defects and losses in its earlier records. It is only wonderful
that such deficiencies and mutilations are not greater than we
find them.
After the Restoration, for something more than twenty years, the discipline of the College gradually recovered itself under the government of Provosts regularly appointed by the Crown. They were orthodox men, attached to the doctrine and discipline of the Church, educated in Dublin, or in one of the English Universities, and well acquainted with all that was necessary for a real academic education. The Puritanical party in the College was then gradually discountenanced, and the dissensions between the Provost and the Fellows, or between the Fellows themselves, which had been the pest of the College since its foundation, were at an end. The Revolutionary, or Puritanical faction, no longer had
heads of the University, to the Lord
Lieutenant and Council, for a maintenance for the College, which was
answered on the 3rd September by a
grant of £70 for the use of the
College.
It should be remembered that in
these troublous times Ireland was harassed by no less than five or six
armies. In the North Monro commanded for the Covenanters. In the
South, O'Brien, Lord Inchiquin, for
the Parliament. Two Roman Catholic
ai'mies harassed the Midland Counties.
Owen Roe O'Neill, commanding chiefly
the native Irish in the North West;
the English Roman Catholics of the
Pale joined the others of their party,
under General Preston: and the Marquis of Ormond, chiefly in the neighbourhood of Dublin, did his best to
support the Royal Cause. In addition
to these, a kind of rival Parliament,
presided over by the Papal Nuncio,
was kept up in Kilkenny, and the
rebel clans, in the vicinity of Dublin,
made perpetual incursions, even to
the very city gates.
In July, 1650, Bishop Anthony
Martin died in extreme poverty, in
the College, and, as it was said, of the
plague. For eleven years after his
death there was no legitimate Provost,
and anarchy prevailed in the College:
notwithstanding that the Puritan and
Presbyterian Samuel Winter was nominated by Oliver Cromwell in 1652,
but he never took the Provost's oath;
and occupied himself chiefly in preach-
ing, visiting in the College estates,
and baptizing children, having no fitness for the administrative duties of his
office. Nevertheless he was a well-meaning, good man. It was not surprising that when Provost Seele succeeded him, in 1 66 1, the College was
described as a place "wonderfully disjointed and out of order for many years."
