James II
its revenues, as well as those of the bishoprics of Clogher, Elphin, and Clonfert, and of numerous. livings in the gift of the Crown, were devoted to the support of the Catholic priesthood.47 The University of Dublin, which was then and for a long time afterwards entirely dependent upon the Established Church, shared in the misfortunes of that institution. A Catholic called Green was first selected to be professor of the Irish language; but, upon inquiry, no such professorship was found to exist. Dr. Moore, a Catholic priest, was afterwards appointed provost, to the disgust and irritation of the fellows. It should be added that the new provost was generally acknowledged, even by zealous Protestants, to be a man of learning and liberality; and it is said to have been due to his exertions that the college library was preserved, during the anarchy which followed the Revolution, from the violence of the rapparees.48
But to the majority of the Irish people neither the abolition of religious disabilities nor the disestablishment of the Protestant Church were objects so interesting as the recovery of the confiscated estates. Many gentlemen had, it is true, been reinstated in their properties by the ingenuity of the Chief Baron, who had formerly boasted that he would drive a coach and six
148
