Eighteenth-century Dublin

Chapter V

**Eighteenth-Century Dublin **

The 18th century in Ire land is generally known as the ‘period of the penal laws’, (History of Ireland. Joyce) or the period of Protestant ascendency. It was marked by the struggle between the Irish Parliament and that of Great Britain, which, after the brief existence of the quasi-independent legislature known as ‘Grattan’s Parliament,’ terminated with the century in the Act of Union. Though Dublin suffered during this period, in common with the country at large, from the ungenerous and unenlightened restrictions on Irish manufactures and commerce, yet its population being largely Protestant, had a large share in any prosperity which a time of comparative rest, succeeding the struggles and the turbulence of the preceding centuries, conferred on the island.

As the quiet which ensued oil the termination of the Wars of the Roses in England fostered the growth in wealth and population of London, so the lassitude which followed the hopeless struggle in favour of the Stuarts gave to Dublin full scope to develop her trading and commercial importance.

The population, estimated in 1682 at 60,000, had more than doubled 40 years later; and the number of inhabited houses rose between 1711 and 1728 by more than 4000, an estimated increase of population of 30,000.

The suburbs commenced that rapid development which has continued to the present day, so that the city of the Tudors, cramped within the narrow circuit of its walls, had, by the middle of the eighteenth century, reached a circumference of seven and a quarter miles, and had become, in population and extent, the second city in the kingdom and the seventh in Europe. This is all the more noteworthy in view of the fact that during the same period the population of Ireland generally had remained almost stationary.

The great majority of our charitable institutions owe their foundation to the earlier portion of the 18th century; and many of the parish churches, most of the more noteworthy public buildings for which Dublin is deservedly famous, and all its historic houses, were erected during this period of prosperity.

The era of Protestant ascendency was fitly inaugurated by the erection, in 1701, on the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, of the equestrian statue of King William III., which still stands on its original site on College Green, and which has been selected ever since to symbolise that ascendency. Within the memory of the author, the ‘Town’ and ‘Gown, riots of Dublin were generally prefaced by processions of the ‘College Boys’ round the statue, leading to attacks by the lower order of the citizens, and, on one unhappy occasion, ending in a charge of mounted police, in which an unoffending student lost his life. The stones of the east gate of the city, the Port Saint Marie, or Dame’s Gate, were used to form the pedestal for this statue.

That the increase of population was not unaccompanied by distress amongst the poorer classes, is evidenced by the passing in 1703 of an Act of the Irish Parliament, enjoining the erection of a work-house in tire city of Dublin ‘for employing and maintaining the poor thereof’, to be supported by a tax levied on hackney coaches and sedan chairs, and a rate of 3d. in the £1 on every house. The present poor rate for the city has reached the enormous figure of 2s. 2d. in the £1.

A site of about 14 acres at the west end of St. James’s Street was granted by the city, and on 12th October of the year following this enactment, the foundation stone of the workhouse was laid by Mary, Duchess of Ormonde, attended by Sir Francis Stoyte, Lord Mayor, with the recorders, aldermen, and sheriffs. (History of the City of Dublin)

A more pleasing function marked the following year, when Castle Market, in Dame Street, was built on the site of St Andrew’s Church and churchyard by Alderman William Jones and Thomas Pooley, and opened on 26th July by the Lord Mayor ‘with proclamation and beat of drum. (Ibid.)

This market was removed to the site of the present South City Markets, between South Great George’s Street and William Street, in 1782, when the ground on which it originally stood was required for the widening of Dame Street. Within next five years the Society of the Ousel Galley, (This Society derived its name from a vessel which lay, in 1700, in Dublin Harbour, and was the subject of a long and complicated trial. The costs of proceedings before the Society were bestowed on local charities), for deciding mercantile disputes, and the Dublin Ballast Board had been incorporated, the new Custom House at Essex Bridge commenced, and the churches of St. Ann in Dawson Street, St Nicholas Within in Nicholas Street, and St, Luke in the Coombe, had been built.

In 1706 the Royal Barracks were erected at the western extremity of the city, on rising ground overlooking the Liffey between Barrack Street and Arbour Hill. Soon after, Commissioners were appointed for widening the streets leading to Dublin Castle, and a new General Post Office was erected in Sycamore Alley, on the north side of Dame Street, replacing the inconvenient structure in Fishamble Street. Already before the close of the 17th century, the Dublin Society of Friends had erected a large meeting house at the east end of Sycamore Alley, which was rebuilt later in the eighteenth century in Eustace Street, where the Society still continue to hold their meetings. The year 1685 had seen the appearance of the *Dublin News Letter, *the -first local newspaper published, and this was followed in 1703 by Pue’s Occurrences.

Meantime, the differences between the Irish Parliament and the British House of Commons were becoming more acute. The former indeed in no sense represented the great majority of the people, inasmuch as by an English Act it was constituted as an entirely Protestant body. It might therefore have been supposed to be a merely useful instrument for registering the decrees of the English Parliament. But the commercial jealousy of the latter had produced enactments eminently calculated to lead to an Irish protest.

By English legislation of the end of the 17th century, Ireland was prohibited from exporting to England not only cattle, sheep, or swine, and beef, mutton, pork, or bacon, but even butter or cheese. The Navigation Act of 1663 had deprived Ireland of all colonial trade, and when the Parliament in Dublin had been induced to impose heavy export duties on Irish woollen goods, an Act of the British Parliament of 1699 absolutely prohibited the export of manufactured wool to any other country whatever. (10 and 11 Gul. III., cap. 10).

The Dublin Parliament, however, showed little statesmanship, but was engaged from 1692 to 1782 in ‘perpetually wrangling’ with the English Parliament ‘about matters which it considered affected its dignity’; and is aptly described by the writer quoted as an exotic ‘which bore to that of England the same resemblance that a hothouse plant bears to the oak of the forest.’

But a great Irish intellect had, by the ingratitude of English politicians, been relegated to comparative obscurity in the Protestant Church of his native country; and his dislike of English ministries found a ready vent in opposition to their economic legislation for Ireland. In 1720, Dean Swift published his *Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures, *and two years later saw his great opportunity arrive.

At this time in Ireland generally, and especially in Dublin, was felt an undoubted want of small change. The Mint which had been erected under Queen Elizabeth had long been abolished, and the country had again and again petitioned for its re-establishment. Under James II. a patent had ‘been secured, by a private individual, for the issuing of copper halfpence, and a similar patent had been granted under William III.

It was therefore not unnatural that the English Government of the day should follow these precedents. But one of the King’s greedy German mistresses, whom he had created Duchess of Kendal, and who was already in receipt of a pension of £3000 per annum charged on the Irish establishment, asked for and obtained the patent. The issue was fixed at the extravagant figure of £100,800, not £108,000, as stated by Swift and others, or about one-fourth of the whole current coin of the country.

This patent the Duchess sold for £10,000 to an honest hardware dealer of Huguenot extraction, who had Englished his family name of Dubois as ‘Wood.’ William Wood further agreed to pay £1000 a year for 14 years to the Crown. The profit had been estimated at £40,000, which appears, not to have been an exaggerated figure, if the whole amount could be put in circulation, as the copper (360 tons) could be coined at a profit of 1s. per lb.

That the coin was needed, and that it was of good quality, cannot be questioned; indeed, the coins were intrinsically double the value of the bronze coinage of the present day; but that the profit should be divided between the Duchess of Kendal and Mr. Wood was both an injury and an insult to a proud and self-respecting part of His Majesty’s dominions. This was the foundation of the celebrated *Drapier’s Letters, *written by Swift in the character of a Dublin tradesman.

Many, of his arguments were fallacious, nay puerile, in their want of logic and consistency, but they were accepted by his readers, and the spirit of the people was roused to frenzy. The Irish Houses of Parliament, the Privy Council, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of Dublin, had alike protested in vain. The reply of one of the English ministers had been, ‘We will cram the brass down their throats’; but the excitement caused by the *Drapier’s Letters *awed the English government.

It was first proposed to reduce the amount of the coinage to £40,000, and finally the whole issue was withdrawn; Wood being compensated by a pension of £3000 a year for eight years, that is to say, a sum sufficient to cover his bargain with the Duchess, together with his estimated profits of £14,000.

But though Dublin had showed so forcibly its resentment of an unjust and insulting proposal, its loyalty was at this period undoubted. In 1715 several Irish regiments had been sent to Scotland to assist in suppressing the Jacobite rising; and in 1722 an equestrian statue of George I. was erected, facing up the river, on Essex Bridge, on the rebuilding of which, in 1753, it was removed to the garden of the Mansion House in Dawson Street, where it now stand. In the same year six regiments were, by the advice of the Duke of Bolton, transferred from Ireland to England.

As a port for seagoing vessels, Dublin had, prior to the 18th century, laboured under serious disadvantages. A bar across the mouth of the Liffey, between the great sandbanks known as the North and South Bull, a little to the east of Sutton, and due north of Dunleary, now Kingstown, was only covered by six feet of water at low tide.

This, during the first half of the 17th century, had necessitated for ships of any considerable draught the unloading of part of their cargoes at Dalkey, where Sir John Talbot had landed as Viceroy on 10th November 1414, and where, by an Ordinance of the Staple (1358), all ships laden with wine, iron, and other commodities, were obliged to anchor. It was not till 1662 that the Irish Privy Council, by an order, dated 19th September, appointed the Custom House Quay, now Wellington Quay, the sole place for landing and lading the imports and exports of Dublin, although landing-slips are mentioned in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Quays had indeed been constructed early in the history of the city. King John had, in 1209, confirmed the citizens in possession of their buildings upon the river, and licensed them to erect edifices upon the side of the Liffey. In the 13th century we find notices of buildings ‘super ripam’ in the parishes of St. Michael and St. Audoen. Sir Henry Sidney took boat at Wood Quay in 1578, and Sir John Perrot at Merchants’ Quay, on his departure ten years later. In1643 Wood Quay extended from the Crane, a little to the west of Grattan Bridge, to Buttevant Tower.

Nevertheless at the end of the 17th century matters still wore a very different aspect from their present appearance. The river, flowing between low banks, spread widely beyond its present limits. The ground forming the site of the Custom House, and a considerable tract of land north of the quays, east of Grattan Bridge, and even for some distance west of it, between St. Mary Abbey east and Church Street west, extending from Pill Lane, so called from the ‘pill’ or little inlet where the Bradogue stream entered the Liffey, to the site of the present new gaol, were covered with ooze, except a small part about the King’s Inns, where had stood a monastery of Dominican friars.

About the close of the 16th century, we learn that the depth of the river channel ranged from 61 feet to 31 feet: at lsolde’s Tower, (Isolde’s or Izod’s Tower, together with Chapel-Izod, reported by Stanihurt ‘to have taken their names from La Beal Isoud, daughter of Anguish, King of Ireland.’) near Grattan Bridge, it was 4 feet.

In 1607 the first effort to reclaim some portion of the south shore had been inaugurated by the grant to Sir James Carroll of a lease for 200 years at £5 per acre of 1000 acres of so much of the strand as is overflowed by the sea ‘between the point of land that joineth the College and the Ring’s End,’ southward to the land of Bagot Rath.

In 1656 his daughter was granted remission of arrears of rent, and probably the lease was soon after surrendered or withdrawn, as it is not mentioned in any future lettings. The tideway of the Liffey then covered all the lower end of Westmorland Street and D’Olier Street, and it was not till 1663 that they were shut out by the wall built by Mr. Hawkins, to whom Hawkins Street, part of the land thus reclaimed, in which the Theatre Royal is situated, owes its name.

This wall was constructed to gain from the river the ground lying between Townsend Street and the present frontage of Burgh Quay and George’s Quay, adjoining the site of the Danish ‘Steyn’ or ‘Long Stone,’ plainly figured on the Down Survey of Sir William Petty, afterwards Earl of Shelburne (1655), and which occupied approximately the site of the Crampton Memorial at the junction of D’Olier Street, Townsend Street, and Great Brunswick Street.

But the first serious attempt towards rendering Dublin a seaport worthy of its growing commercial importance dates from the petition of Henry Howard in 1676 to Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex, then Lord Lieutenant, for an order to pass Letters Patent for a Ballast Office in all the ports of Ireland, pursuant to Letters under the King’s Privy Seal granted him five years earlier.

This, so far as Dublin was concerned, was opposed by the Corporation as owners of the strand of the river under the charter of King John. In consequence of this opposition Thomas and Henry Howard ordered to lease the Port of Dublin from the city at an annual rent of £50; their offer was accepted, and a lease for 31 years ordered. The Howards neglected to perfect this lease, and the Corporation at Christmas 1685 petitioned the Lord-Lieutenant that His Majesty may direct Letters Patent to pass to the city for the establishment of a Ballast Office, offering to devote the profits to the maintenance of the ‘King’s Hospital.’

Thirteen years later the Lord Mayor and Corporation, in a petition to the Irish House of Commons, represented that ‘the river is choked up by gravel and sand, brought by the freshwater floods, and ashes thrown in, and by taking ballast from the banks below Ringsend, (Ringsend, that is, the end of the Ring (Danish Reen, a spit or tongue of land), whereby the usual anchoring places … are now become so shallow that no** **number of ships can with safely bide there, …. much merchandise being unloaded at Ringsend and thence carted up to Dublin.’

The Bill prepared in consequence was stopped in the English Parliament owing to the rights of Admiralty jurisdiction, confirmed to the Lords Mayor of Dublin by successive charters, being hotly contested on behalf of the Lord High Admiral of England; and it was not till 1708 that, by the 6th of Queen Anne, the Dublin Ballast Board was created, the city having privately promised to her consort Prince George of Denmark, Lord High Admiral of England, an annual donation of ‘100 yards of the best Holland duck sail-cloth which shall be made in the realm of Ireland.’

To this Board, remodelled in 1787 as ‘The Corporation for Preserving and Improving the Port of Dublin,’ we owe its present satisfactory condition as a resort of merchant shipping. The soil raised by dredging the river was utilised to form gradually the site of Beresford Place, Sheriff’ Street, Mayor Street, Guild Street, Newfoundland Street, etc., on** *the north, whose names still suggest their origin, arid Breat Brunswick Street, Denzille Street, Grand Canal *Street, etc., on the south of the present river channel.

The land thus reclaimed being apportioned by the civic authorities by ‘lot,’ the practice is still commemorated in the name of the North Lotts, adjoining Great Strand Street. The newly formed Board lost no time in commencing active operations. By driving piles and sinking kishes and large wooden frames filled with stones in the river bed below Ringsend, so as to raise the south bank of the river, the foundation was gradually laid on which the present south wall, three miles in length, was afterwards built, and the Poolbeg Lighthouse was commenced in 1761, and finished seven years later’.

The corrosive effect of salt water on the wooden piles rendered the breakwater, connecting the lighthouse with the Pigeon House (The Pigeon House, at first an hotel, then a magazine fort, is believed to have obtained its name from a certain John Pigeon whose name occurs in the Journal of the Ballast Office as an employee. A portion of it was handed over by Government on 14 July 1897 to the Dublin Corporation, and the remainder successively in 1898 and 1899, and it is now the power station for the electric lighting of the city.) insecure and expensive to maintain, and it was accordingly gradually replaced by massive granite blocks dovetailed into each other, and clamped together by iron bolts; the intermediate space was partly filled with gravel, on which granite blocks were again laid on a bed of cement until the whole distance was so completed.

The Pigeon House road, a solid causeway 32 feet wide at the base and 28 feet at the top, was thus finished before the cud of the century. The work was subject to many vicissitudes, and as late as 26th January 1792, as we read in the *Dublin Chronicle *of that date, ‘A part of the south wall suddenly gave way and a dreadful torrent broke into the lower grounds, inundating every quarter on the same level as far as Artichoke Road. The communication to Ringsend and Irishtown is entirely cut off and the inhabitants are obliged to go to and fro in boats’; and two days later we read in the same publication, ‘Yesterday his Grace the Duke of Leinster went on a sea party, and after shooting the breach in the south wall, sailed over the low ground in the south lots and landed safely at Merrion Square.’

In January 1906 in an action at law between the contractors for the Dublin Main Drainage operations and the Dublin Corporation, counsel for the former described the south wall as a ‘Chinese Wall’ having ‘no foundation below ordnance datum.’ He accounted for its solidity by stating that it had settled into a solid block 20 feet wide, and ‘made a foundation for itself.’

Operations, similar to those carried out on the south shore, prepared for the building, on the opposite bank of the north wall, which was finished prior to 1728, as appears from Brookin’s map of that date. This is now the landing place of all the cross Channel lines of steamers, except the Royal Mail boats, which sail from Kingstown. The tide still flowed both in front and rear of this wall, and it required the dredging and filling in processes of wellnigh a century, to confine the river and tideway to their present channel.

Meantime, in 1713, John Rogerson, afterwards Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, had obtained from the Dublin Corporation a lease in fee farm of 183 acres of the south strand ‘eastward of the arch on the high road from Dublin to Ringsend, and had constructed the quay stilt known by his name, whereby over 2 acres fronting on that quay were at his death in 1741, already reclaimed and laid out for building. In 1791 the Irish Parliament granted £45,000 for the construction of docks on the north and south banks of the Liffey, and in 1796 floating and graving docks were opened near Ringsend. Thus Dublin had, as a port, before the close of the century, assumed somewhat of its present completeness.

The mountain stream of the Dodder, which once traversed a wide waste of sand between Lazy* *Hill and Ringsend, was, early in the century, also restrained, though not fully confined between its present artificial banks till 1796. This stream was once known as the Raferam (Rathfarnham) Water, and also sometimes the Donny Brook, (It s called the Doney River in the map of Captain Greenail Collins of November 1686.) through an erroneous identification with the name of the village through which it flowed, styled by the annalists Domhnach Broc, i.e. the church of St. Broc, from which the residentiary suburb of Donnybrook derives it name.

In 1629 ‘Mr. John Usher, Alderman of Dublin was drowned in sight of many persons about the place where Ball’s Bridge now statnds, in attempting to cross the Dodder by a ford, then the only** **means of communication with Ringsend. This led to the building of a stone bridge, completed before 1637, then known as the bridge of Symons-court, Symmons Court, or Smothescourt, possibly on the site of Ball’s Bridge. The latter, built in 1791 and rebuilt in 1835, has been widened and greatly improved in 1905 to meet the requirements of the traffic to the show yards estabished, on the east bank of the Dodder, by the Royal Dublin Society in 1881..

In 1707 a new Custom House was erected, at some little distance from the river, adjoining the east side of Essex, now Grattan Bridge, and extending to the intersection of Essex Street and Essex Gate, Parliament Street not having been in existence for 70 years later. Its principal entrances were in Temple Bar and Essex Street, exactly opposite Crampton Court, and it was bounded on the east by the now subterranean Poddle stream.

Custom House Quay was limited to the frontage of the Custom House, the two upper storeys of which, built of brick, contained each in breadth 15 windows. The lower storey, on a level with the quay, was an arcade of cut stone pierced with 15 narrow arched entrances. A clock was placed in a triangular entablature, protected by projecting cornices, in the centre of the top of the north front. On a level with this, there stood on each side on the roof five elevated dormers, surmounting the windows.

It is interesting to note that in July 1886, when excavations were being made for the foundation of the premises of Messrs. Dollard and Company, on Wellington Quay, the first course of the old building was laid bare, at a depth of 4 feet 6 inches from the present level of Essex Street, consisting of handsome chiselled black limestone. On the opening of the present Custom House in 1791 the old structure was converted into a barrack, which Robert Emmett proposed to have seized in his abortive insurrection.

In 1729 the Houses of Parliament had met in the Blue Coat Hospital in Oxmantown, but in the same year was commenced that magnificent edifice the Parliament House in College Green, justly regarded as ‘infinitely superior in point of grandeur and magnificence to those of Westminster.’ (Hibernia Curiosa. J. Bush, Dublin, 1769.)** **was erected on the site of Chichester House, and at first consisted only of the portion facing College Green. The eastern portion was added in 1785, and the west front two years later. The total cost was only £95,000.

The continued growth and beautifying of the city, the employment afforded by extensive building operations, and the multiplication about this time of charitable institutions, were not successful in abating the prevalence of widespread poverty and even destitution. In the year 1728-29 an actual famine was experienced by the in inhabitants of Dublin, during the continuance of which Primate Boulter relieved a number of the starving people by public meals in the dining-hall of the new workhouse, and hundreds were daily fed by the authorities of Trinity College.

Ten years later an intense frost, in the months of January and February, was followed by a similar visitation accompanied by pestilence. One of the relief works then executed was the erection of the obelisk which still forms a landmark in Victoria Park, on the summit of Killiney Hill. Yet in 1749 the Irish revenue showed a surplus of £200,000, which gave occasion for** **a further struggle for parliamentary rights.

The Irish Parliament resolved to apply this surplus to the reduction of the national debt. The English authorities held what now seems the untenable position that the surplus was the property of the Crown. The Irish view was maintained by Doctor Charles Lucas, who some years previously had championed the electoral rights of his fellow-towns-men in apamphlet entitled A Remonstrance against certain Infringements on the Rights and Liberties of the Commons and Citizens of Dublin; the Commons having been deprived of the right of choosing the City Magistrates, a power transferred to the Board of Alderman, subject to the approval of the Chief Governor and Privy Council.

Indeed, as we shall see further on (chapter viii.), Dublin was then ruled by as narrow an oligarchy as ever swayed the destines of Florence or Venice. The opposition of Doctor Lucas to the allocation of the Irish surplus subjected him to a prosecution by H.M. Attorney-General ‘as and enemy to his country,’ and he was commanded to appear at the bar of the Irish House of Commons, and subsequently to be imprisoned in Newgate pending his trial.

Before his arrest could be effected he fled to the Isle of Man, and thence to London. In 1760 he was a candidate for the representation of his native city, for which he was elected member along with the father of Henry Grattan, and continued to represent Dublin in Parliament until his death in 1771. His statue, by Edward Smyth, stands in the City Hall, formerly the Royal Exchange, for the purchase of the site of which lie secured a grant from the Irish House of Commons.

The financial plethora in the Irish exchequer was of short continuance. In 1755, in consequence of the declaration of war with France, a serious decline was experienced in the Irish revenue, and a failure of the potato crop caused widespread distress. Three of the Dublin banks - Clement’s, Dawson’s, and Mitchell’s-suspended payment, and the three remaining banks declined to discount traders’ bills.

Four years later rumours of a Legislative Union with Great Britain led to serious rioting among the Protestant population of Dublin. A mob broke into the Parliament House, placed an old woman in the Speaker’s Chair, and instituted an unsuccessful search for the journals of the House in order to burn them. They also stopped the carriages of members and killed some of the horses, insulted the Lord Chancellor and some of the bishops, and erected a gallows, announcing their intention of hanging thereon an obnoxious politician.

It must be remembered that, as has been already said, Dublin was then controlled by a narrow and strictly Protestant oligarchy, and by what would be termed, in the language of the present clay, an ‘Ascendancy’ Parliament. The position of the Roman Catholic citizens may be inferred from the following incident. Nicholas, Lord Taaffe, an Irish Roman Catholic peer, who had been educated in Germany with George II. and had been Austrian ambassador at the English Court, had returned to Ireland to prosecute his claim to the family title. On proceeding one Sunday morning early in the year 1745 to the chapel of the Discalced Carmelites in Stephen Street, he found the building closed and the gates nailed up (Carmel in Ireland. Rev. J.P. Rushe O.D.C.) by order of William, Duke of Devonshire, Lord-Lieutenant. He thereupon wrote the following letter to the King:-

DEAR GEORGE, - It is a hard case, that in your Kingdom of Ireland, my own native country, I am not allowed to hear prayers, but the chapel gates are nailed up, which harsh treatment has been extended to all the chapels in Dublin. - Yours,

NICHOLAS TAAFFE. (Taaffe’s History of Ireland)

This produced an angry command of the King, that the obnoxious regulation should be cancelled. In the same year, the collapse of the floor of a room in which several Roman Catholics had met together secretly to perform their devotions, caused considerable loss of life and serious bodily injuries to many, which led to a relaxation of the restrictions on their worship, and in 1751 the open celebration of the Mass was permitted by the authorities.

The failure of three of the Dublin banks in 1755, had called attention to the risk to the public, credit, consequent on banking being left entirely in the hands of private individuals. The bank established by David Digges La Touche, an officer of the regiment of French refugees, serving in the army of William II., had indeed weathered the storm, and in 1781 was established Newcomen’s bank, in the premises on the left of the present City Hall, now occupied by the offices of the City Treasurer.

But the year following saw the foundation, under Lord Carlisle’s viceroyalty, of a national bank with a capital of one and a half millions, hereafter known as the Bank of Ireland, which was opened in premises in Mary’s Abbey, and of which David la Touche was the first Governor.

In 1784 a much-needed Paving Act was introduced; and two years later a Police Bill was passed, whereby Dublin was divided into four districts, the watchmen reorganised and placed under the control of three paid Commissioners of the Peace, and a new force of regular police constituted, consisting of only 44 men! The present Dublin metropolitan police force numbers 1177 men. The provisions of this bill only remained in force for ten years, when the Dublin Police Act was practically repealed and the powers of the Corporation with respect to the police restored.

The year 1783 saw the establishment of the Order of Knights of St Patrick, consisting of a Sovereign, a Grand Master, and 22 Knights**, **the Lord Lieutenant and for the time being filling the office of Grand Master. The badge is of gold, surmounted by a wreath of shamrock within a circle of the enamel, with the motto Quis Separabit (late MDCCLXXXIII, encircling the cross of St. Patrick *gules *with a trefoil *vert, *each of the leaves charged with an imperial crown or upon a field argent.

The same year had seen considerable distress in Ireland, which produced a proclamation forbidding the export of oats, oatmeal, and barley. Dublin, however, continued prosperous. The quarter known as ‘The Liberties, i.e. the district lying between St Patrick’s Cathedral and St. Thomas’s Court, about James’s Gate Brewery, was occupied largely by French Huguenot weavers, and was a hive of industry, no less than 1400 silk looms being at work in 1784 employing 11,000 persons.

Serious rioting was of frequent occurrence about this time between the ‘Ormonde Boys,’ or butchers of Ormonde Market, and the ‘Liberty Boys,’ or tailors and weavers of the Coombe, in which on some occasions more than a thousand combatants were engaged. The combat often raged along the Quays from Essex (now Grattan) Bridge to Sarah (now Island) Bridge; all business in the district was suspended; the shops were closed, and peaceable citizens were confined to their houses.

On one occasion the weavers seized* *Ormonde Market, and, removing the carcasses from the hooks on which they were hung, suspended the butchers therefrom by the jaws, and left them thus banging in their own stalls.

These riots led to the quartering of troops in the disturbed neighbourhood, and some of the soldiers so quartered were disabled by being ‘houghed’ *(i.e. *having the tendons at the back of the leg severed) by the knives of the butchers. This led to an enactment that all soldiers so mutilated should be chargeable for life on the district; and it is said that many instances occurred of soldiers being guilty of self-mutilation, in order to obtain the benefit of this regulation.

The energies of some of the riotous weavers were diverted by the formation of the volunteers. This body had its origin in the landing of Thurot and a small number of French troops at Carrickfergus in 1760. The neighbouring farmers armed themselves for defence, and were soon organised in military fashion. In the words of Lord Charlemont, with whose name the volunteer movement is so closely connected, ‘they were drawn up in. regular bodies, each with its own chosen officers, … some few armed with old firelocks, but the greater number with what is called in Scotland the Lochaber axe, a scythe fixed longitudinally to the end of a long pole-a desperate weapon, and one of which they would have made a desperate use.

The French expedition, finding such serious preparations made for their reception soon re-embarked, leaving behind General Flobert an some few wounded officers and men. The example thus set by the peasantry of Ulster was soon followed in other parts of the country. Territorial magnates vied with each other in raising and equipping companies of volunteers, and this body had considerable influence in obtaining in 1782 the measure of legislative independence, known as Grattan’s Parliament.

The Liberty Corps of volunteers, raised among the woollen operatives in the Earl of Meath’s Liberties, advertised for recruits, and enlisted 200 of the lowest class of citizens, chiefly Roman Catholics. (Lecky, *History of Ireland in the 18th Century’, *vol. ii. p. 394.)

The volunteer movement had become a national one, and with its growth had spread the agitation for legislative independence. The war with France and the revolt of the American colonies, gave to the discontented Protestants of the north of Ireland their opportunity. By the end of 1781, the demand for the repeal of Poyning’s law, and for the creation of an Irish Parliament free from the control of that of England was backed by an armed force of 90,000 men.

On the 15th February 1782 delegates from the Ulster volunteer regiments assembled in** **convention at Dungannon, and resolved: ‘That a claim of any body of men, other than the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland, to make laws to bind this kingdom, is unconstitutional, illegal, and a grievance.’

Leinster, Munster, and Connaught followed the lead of Ulster, and when Parliament assembed in Dublin on 16th April 1782, the streets were lined by the volunteer regiments, and College Green was packed by a concourse of many thousands. (Barrington, Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation.) When Henry Grattan moved his declaration of rights, Mr. Hely Hutchinson, Secretary of State in Ireland, intimated his orders to deliver a gracious message from the King, and, by an unanimous vote of the Irish House of Commons, Ireland declared herself an independent nation.

It was dn this occasion that Grattan delivered that speech, ranking amongst the highest efforts of senatorial eloquence, in which occurs the well-known passage: ‘I found Ireland on her knees; I watched over her with an eternal solicitude; I have traced her progress from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift ! spirit of Molyneux! your genius has prevailed! Ireland is now a nation! In that new character I hail her! and, bowing in her august presence, I say, “Esto perpetua!”’

The Declaration of Independence of the revolted American colonies and their military successes had taught English ministers a bitter lesson; and, on the motion of Charles James Fox, the British Parliament the same year passed an Act abolishing that of George 1. which bound Ireland to obey laws made in Great Britain, and the first independent Irish Parliament, known from its most prominent and popular member as Grattan’s Parliament, met in Dublin.

Its ministers were, however, responsible, not to Parliament, but to the Lord-Lieutenant. The fact that Roman Catholics, three-fourths of the population, were incapable of sitting in the House, and had no voice in the election of its members, and that two-thirds of these members were practically nominated by 100 persons, who controlled the so-called ‘rotten’ boroughs, prevented this body from being in any real sense popular or representative.

Discontent therefore continued to spread, especially amongst the Presbyterians of Ulster, these being, alike with the Roman Catholics, excluded from Parliament; and, in 1791, the Society of United Irishmen was founded in Belfast by Theobald Wolfe Tone, himself a Presbyterian. The abortive mission of Lord Fitz-William as Viceroy, who disgusted the ascendency clique by his favourable attitude towards the popular party, led, on his recall, to increased dissatisfaction, which found vent in a dangerous riot, in which Lord Clare was wounded, and his house, 5 Ely Place, attacked by a violent mob determined to hang him outside his own door.

The rumour, cleverly spread by his sister, that troops were on the march from the Castle, dispersed the rioters, who proceeded to the Custom House in search of Mr. Beresford, whom they failed to capture.

A demand for Catholic emancipation was now formulated by the United Irishmen, which again was met by the formation of the Orange Society, introduced into Dublin in 1797. Thus the seeds of an internecine religious struggle were sown throughout the length and breadth of Ireland, a struggle in which Dublin largely participated.

The Volunteers were much in evidence in the city. In October 1779 the first regiment of Dublin Volunteers, commanded by the Duke of Leinster, appeared under arms and lined Dame Street, and in 1783 delegates from all the various corps assembled in convention at the Rotunda, from 10th November to 1st December, to concert measures for obtaining Parliamentary Reform.

The General Executive Directory of the United Irish Society, consisting of five members, sat openly in Dublin. Of these, two only were Roman Catholics, the others being Thomas Emmett, Arthur O’Connor, nephew of Lord Longueville, and Oliver Bond, a woollen draper and son of a dissenting minister. Lord Edward Fitz-Gerald, brother of the Duke of Leinster, was a member of the Provincial Directory of his own province.

In 1794 the Reverend William Jackson, an Irish Jacobin, arrived in Dublin from Paris to concert with Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen plans for an insurrection. The French emissary was arrested, tried, and convicted of high treason, but committed suicide in prison. After the departure of Lord Fitz-William, several of the Irish revolutionary leaders fled to the United States; where they joined James Napper Tandy, Dr Thomas Reynolds, brother-in-law of Wolfe Tone, and other revolutionists, and steps were taken to solicit from Carnot and the French Directory the despatch of a military expedition to Ireland to proclaim a republic.

Lord Edward Fitz-Gerald and Arthur O’Connor soon afterwards arrived in Paris to arrange details of the invasion; and through their unguarded talkativeness the English Government were made aware of all their plans. In consequence, General Lake was sent to disarm the Ulster malcontents, martial law was proclaimed in five northern counties, and great numbers of pikes, muskets, and even cannon were seized.

On the last day of February 1798, O’Connor, together with an Irish priest named O’Coigley or Quigley, was arrested at Margate when about to embark for France; and papers were found on the latter inviting the French Directory to land an army in England. On these he was found guilty of high treason and suffered execution.

The usual result ensued. Thomas Reynolds, a Colonel in the Irish revolutionary army, and treasurer for his county of the organisation, betrayed his associates, and the conspirators were arrested at their place of meeting. Lord Edward Fitz-Gerald was, however, with Emmett and other leaders, still at large.

On the 19th May Lord Edward was surprised at 153 Thomas Street, the house of a named named Murphy, by Major Sirr, who had surrounded the house with soldiery, and after a desperate resistance, in which he mortally wounded one of’ his captors with a dagger with which he was armed, he was secured. He died in prison, a fortnight later, of a fever, the result of the wounds inflicted in his capture. A search for concealed arms was at once instituted in Dublin, and two days before the outbreak of the rebellion, 23rd May, 2000 pikes had been already seized, and it was believed that 10,000 still remained concealed in the city.

On the 21st May Lord Castlereagh wrote, by direction of the Lord-Lieutenant, to the Lord Mayor of Dublin to inform him that a plot had been discovered for placing Dublin in the hands of a rebel force. The rebels proposed to seize the Castle, sack Beresford’s Bank, and burn the Custom House. The most striking feature of the time, says Mr. Lecky, in his *History of the Eightenth Century, *was ‘the energy and promptitude with which the citizens armed and organised themselves for the protection of the city.’

Once more Dublin proved itself the mainstay of English rule in Ireland. The city was placed under martial law, and though thousands secretly joined the ranks of the United Irishmen, and large stores of firearms and pikes had, as we have seen, been collected, the loyal citizens formed a great and well-armed police force which effectually kept the cowed rebels down.

On the 4th June the rebels had appeared at Santry and Rathfarnham, respectively north and south of the city. Cannon were mounted opposite Kilmainham and the new prison, and the bridges over the canals were removed or strongly guarded. On the collapse of the rebellion many persons were hanged in the Dublin barracks or over the battlements of Carlisle Bridge.

For instance, Doctor Esmonde, brother of Sir Thomas Esmonde, holding a commission** in a Militia regiment stationed at Clane, County Kildare, had led the rebels in an attack on the little town of Prosperous, the seat of a cotton industry, in the same county, and garrisoned by 50 men of the North Cork Militia and 20 Antient Britons, a Welsh regiment of Fencible Cavalry. Esmonde had dined with Captain Swayne, in command of this detachment, on the evening before his treachery; and had the audacitv, on the repulse of the attack, to rejoin his own regiment as secoud in **command on the march to Naas.

He was recognised by one of the defenders of Prosperous, and Captain Richard Griffith, the officer in command, had him arrested, tried, and condemned. An old woman, still living in 1886, informed a Dublin clergyman (Rev. T. R. S. Collins, B.D., Secretary to His Grace the Archbishop of Dublin (Dr. Peacocke))** **that she remembered seeing, when a girl, a man hanged on Carlisle Bridge, *with his coat turned *; which identified the man so executed with Doctor Esmonde.

The political turmoil of the last years of the century does not seem to have checked the rapid growth and beautifying of the city. In 1781 the handsome structure of the present Custom House had been commenced on part of the ground reclaimed on the north bank of the Liffey, and was completed in ten years; and five years later the erection of the equally beautiful pile of buildings known as the Four Courts was begun on the site of the old King’s Inns, which had been removed to their present position in Henrietta Street in 1765.

The same year saw the commencement of the Royal Military Infirmary, a well-built fabric of Portland stone, erected on high ground in the south-east angle of the Phoenix Park opposite the Royal Hospital, and completed within two years at a cost of £9000: it also witnessed the foundation of the Royal Irish Academy. The College of Surgeons had been incorporated two years previously under a charter which severed their ancient connection with the Gild of Barbers.

In 1789 the Royal Canal Company was incorporated with a capital of £200,000, having been preceded by thirty years by the Grand Canal, much of whose system dates, however, from the 19th century.

In 1791 the foundation stone of Sarah Bridge over the Liffey, connecting Kilmainham with the north bank, was laid by Sarah, Countess of Westmoreland, but the structure is now generally known as Island Bridge; and three years later Carlisle Bridge, forming the main avenue of connection between north and south Dublin, was commenced, giving importance as a thoroughfare to Grafton Street, first mentioned in 1708 and named after the Duke of Grafton, son of Charles II.

This street in the middle of the 18th century was entirely residentiary, and contained the town houses of Lord Kinsale, Viscount Grandison, the Earl of Dunsany, and other noblemen, standing among gardens and open fields. The new bridge, ten feet wider than Westminster Bridge, soon led to the opening of shops in Grafton Street, a change which the growth of the southern suburbs has since accentuated.

In 1793 the important distillery in John’s Lane was opened adjacent to Mullinahac, i.e. *dirty mill, *a mill near the bridge bestowed upon the Convent of the Holy Trinity, and from which Dirty Lane, now the upper part of Bridgefoot Street, obtained its earlier unenviable sobriquet.

The same year was built on Hoggen Green at the head of the present Church Lane the new church of St. Andrew, in the form of an ellipse, familiarly known as the Round Church until its destruction by fire in 1860, at which date it was replaced by the present building.

In 1796 was laid the foundation of the solid granite structure of the Commercial Buildings in Dame Street, ‘where merchants most do congregate,’ though of late years the library and reading-room have lost much of their importance as a mercantile resort.

The following year the Sessions House in Green Street was opened, and the present Sheriff’s Prison attached to it replaced the old structure of Newgate. During the very year of the rebellion the Bedford Asylum for industrious children was opened at the suggestion of the Earl of Chichester.

The main effect of the rebellion politically had been to strengthen the hands of Pitt, with respect to his long-conceived project of the legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland. In a letter to Lord Mornington, afterwards Earl of Wellesley, dated 31st May 1798, the great minister says: ‘In Ireland the Jacobins (after many of their leaders being apprehended) have risen in open war. The contest has at present existed about a week. … The rebellion will be crushed. … and we must I think follow up such an event by immediate steps for an union.’

In the session opened January 1799 the Irish Parliament rejected his propositions, the Government being beaten by a majority of five on the Report of the Address; but bribery and bullying on the largest scale were resorted to; the patrons of the rotten boroughs were bought over by ‘cash or titles. In 1800 the measure was passed in both the Irish and British Houses of Parliament, and in** **July received the Royal Assent.

Nowhere in Ireland was the opposition to the measure more strenuous than in Dublin. The city foresaw with the removal of its Parliament the loss of its prestige; the absenteeism of landlords in the country districts pointed to the probable loss to Dublin of that resident nobility and gentry whose mansions had arisen during the 18th century, and are, as residences, untenanted save by office-keepers in the 19th; and the metropolis of Ireland viewed with gloomy forebodings the exchange of that position for the status of a mere provincial town. But the fiat had gone forth, and on the 1st January 1801 the Imperial standard was hoisted on Dublin Castle, and Ireland’s brief career of parliamentary independence was brought to an ignominious close.

As has been already indicated, modern Dublin is mainly the creation of the 18th century, and most of her far-famed public buildings were erected during that period. The most noteworthy of these are the Parliament House now the Bank of Ireland - the Custom House, the Four Courts, and the Royal Exchange - now the City Hall. Some of the city churches date their erection from ‘the same period. These, together with the historic eighteenth - century houses, will be referred to at the close of the next chapter.

The erection of the Houses of Parliament was commenced in 1729 from the designs, as some suppose, of Cassels, and was carried out under the inspection of Captain, afterwards Sir, Edward Lovet Pearce, Engineer-General, until his death, when it was finished by Arthur Dobbs. The site chosen was that of Chichester House, erected in 1613 by Sir Arthur Chichester on a plot of ground in Hoggen Green, formerly occupied by Cary’s Hospital for ‘poor, sick, and maimed soldiers.’ At this time the rear of the hospital was only separated from the river by a lane along the strand, the present Fleet Street. Chichester House had been commonly used for the sessions of Parliament from 1661 and was leased for that purpose from its owners by the King.

The new buildings were completed about 1794, but the passing of the Act of Union in 1800 left them untenanted, and two years later they were sold to the Bank of Ireland for £40,000, less than half their original cost, subject to a ground rent of £240 per annum.

The portion first erected was the magnificent Ionic front and colonnade extending 147 feet facing College Green, and occupying three sides of a receding square. It is ‘destitute of the usual architectural decorations, and deriving all its beauty from a single impulse of fine art, is one of the few instances of form only expressing true symmetry.’

In the centre of the colonnade or facade is a beautiful Ionic tetrastyle portico supporting a pediment, the tympanum of which bears the Royal arms, and is surmounted by a statue of Hibernia flanked right and left by figures representing Fidelity and Commerce. These were carved, from models by Flaxman, by Edward Smyth, a Dublin sculptor.

At the extremities of the colonnade circular-headed doorways provide the entrances from College Green, leading up short flights of steps under lofty archways. Screen walls, forming segments of a circle, with rusticated basements, now connect the central portion with the east and west fronts. These walls were added after the purchase of the building by the Bank of Ireland, and are enriched with dressed niches alternating with projecting columns.

The east front, in Westmoreland Street, was built in 1785 from the designs of James Gandon, of London, grandson of a Huguenot refugee, and consists of a handsome portico of six Corinthian columns and a large gateway. The some-what *bizarre *change of order of architecture has afforded a subject for much criticism, but by its adoption the necessity for pedestals is avoided, and the design, though inconsistent with that of the main front, is in harmony with the opposite angle of Trinity College towards College Street, and the *coup d’oeil, *especially by moonlight or beneath the electric light, is wonderfully impressive.

Under the portico was the entrance to the House of Lords, now walled up, but over the keystone is still to be seen part of the lamp-hook. The apex of the pediment bears a statue of Fortitude flanked by those of Justice and Liberty, by the same sculptor as the figures on the main front The west front, completed in 1794 from designs of Robert Parke, faces Foster Place, and consists of an Ionic portico of four columns, at right angles to which is a gateway, within which are quarters for the military who daily mount guard in front of the building.

As at present constituted, the two entrances are at the east and west angles of the main portico and lead into lobbies, off which the offices open ; but formerly a middle door under the portico led directly to the House of Commons, through a great hall called the Court of Requests, the site of the present cash office.

The latter, designed by F. Johnston, is a handsome room, 70 feet by 53 feet, the walls panelled with Bath stone, and ornamented with a rich entablature supported by Ionic columns. Behind the Court of Requests was, as we have said, the House of Commons, forming a circle, 55 feet in diameter, inscribed in a square. It replaced the beautiful octagonal chamber, wainscotted with Irish oak, completely destroyed by an accidental fire in 1792. The seats were disposed round the room in concentric circles rising tier above tier, and the whole was surmounted by a rich hemispherical dome supported by sixteen Corinthian columns.

Between the pillars a narrow gallery seated a limited number of the general public. This portion of the building was entirely removed in the structural changes of 1801-2. On the right of the House of Commons was the House of Lords, a handsome apartment, 73 feet by 30 feet, panelled and ornamented with columns of Riga oak, and decorated at each end with Corinthian columns. This has been little altered, and is now known as the Court of Proprietors, or Board Room. It still contains the original table and chairs, but the benches have been removed. The position once occupied by the throne is now filled by handsome statue in white marble of George III. in his parliamentary robes, executed, at a cost of £2000, by J. Bacon, Junior, of London. The pedestal is ornamented with figures of Religion and Justice. The walls are hung with two fine tapestries by Robert Baillie (1733), representing the Battle of the Boyne and the Siege of Derry. The fireplace is of Kilkenny marble. There is a fine bust of the Duke of Wellington by Turnerelli. The whole building covers an acre and a half, and the roof, which is for the most part flat, would afford accommodation to a regiment of soldiers.

The removal of the Custom House from the site close to Essex Bridge was due to the energy and enterprise of the Right Hon. John Beresford, second son of the first Earl of Tyrone, and brother of the first Marquess of Waterford. Mr. Beresford belonged to a family which fills a large place in the modern history, civil and ecclesiastical, of Ireland. He represented the County Waterford in the Irish Parliament for 44 years, and for thirty held the post of Commissioner of the Revenues in Ireland. He was the chief of those officials of whom Earl Fitzwilliam had determined to get rid, and the hasty recall of that Viceroy was largely owing to the influence of the Beresford family.

The Commissioner had princely ideas as to the improvement of Dublin, and to him the city owes much of its architectural pre-eminence. He conceived the design of widening and extending the quays, connecting Sackville Street with the new Houses of Parliament by the building of Carlisle Bridge, and removing the Custom House to the then unsavoury swamp east of the new bridge, and half a mile nearer the sea than the then existing edifice.

He procured from James Gandon the beautiful design, afterwards so ably carried out by that architect; and obtained, in face of corporate and mercantile opposition, an order from the English Treasury to build a new Custom House.

When at length, in 1781, the foundations had been laid, a violent rabble, provided with shovels and saws, and led by the High Sheriff, proceeded to level the fence and fill in the trenches. But the persistence of Mr. Beresford overcame all obstacles, and the present beautiful structure, disfigured unfortunately on its western side by the swivel bridge, and still more by the unsightly railway viaduct of the ‘Loop Line,’ opened for traffic in May 1891, was completed in ten years at a cost of £250,000, exclusive of the adjoining quay and docks, on which an additional sum of £140,000 was expended.

The building possesses the unusual advantage of isolation, and has thus four fronts, answering almost directly to the four points of the compass. It is in form an oblong quadrangle 375 feet long by 205 feet deep, the southern front facing the river. In the centre of this is a handsome Doric portico flanked by open arcades, which are carried round the building.

Within are two courts east and west, divided from each other by the central pile 131 feet broad, arid extending the whole depth from north to south. The portico is surmounted by a projecting cornice, and bears in the tympanum a sculptured shell drawn by sea-horses, and containing allegorical figures of England and Ireland embracing, in allusion to the union of the countries. They are attended by a fleet of ships in full sail and by Tritons sounding their shells, while Neptune drives away Famine and Despair.

The frieze above the portico is enriched with ox-heads festooned with hides. From the entre of the building rises a graceful octagonal cupola, on the same plan as those at Greenwich Hospital but of somewhat less dimensions, attaining a height of 113 feet above the ground level; the dome, 26 feet in diameter, is covered with copper and crowned by a circular pedestal (4 feet) supporting a figure of Hope, 12 feet in height, resting oil her anchor.

In front of the central tower on the attic storey, over the four pillars of the portico facing south are figures of Neptune, Mercury, Plenty, and Industry. At each extremity of the south front are pavilions having entrances between tall recessed pillars. The north front has also a central portico of four columns but no pediment; above these are statues, by Joseph Banks, R.A., representing the four quarters of the globe. This front has neither arcades nor recessed columns, but at each end are pavilions similar to those on the south front.

The Royal arms, carved above the recesses at either extremity of the south facade, were executed by a young sculptor named Edward Smyth, then employed in mantelpiece work by Henry Darley, a master stonecutter. His genius was recognised by Gandon, and he was afterwards entrusted with the figure of Hope above the dome, and, as we have seen, with those of Justice, Fortitude, and Liberty above the east front 6f the Parliament House, and also with those surmounting the portico of the Four Courts.

The same sculptor supplied the sixteen allegorical heads on the keystones of the entrance and other corresponding arches, representing the principal rivers of Ireland; the only female head figuring the Anna Liffey, through a curious misconception of the Irish name. (The Anna Liffey, the Auenelith of King John’s charter, ‘aquam de Amliffy versus boream’ of that of Richard II., is the rendering of the Irish Abhainn Liphte = river Liphte or Liffey,)

The interior of the Custom House is now mainly occupied by the offices of the Local Government Board and of the Departments of Customs and Inland Revenue. An Assay Office is still maintained by the goldsmiths in the north-west angle. In the open space to the north, commemorating the name of its originator in its title of Beresford Place, Father Mathew, the Irish apostle of total abstinence, pronounced some of his stirring appeals, and administered the pledge to thousands of his hearers. The space is still sometimes availed of for temperance and other public meetings.

Proceeding east up the river for about a mile from the Custom House, we reach the Four Courts, a magnificent and extensive pile of buildings, forming an oblong rectangle, 440 feet in front and 170 feet deep, facing the river between Richmond and Whitworth Bridges. The King’s Courts, as we have seen, occupied during the early part of the 17th century a site west of Christchurch, and were rebuilt towards the close of that century at a cost or £3500.

About the middle of the 18th century these buildings were repaired, but the accommodation afforded by them proved insufficient, and in 1786 their condition had become ruinous. The architect Cooley was directed to prepare designs for a new building on the site of the King’s Inns *(q.v.), *which had been removed to their present position in Henrietta Street in 1765.

The foundation stone of the Four Courts was laid on the 13th March 1786 by Charles, Duke of Rutland, then Lord-Lieutenant, but they were not completed for 14 years at a total cost of £200,000. The original design by Cooley had to undergo modification, as it required a greater depth from front to rear than the site afforded, and on his death, after the completion of the western wing, the work was finished by James Gandon on its present plan.

This building, resembling the Custom House in some important features, consists of a central pile, 140 feet square, surmounted by a lofty dome, having on either side recessed courts faced towards the river by rusticated screens, with entrances under ornamental archways. Between these the main building is** **entered under a portico of six Corinthian columns, having on the pediment a statue of Moses on the apex, with Justice and Mercy on either side, and on the corners of the building, over coupled pilasters, seated figures emblematical of Wisdom and Authority.

Above the entrance arch ways to the courtyards, right and left of the main building, are respectively the Royal shield and the Irish harp. Entering by the central portico, we find ourselves in the great hall surmounted by the interior dome, and forming an inscribed circle 64 feet in diameter in a great square of 140 feet, at each corner of which was one of the four original Courts-of Exchequer, Common Pleas, King’s Bench, and Chancery.

Round this hall are statues of Sir Michael O’Loghlen, William Conyngham, first Baron Plunket, Sir James Whiteside, Lord O’Hagan, Richard Lalor Shiel (One of the first Roman Catholics admitted to the Inner Bar. He was Master of the Mint in 1850**, **and was responsible for what is known as the ‘Godless Florin,’ having omitted the letters F.D. D.G. from the obverse of that coin), and Henry Joy, Chief Baron of the Exchequer.

The hall has eight openings, each having four columns, two in depth on either side, 25 feet high, standing upon sub-plinths, and fluted for the upper two-thirds of the shaft. Between the coupled pairs of these are steps of ascent into each of the Courts. In the piers between the openings are niches and small panels. The entablature is continued unbroken round the hall, and above it is an attic pedestal having in dado eight small panels over the eight openings between the columns. Each of these is adorned with a bas-relief by Edward Smyth, representing respectively William I. instituting courts of justice, King John signing Magna Charta, Henry II. granting a charter to the citizens of Dublin, and James I. abolishing the Brehon laws.

From the attic springs a nearly hemispherical dome, having in the centre a large circular opening, around which is a gallery. Through the opening is seen the space between the interior and exterior domes, similar to that of St Paul’s Cathedral, London.

Above the interior dome rises the beautiful lantern, 64 feet in diameter, ornamented by 24 Corinthian pillars, and lighted by twelve large windows, between each pair of which, resting on consoles, are colossal statues in alto-relievo representing Justice, Wisdom, Law, Prudence, Mercy, Eloquence, Punishment, and Liberty. A rich frieze of foliage runs above the heads of these statues, and is enriched with medallions of the world’s great lawgivers - Moses, Lycurgus, Solon, Numa, Alfred, Confucius, Manco Capac, and Ollamh Fodhla.

The Four Couits possess an extensive library, much frequented by practising barristers; and have likewise accommodation for judges’ chambers, jury rooms, and robing rooms, and the circular room under the exterior dome is used as a Record Chamber.

The buildings which formerly stood on this site were, as we have said, the King’s Inns, which now occupy an imposing position between Henrietta Street and Constitution Hill, near the terminus of the Midland Great Western Railway. The first of the Inns of Court established in Dublin was Collet’s Inn, founded in St. George’s Lane (now Exchequer Street), outside the eastern gate, during the reign of Edward I.** **The Exchequer of the English settlers had stood in this lane, from which it received the name of Chequer Lane. ‘Among other monuments,’ says Richard Stanihurst, ‘there is a place in that lane called now Collet’s Inns, which in old time was the Escacar or Excheker, which should implie that the prince’s court would not have kept there unlesse the place had been taken to be cocksure. ( W. Harris, *History and Antiquities of Dublin, *1766) In spite of this fancied security ‘in fine it fell out contrarie; for the district was raided *circa *1280 by the O’Tooles, who plundered the Exchequer and burned the records, which led to the removal of the Inns to a place of safety within the city walls; the site of the old Exchequer being granted, on 28th July 1362 (36 Edward iii.), in *custodium *to the Prior and friars of the Augustinian order in Dublin.

In 1334 the house of Sir Robert Preston, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, was surrendered by him for use of the Inns of Court, thence known as Preston’s Inns, situated about the place where the City Hall now stands. Here it was that ‘Silken Thomas’ planted his battery when besieging the Castle, but the site was then no longer occupied by the Inns of Court, as the Preston family had reclaimed their ancestor’s property in 1542, and the Society had received a grant of the confiscated Dominican Monastery of St. Saviour, situated on the north bank of the Liffey, and surrendered in 1506 by Patrick Hay, the last Prior, to Henry viii.

On the assumption by this monarch in 1541 of the title of King of Ireland, the Society had taken the name of the King’s Inn. The last Parliament of James ii. (1689) was held there, but in 1765, the buildings being ruinous and incommodious, the Society secured from Primate Robinson the present site, their former position being now occupied by the Four Courts.

The building was designed by James Gandon, and the stone carving was entrusted to Edward Smyth. Through the entrance is in Henrietta Street, the building really faces Constitution Hill, and consists of two wings**, **each of two storeys in height, surmounted by a pediment, and connected by a central building above which is a graceful octangular cupola.

The central building is entered by a lofty arched gateway, communicating with a similar gateway giving access to Henrietta Street. Over the latter are the Royal arms carved in Portland stone by Edward Smyth. The doorways in** the wings are flanked by fine allegorical Caryatides. Over the windows of the second storey of the north wing is an alto-relievo representing Bacchus and Ceres, attended by the Seasons, sacrificing on an antique tripod; and over the front of the north wing are Wisdom, Justice, and Prudence similarly employed, and attended by Truth, Time, and History. The finest apartment is the dining-hall, measuring 81 feet by 42 feet, ornamented with **fluted Ionic columns, and having a handsome ceiling with figures in alto-relievo, representing the four Cardinal Virtues.

The hall is adorned with portraits of legal celebrities. The Library occupies the site of Primate Robinson’s dwelling-house, and was built in 1827, at a cost of £20,000, from the designs of Frederick Darley.

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