Dublin Castle

“ It is unnecessary to say that, within the shadow of Dublin Castle, any rash man who would be unthinking enough to write or speak seriously about the history of Ireland—that protracted tragedy upon which the curtain has not yet fallen—would soon be voted a bore, or something worse, by the fashionable people who are privileged once or twice a year to kiss the hand of the representative of royalty. ”

“ The Irish formerly had a parliament of their own, but toward the close of the last century it was suppressed, and the union made complete.
The governors of Ireland have always been called viceroys, or lord-lieutenants. Dublin Castle was built for their residence, but for some time past it has been abandoned for "The Lodge," in Phoenix Park. The Castle is a massive, gloomy-looking building, now principally occupied by the military. ”

“ Dublin Castle is interesting only because of its history. It was here, by what was then the ford across the Liffey just above the tideway, that the Danish invaders built their first stronghold in 837, and from it the last of them was expelled in 1170 by Strongbow at the head of his Anglo-Norman knights; here, two years later, Henry II received the submission of the overawed Irish chiefs ”

“ Dublin prepared for a siege by burning its suburbs and devastating the country around. But though the two Bruces penetrated as far as Limerick, they did not capture a single castle or a walled town. They lost so many men during their winter campaign, that they were forced in the spring to retire to Ulster. The hopeless disunion of both parties in Ireland seemed likely to prolong the struggle indefinitely. The men of Dublin and the Earl of Ulster were at feud with each other, and the citizens captured the earl and shut him up in Dublin castle. ”

“ As befitting a prince of the blood royal, the duke made a triumphal entry into Dublin, and, guided by his wife, wisely conciliated the native chiefs and the leaders of the Anglo-Irish. They gave many banquets and entertainments in Dublin Castle, at which Irish and English mingled, quarrels being forgotten in the presence of the woman who was known as 'The Rose of Raby.' And when on October 21, 1449, she gave birth in Dublin Castle to her ninth child, George, afterwards Duke of Clarence, she diplomatically invited the Earls of Desmond and Ormonde to stand as sponsors. ”

“ That Dublin Castle rule— (hisses) —is as monstrous a failure as Irish landlordism, is a proposition which few will be found courageous enough to deny. (Cheers.) It is simply a systematised rule of national exasperation; a mode of administration as little understood by the English people, and as unrepresentative of constitutional government, as if the ill-omened edifice that stands upon Cork Hill were situated on the banks of Yang-tse-Kiang, instead of being within a few hours' sail of Liverpool. ”

“ Place-hunters abound and office-seekers are innumerable. Dublin Castle is regarded as the haven of hope for all younger sons without talent and briefless barristers hungering for a regular income. They are all suppliants of the Lord-Lieutenant, and several hundreds of years of ascendancy have given them a sense of right in receiving favours, and one of indignation and injustice in the case of refusal. But when all is said and done, the {342} outcry over jobbery in Ireland is absurd, for it is a fact that there is more jobbery in London in a month than in the whole of Ireland in a year. ”

“ The river cuts the city into two parts, which are joined by seven stone-bridges and two iron ones, and at its mouth are a good harbor and extensive docks and wharves. The trade is largely in timber, wine, cattle and agricultural produce. The Bank of Ireland, the custom-house, Trinity College, Dublin Castle, Christ Church, and St. Patrick's cathedral are among the finest buildings in the city. The cathedral of St. Patrick was founded in 1190 by John Comyn, archbishop of Dublin. One of the finest monuments in the city is that to Lord Nelson, which is 134 feet high. ”

“ S.W. of Dublin.—The Castle is an interesting object to the inquisitive tourist, originally begun in the 12th century by Strongbow, and completed by William de Mareschal, Earl of Pembroke. Great part of the ancient edifice has survived the various convulsions of civil anarchy, now repaired and beautified so as to form a conspicuous ornament to the city, on a rising ground, with a rapid descent to the Nore, and on the other sides fortified by walls and towers, the Gothic grandeur of whose remains is disfigured in the eye of taste, by a lofty marble entrance gate of the Corinthian order. ”

“ Swords Castle, near Dublin, has been a large and important castle, but little now remains except the outer wall of enceinte, which is tolerably perfect, with its battlements and alure, a square tower at the north-east corner, an entrance gateway in the centre of the south side, remains of a large hall or chapel on the east side of it, and ruins of other buildings on the west. The large room which looks like a hall has only bare walls in a dilapidated state, and remains of the canopy of a niche at the cast end, which seems to agree with the popular notion that it was a church. ”

“ Every man had his place assigned to him. The Ulster gentry under Sir Phelim O’Neill, were to seize Derry; O’More, Colonel Byrne, Lord Maguire, and Bryan O’Neale were to lead the attack on Dublin Castle, which was to be made by two hundred men, to be provided equally out of each province by the principal conspirators. ”

“ Here and there the towers of a castle or the chimneys of a villa arise from banks of foliage, and, perched along the bluff above the seashore, like the chalets of Switzerland, are comfortable cottages and mansions in which rich people from Dublin dwell. Clinging to the side of the bluff and protected by a stone wall is a splendid roadway encircling the entire bay, quite as beautiful, although on a smaller scale, as the Corniche road from Nice to Monte Carlo. ”

“ They broke up about six o'clock a.m. and marched back to Liberty Hall followed by the disheartened, miserable, frozen police.
There was another midnight mobilization later on. Announcements were made publicly that on this occasion the Irish Citizen Army would attack Dublin Castle, the center of English Government in Ireland for 600 years. The thought of such a deed never fails to fire the imagination of an Irish Nationalist. A favorite phrase of one of the officers of the Irish Citizen Army, Commandant Sean Connolly, was, "One more rush, boys, and the Castle is ours." ”

“ The Duke and Duchess determined to remain during each year for some months at their delightful retreat amid the romantic beauties of the county of Wicklow; this residence only to be interrupted by the occasional absence of the Duke to hold a levee or a privy council at Dublin Castle; the routine of state dinners, or when her Grace presided at drawing-rooms, balls, &c. or in occasionally going in state to the theatre royal, &c. &c. The autumnal months were passed at Tyrconnel Castle, but the winter invariably was spent at Dublin Castle. ”

“ The local design, as evolved by this committee, was most ingenious. A day, the 9th or 10th of May, was set for its execution, men and arms were collected, and the details carefully arranged for the seizure of Dublin Castle and the person of Ormond. According to an old usage the Lord-lieutenant was accustomed from day to day to receive petitions in person from all who cared to carry their troubles to him in this way. Taking advantage of this custom, it was proposed by the conspirators to send certain men enlisted in the enterprise into the Castle in the guise of petitioners. ”

“ Castle O'Shanaghgan is now your uncle's property, and it will soon be a place to be proud of. He is having it refurnished from attic to cellar; carpets, curtains, mirrors, furniture of all sorts have already begun to arrive from one of the most fashionable shops in Dublin. Gardeners have been got to put the gardens to rights, the weeds have been removed from the avenue, the grass has been cut, the lawns have been mown; the whole place looks already as if it had undergone a resurrection. My bedroom, dear Nora, is now a place suitable for your mother to sleep in ”

“ For the Danes had sailed up the Liffey a century before, and built a castle to command the ford, somewhere near the site of the present castle; and about this stronghold grew up the city of Dublin; and then they built other forts to the south and north and west; bands of raiders marched to and fro over the country, plundering shrines, despoiling monasteries, levying tribute, until all Ireland, with the exception of the extreme west, crouched under the Danish power. ”

“ But though one may honour the respect of the aristocracy of the land for the sovereign, yet there is no reason why those who are not of the aristocracy should be aping their betters; and the Dublin Castle business has, I cannot but think, a very high-life-below-stairs look. There is no aristocracy in Dublin. Its magnates are tradesmen—Sir Fiat Haustus, Sir Blacker Dosy, Mr. ”

“ Canst guess?—'My dear Heart, I hope these will prevent any news shall come unto you of me since my commitment to the Castle of Dublin, to which I assure thee I went as cheerfully and as willingly as they could wish, whosoever they were by whose means it was procured; and should as unwillingly go forth, were the gates both of the Castle and Town open unto me, until I were cleared: as they are willing to make me unserviceable to the king, and lay me aside, who have procured for me this restraint; when I consider thee a Woman, as I think I know you are, I fear lest you should be apprehensive. ”

“ On arriving at the Viceregal Lodge in the Phoenix Park, my brother and I were much relieved at finding that we were not expected to live perpetually surrounded by men in full uniform and by ladies in smart dresses, as we had gathered that we were fated to do during the morning's ceremonies at Dublin Castle. ”

“ A Dublin saunterer of antiquarian propensities pacing the flags in front of Christ church, or elbowing his troublesome way down the narrow defile called Castle street, can scarcely escape a certain sense of awe as he looks on the houses and the passengers, and darts a thought back through dim and troubled time till he strives to arrive at an idea of' the first inhabitants and the scene in which they played out their short parts. ”

“ At this period, and for some time after, Limerick, was "next in consequence" to Dublin. Richard the First, in the ninth year of his reign, granted it a charter to elect a mayor—an honor which London did not then enjoy, and which Dublin did not receive until a century later; and King John, according to Stanihurst, was "so pleased with the agreeableness of the city, that he caused a very fine castle and bridge to be built there." The castle has endured for above six centuries ”

“ Ruins of an old Castle 1 m. distant.
Ennis is the shiretown, and 112 m. W. from Dublin.—Curwen observes, that the approach to the town is delightful, on account of the apparent comfort of the lower classes; the town itself neat and thriving. See the neat modern Ch. surmounted by the ruins of the venerable Abbey, one of the finest in Ireland, whose long narrow windows, divided by stone railing, with the remnants of some delicate carving and other architectural ornaments, are considered by Grose as speaking its era, and the expense bestowed upon it in the 13th century. ”

“ Every mark of devotion which a desperately poor country could show was shown without stint. Accompanied by the French ambassador, amid a group of English exiles, and advancing under a waving roof of flags and festoons, hastily improvised in his honour, the least worthy of the Stuarts arrived in Dublin, and took up his residence at the castle. ”

“ With the cash he had collected he repaired to Ireland, and at Dublin was joined by twenty robust chieftains, who might have been called the Dublin stout of the thirteenth century. Returning to England in three months with an empty pocket, he became alarmed at hearing of a conspiracy among his barons. He shut himself up for fifteen days in the castle of Nottingham, seeing no one but the servants, and not permitting the door to be opened even to take in the milk, lest the cream of the British nobility should flow in with it. ”

“ As there is little aristocracy in Dublin there are few lordly dwellings besides the Vice-regal castle. This is very striking in this country of lords and serfs. The masters of the land, mostly of English origin, do not care at all to live in the capital of Ireland; all the time that they do not spend on their property they prefer to beguile away in London, Paris, Naples or elsewhere. Few of their tradesmen are Irish; and the greatest part of the rents they raise on their lands merely accumulate in the banks of Dublin to be afterwards spent on the foreign markets. ”

“ Good-night, Tom; sleep well, and don't dream of the Cape or the Caffres.”
CHAPTER VII. THE FOUNTAIN OF HONOR
That ancient and incongruous pile which goes by the name of the Castle in Dublin, and to which Irishmen very generally look as the well from which all honors and places flow, is not remarkable for either the splendor or space it affords to the inmates beneath its roof. Upheld by a great prestige perhaps, as in the case of certain distinguished people, who affect a humble exterior and very simple belongings, it may deem that its own transcendent importance has no need of accessories. ”

“ The first foundation of the elder order is attributed to Strongbow, who erected for them a castle at Kilmainham, on the high ground to the south of the Liffey, about a mile distant from the Danish wall of old Dublin. Here, the Templars flourished, for nearly a century and a half, until the process for their suppression was instituted under Edward II., in 1308. Thirty members of the order were imprisoned and examined in Dublin, before three Dominican inquisitors—Father Richard Balbyn, Minister of the Order of St. Dominick in Ireland, Fathers Philip de Slane and Hugh de St. Leger. ”