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DUB
charges brought against him, as chief governor of
Ireland; and on a false report that his father had been
imprisoned and put to death in London, he proceeded,
without making further inquiry into the truth of the
allegation, at the head of his armed followers, to St.
Mary’s abbey, where the council was sitting, threw
down the sword of state, and notwithstanding the
paternal remonstrances of the primate, Archbishop
Cromer, bade defiance to the king and declared himself
his open enemy. After ravaging Fingal, where he seized
and put to death Alan, then archbishop of Dublin, the
enemy of his family, he laid siege to the castle, but after
several ineffectual attempts to carry it by storm he
surrendered to Lord Leonard Grey, and was ulti-
mately sent to England, where he was executed with
five of his uncles, who not only had taken no part in the
insurrection, but had been active in dissuading him from
engaging in it. In recompense for the citizens’ gallant
defence, the king granted them the dissolved monastery
of All Hallows, without Dames Gate, confirmed a grant
of £49. 6. 8. made by Rich. II., and released them from
an annual rent of £20.
In 1547, the Byrnes and O’Tooles, presuming on
the weakness of the government during the minority of
Edw. VI., made frequent inroads into the neighbourhood
of Dublin, to the great annoyance of the inhabitants.
The close vicinity of the mountains and the difficulties
of the passes through which they were accessible, ren-
dered the defence of the suburbs difficult, and retalia-
tion hazardous; but at length Sir Anthony St. Leger,
lord-deputy, with a body of the standing army, and a
considerable number of the city militia, made a successful
inroad into their fastnesses, defeated them in a great
battle, killed their chief, and brought sixteen of the
Fitzgeralds prisoners to Dublin, where they were all
executed as traitors. In 1552, the mayor, at the head of
the armed citizens, being joined with the townsmen of
Drogheda, marched against the O’Reillys of Cavan,
whom they put down: but, on their return, the vic-
tory was likely to be sullied by a dispute between the
two commanders, as to the honour of leading the van-
guard; which was at last terminated in favour of the
mayor of Dublin, by an order confirming his right of
leading the van when going out, and the rear when re-
turning home.
In the first year of Queen Mary’s reign, the citizens
marched out against the Cavanaghs, who with a large
army were devastating the southern part of the county
of Dublin, and whom they routed, killing many and com-
pelling the remainder to shut themselves up in Powers-
court castle, whence, having been at length forced to
surrender at discretion, after an obstinate resistance,
they were taken to Dublin, and 74 of them executed:
the rest were pardoned.
Queen Elizabeth, in the beginning of her reign,
caused the castle to be fitted up as a residence for the
lord-lieutenant, who, previously to this arrangement, had
resided at Thomas Court. In 1579, the public records
were arranged in Birmingham tower, Dublin Castle;
and three years afterwards the courts of law were trans-
ferred from the castle to St. Mary’s abbey, which occu-
pied nearly the site of the buildings in which they are
now held on the north side of the river. In 1586, the
king’s exchequer, then held without the eastern gate on
the ground now called Exchequer-street, was plundered
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by a party of Irish from the mountains. The year 1591
is memorable for the foundation of Trinity College. In
1599, the Earl of Essex arrived in Dublin at the head
of a large army, and after his removal Sir Charles Blount,
afterwards Lord Mountjoy, who had been appointed to
succeed him in the command of the army raised
against the Earl of Tyrone, landed there with 6000
men: but his operations gave rise to no circumstances
peculiarly affecting the city.
In 1607, the Government was thrown into the
greatest alarm by a letter found on the floor of the
council-chamber in the castle, containing intimations of
a conspiracy entered into by the Earls of Tyrone and
Tyrconnell, and other northern chieftains, to seize the
city and excite a general insurrection against the Eng-
lish government. Instant measures were employed to
arrest the imputed leaders, several of whom were taken
and executed, but the two Earls had sufficient notice of
the designs against them to save themselves by flight;
their immense estates were confiscated. In 1613, a
parliament was held in Dublin, after a lapse of 27 years:
it was the first in which representatives were sent from
all the counties, and is still more remarkable for a dis-
pute respecting the election of a speaker between the
Protestant and Roman Catholic parties, which ter-
minated in the triumph of the former, and the secession
of the latter from the House of Commons. In 1614, a
convocation was held here, which established the thirty-
nine articles of religion; and a subsequent convocation,
in 1634, adopted a body of canons for the regulation of
the Established Church.
After a period of 40 years of uninterrupted tran-
quillity, both to the city and the nation, the prospect of
its further continuance was destroyed by the discovery
of a plot to seize the castle, on the 23rd of October,
1641, as the first movement of a general insurrection
against the English Government. The plan was dis-
closed by an accomplice, on the evening before the day it
was to have been put into execution, and thus frustrated
as far as the city was concerned. So little had the oc-
currence of such an event been apprehended that, in the
year before, a large portion of the city walls was allowed
to fall to ruin. To aid in their repairs, and to meet the
other urgent necessities of the state, the citizens were
called upon by proclamation to send in their plate, on
promise of repayment, an expedient which produced
only £1200 towards the relief of the public exigencies.
Next year the mayor was invited to the council, to con-
fer on a project for raising £10,000, half in money and
the remainder in provisions, to enable the king’s army
to take the field; but such was the poverty of the place,
that the project was relinquished as impracticable. On
an alarm of an intended attack on Dublin, by the Irish
forces of Owen Roe O’Nial and General Preston, in
1646, the Marquess of Ormonde, then lord-lieutenant,
determined to strengthen the city by a line of outworks
thrown up on its eastern side, between the castle and
the college. On this occasion the women set a remark-
able example of public spirit, the Marchioness of Or-
monde and other ladies placing themselves at their head,
and the whole assisting in carrying baskets of earth to
the lines. Famine, however, proved the city’s best safe-
guard. The Marquess had caused the country to be
laid waste, and the mills and bridges to be destroyed for
several miles round, so that the besieging army, amount-