Provost Huntington's injunctions to schoolmasters in 1684

tions averaged forty-five; between 1680 and 1690 the average was sixty.1 This expansion brought strains. Narcissus Marsh (provost from 1679 to 1683) found the government of the College trouble some, 'partly by reason of the ill education that the young scholars have before they come to the college, whereby they are both rude and ignorant', and he quickly became disenchanted with the '340 young men and boys in this lewd debauch'd town'.2 His successor as provost, Dr Robert Huntington, faced the same situa tion. The letter reproduced below (taken from Huntington's copy-book of letters in the Bodleian Library, Oxford)3 shows how Huntington attempted to solve the problem. Huntington, reluctant to accept office in Dublin because it removed him from his oriental studies and also ruled out marriage, nevertheless threw himself energetically into the duties of his place. He aided the completion and publication of the Irish translation of the Old Testament; he secured benefactions to com plete the new chapel and other college buildings; he became a member of the Dublin Philosophical Society.4 Also he tried, as the letter shows, to improve the quality of undergraduates and to weed out those unfitted for a university education. Whether his call for closer attention to the motives of intending entrants was effective, we do not know. The fact that the annual number of matriculations went on increasing suggests that it was not. A final point of interest is the letter's confirmation that by 1684 the college had a social, as well as religious and intellectual, function of catering