will, in the mean time, both excuse you, and put off the day of public appearance till then.” Apparently moved by these arguments, Finachty promised to remain and appear on the following day. “On this assurance,” says Walsh, “I took leave with him for that night, not doubting the sincerity of his promise, and left him there in my own chamber, and bed, leaving also, one to attend and serve him, if he had wanted anything, and went myself to lye in the private oratory that was in the same house over his head. But I was scarce out of my bed, when, unexpectedly, even by the break of day, I saw him even also as accoutred for a march, come up into that room where I lay, and telling me in plain terms; I must excuse him, in that finding himself not well, he must and would be gone out of town presently, and take his journey to Connacht; praying me withal to excuse him to the Lord Lieutenant, and assure his grace that so soon as he recovered his health and strength, he would not fail to come (if I called him) and perform what was either expected from him, or himself had offered.” All further expostulation to divert him from his purpose was ineffectual, neither could he be induced to write to the Lord Lieutenant, specifying the reasons for his sudden withdrawal. Walsh, however, begged him not to hold any “fields” during his progress to Lochrea, “and then remembering how he had (though indirectly) but the last night insinuated some want, I gave him,” says Father Peter, “what money I had in my pocket, i.e. about 14 shillings, which having taken, he departed from me; yet he had the confidence, within two hours after, even that very morning, before he left the town, to send me a little printed English book (in twelves or sixteens) of his own miracles done in London.”

After his retreat from Dublin, Finachty fell into obscurity, having been forbidden to practise his exorcisms by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, whose censure he had incurred for having nearly driven mad some weak-minded people at Portumna, and for publicly declaring that “all the women in Ireland were specially possessed of the Devil.”

Finachty had not long retired, when another wonderworker appeared in the person of Valentine Greatracks or Greatrix, a respectable Protestant gentleman of Affane, Clerk of the Peace, and a magistrate of the county of Cork. His mode of operating appears to have been similar to that of Finachty, whence he acquired the name of “the Stroaker.” Of the termination of his career nothing appears to be known except that be was satirized by St. Evremond; and a writer of the day says that, “not long after his practices on folks in London, he went out like the snuff of a candle, just as Finachty did.”

On the attainder of Sir William Kennedy, in 1703, 12 houses, which he held in fee in Kennedy’s-court, were confiscated to the Crown. One of those is described as “a large brick house, in good repair, has sellars under the whole house, is two storeys and a half high, and has a back-side, being the Queen’s Bench Office, with a waste plot of ground joining thereto, breath in front 64 feet, rere 46 feet, depth 38 feet.” Dr. Richard Hemsworth, President of the Irish College of Physicians, 1735, Surgeon Peter Brennan, 1763, and various lawyers, resided in this locality in the last century. The King’s Bench Office, although removed for a time to School-house-lane, was re-transferred, in 1745, to Kennedy’s-court, where, together with the office of the Court of Exchequer, and that of the Chief Remembrancer, it continued to be held till the year 1785.

A Masonic Lodge held its meetings, in 1793, at No. 2, Kennedy’s-court, which, subsequently, became occupied chiefly by wholesale ironmongers and dealers in metal manufactures.