SINCE its very foundation in 1592, the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin (aka Trinity College Dublin, and hereafter TCD) has been joined at the hip to England’s two most ancient universities, Oxford and Cambridge.
In its first century, successive TCD provosts were, to a man, Anglican clerics and Oxbridge graduates. Though in scale and purpose all three universities have since changed beyond recognition, the ties persist, testimony to which is the second annual Irish Oxford-Cambridge dinner, hosted in TCD dining hall on Saturday, March 26th (hours after the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race). Toasts will be offered to the Irish and British heads of state, while Irish-born mathematician Prof John Lennox for Oxford, and UCD historian James McGuire for Cambridge, will each propose toasts to The Other Place.
For the history of TCD and its Oxbridge connections I am indebted to the late David Webb, botanist, and RB McDowell, historian, now 96, TCD dons and co-authors of a tome at once affectionate, unsparing and meticulous, Trinity College Dublin, 1592-1952(1982).
Bear in mind it was founded four years after the failed Spanish Armada.
“In such an age of fierce ideological conflict, learning was intimately related to politics,” the authors declare, “and it was clear that education might be used in Ireland as a powerful auxiliary to military force by breaking down the two great barriers to the spread of English influence, Catholicism and the Gaelic cultural tradition.” All institutions have their highs and lows. Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud, TCD chancellor, 1633-45, noted it was “as ill-governed as any college in Christendom, or worse”. In 1689 some dons fled to Oxford or Cambridge when James II’s army expelled them to house soldiers and prisoners-of-war in TCD until their defeat in the Battle of Boyne nine months later.
Throughout its history, TCD has variously mirrored and counterpointed the wider drama of Anglo-Irish relations. In 1793, long before Oxford or Cambridge, it opened its doors to Catholics. Yet in that same era, spanning the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, the 1798 Irish rising, supported by France, and the 1800 Act of Union, its ethos shifted from liberalism and Puritanism to loyalty to king and country and intolerance of dissent.
As the 19th century unfolded, TCD admitted Catholics as teaching fellows (1873) and women undergraduates (1904), following which from Oxford and Cambridge came “The Steamboat Ladies,” who had passed their final exams but by virtue of their gender were ineligible for degrees. TCD conferred on them its own degree.
In his History of Trinity College Dublin 1892-1945(1947) Kenneth Bailey described how TCD dons in 1912 declared that theirs was "an Irish university, with her roots stuck deep into the soil of her native land". The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, was clearly sceptical. During his episcopacy, 1944-70, Catholic faithful were banned from it, inspiring the doggerel verse, Young men may loot, perjure and shoot / And even have carnal knowledge / But however depraved, their souls will be saved / If they don't go to Trinity College.
The fall in Catholic undergraduate numbers in those years saw their places taken by English matriculants, Catholic and Protestant alike who, rejected by Oxford or Cambridge, preferred TCD to their own “redbrick” universities. Some Catholics, including Mary Robinson, obtained dispensations to attend TCD.
The role of Oxford and Cambridge alumini in shaping its Irish protégé is increasingly reciprocated. Working in Cambridge in the 1930s with Englishman John Cockcroft, Ernest Walton, who later returned to teach at TCD, shared the Nobel Prize (Science) for splitting the atom. Other TCD alumni now in Cambridge include professors David Ford (divinity) and Brendan Simms (international relations) with Prof Roy Foster (Irish history) at Oxford.
TCD has supplied the wider world with such wordsmiths as Jonathan Swift, Oliver Goldsmith, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, Samuel Beckett (Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature) and JP Donleavy. Neither TCD nor Cambridge will ever match Oxford (with 26 prime ministers to date), in nurturing leaders, but among TCD’s own are Edmund Burke, 19th-century New Zealand premier, Sir Edward Stafford, Jaja Anuche Wachuku (Nigeria’s first parliamentary speaker, foreign minister and UN ambassador) and two Irish presidents, Douglas Hyde and Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Refugees and Human Rights and current TCD Chancellor.
TCD and its “sister” colleges in Oxford (Oriel) and Cambridge (St John’s) pay annual tribute to one another with dons attending their respective commemorative days, Candlemas Gaudy at Oriel in February, Trinity Monday at TCD in April, and the Feast of St John Ante Portam Latinam at St John’s in May. Conceived to consolidate British rule in Ireland, TCD has become one of Britain’s most precious legacies.
Details on the 2011 Oxbridge dinner at www.alumni.ox.ac.uk or www.alumni.cam.ac.uk