IRELAND – TRINITY COLLEGE, ROBERT EMMET AND THE RISING OF 1798


Letter signed by the Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College, John FitzGibbon, first Earl of Clare ("Clare"), to the Secretary of State for War, Henry Dundas, transmitting "a list of nineteen persons Whom I have been Obliged to Expel from our University at a late Visitation of Trinity College, for having been leading and active Members of treasonable Societies formed in that house"; adding: "It will be for your Consideration whether Precautions should be taken to guard against their admission into The University of St Andrews, and If you should agree With me in Opinion that they Ought to be Excluded from Any of The British Universities, I shall be Obliged to you If you will have the goodness to transmit a duplicate of the list to The University of Edinburgh, Which I do not find to be governed As the Other British Universities Are"; with both enclosed lists present, each headed "Expelled by the Visitors April 21st 1798", the letter 2 pages, the lists 2 pages, both with integral blanks, some dust-staining, 4to, Dublin, 28 April 1798
|'LEADING AND ACTIVE MEMBERS OF TREASONABLE SOCIETIES' – THE LETTER ANNOUNCING THE EXPULSION OF ROBERT EMMET AND FELLOW STUDENTS FROM TRINITY COLLEGE IN 1798, complete with two lists of all nineteen expelled, sent by the Lord Chancellor of Ireland and Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College to William Pitt's right-hand man.A warrant for Robert Emmet's arrest was to be issued the following year; with his uprising staged in 1803. The words he is said to have spoken from the dock have helped earn him his central position in Irish nationalist tradition: 'Let no man write my epitaph... and when I am prevented from vindicating myself, let no man dare to calumniate me. Let my character and my motives repose in obscurity and peace, till other times and other men can do them justice; Then shall my character be vindicated. Then may my epitaph be written. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have done' (Richard Robert Madden, The United Irishmen: Their Lives and Times, 3rd ser., vol. 3, 1846, p. 246).As the history of Trinity reports: 'The result of the inquiry of the Visitors was the establishment of the fact that there were four committees of United Irishmen in the College, the secretaries of which were Robert Emmett, Peter M'Laughlin, the younger Corbett, and Flynn. The sentence of the Visitors was to the effect that Thomas Robinson, Scholar, who had lent his rooms for the meetings of the United Irishmen, and who had in his sworn evidence before the Visitors prevaricated in his answers, was expelled from the College. William Corbett, Dacre Hamilton, John Carroll, and David Shea, Scholars; and Thomas Corbett, Peter M'Laughlin, Arthur Newport, John Browne, and George Keough, Students, were also expelled for contumacy in refusing to be sworn, and because they had fallen into the gravest suspicion, in the opinion of the Visitors, of being acquainted with, and partakers in, a seditious conspiracy. Robert Emmett, Thomas Flynn, John Penefather Lamphier, Michael Farrall, Edward Barry, Thomas Bennett, Bernard Killen, and Patrick Fitzgerald, were expelled for contumacy in refusing to appear before the Visitors, and because there was the gravest suspicion that they were acquainted with, and had been partakers in, the conspiracy. Martin John Ferrall was expelled because he admitted that he was acquainted with, and had been engaged in, this conspiracy, and because he had not informed the authorities of it, nor had been willing to do so... These sentences were confirmed on the 1st of May, 1798, by the Duke of Gloucester, as Chancellor of the University' (The Book of Trinity College, Dublin, 1591-1891, 1892, p.88).Emmet apart, some of these are listed by Madden as United Irishmen, such as John Carroll (sentenced to transportation to Botany Bay on 28 May 1798), and the brothers Thomas and William Corbett; but others not, such as Thomas Robinson, 'a scholar, whose college rooms were a centre for radical activities and who proved to be such an unsatisfactory witness at the visitation that Clare snapped at him, "if your memory is so short you had better give up science", declared that he had withdrawn from the United Irishmen (this did not save him from expulsion)' (R. B. McDowell, 'Trinity College Dublin and Politics', Hermathena, Quartercentenary Papers, 1992, pp.115-143, p.126).