Dublin Castle History

A Brief History of Dublin Castle

Chapter 1 Prehistoric Dublin

Chapter 2 Viking Dublin
Chapter 3 Norman Dublin
Chapter 4 The Revolt of Silken Thomas
Chapter 5 The Towers and Walls
Chapter 6 Dublin Castle and Tudor Conquest
Chapter 7 The Dark Side of Dublin Castle
Chapter 8 The End of the old Gaelic Order
Chapter 9 Oppression and Dispossession
Chapter 10 The Growth of Dublin Fair City
and The Great Castle Fire of 1684
Chapter 11 Rebirth of Dublin Castle
Chapter 12 The Illustrious Order of St. Patrick
Chapter 13 The 1798 Rebellion
Chapter 14 Dublin Castle in the Aftermath of the Union
Chapter 15 Dublin Castle Social Scene and ‘The Great
Hunger’
Chapter 16 The ‘Troubles’ and the End of British Rule
Chapter 17 Modern Dublin Castle
A Brief History of Dublin Castle

Dublin Castle is situated in the very heart of historic Dublin. In fact the city gets its name
from the Dubh Linn or Black Pool (dubh = black), on the site of the present Castle
Gardens and Coach House.

The Castle stands on the high ridge, the highest ground in the locality, at the junction of
the River Liffey and its tributary the (now underground) Poddle, which formed a natural
boundary on two sides. It is very probable that the original fortification on this easily
defended strategic site was a Gaelic Ringfort, which guarded the harbour, the adjacent
Dubhlinn Ecclesiastical Centre and the four long distant roads that converged nearby.

In the 930’s, a Danish Viking Fortress stood on this site and part of the town defences is
on view at the Undercroft, where the facing stone revetments offered protection against
the River Poddle. Their settlement of Dyflinn (a corruption of Dubhlinn) quickly became
the main Viking military base and trading centre of slaves and silver, in Ireland. The
Norwegian and sometimes Danish rulers had control of the Irish Sea and forayed deep
into the centre of Ireland, where monasteries, with their precious ornaments and vessels,
were easy targets. Eventually their power was broken, when they and their allies were
heavily defeated by an Irish army under the command of King Brian Boru, at the Battle
of Clontarft, 1014.

Neither the Irish nor the Vikings could withstand the Norman invasion of 1169. The
Vikings were ejected and the Normans became the next occupiers of Dublin. They
strengthened and expanded the existing town walls. It is assumed that their first
fortification was an earth and wooden, motte and bailey, on the site of present day Dublin
Castle. There is archaeological evidence of a wooden and stone castle there in the
1170’s.

In August 1204, King John of England commanded the erection of a (larger) strong
castle, with strong walls and good ditches, for the defence of the city, administration of
justice and safe custody of treasure. It was completed by 1230 and the Great Courtyard
(Upper Castle Yard) of today corresponds closely with the fortification.
The Towers of the Castle:

The south-east Record Tower is the last intact medieval tower, not only of Dublin Castle
but also of Dublin itself. It functioned as a high security prison and held native Irish
hostages and priests in Tudor times.

The Octagonal Tower, in the southern curtain wall, replaces an earlier D shaped tower
that contained loops for archers to cover attack.

The south-west Bermingham Tower can be viewed at Ship Street Gate. It also
functioned as a prison as well as storing administration records. Following an explosion,
it was taken down to first floor level and rebuilt in 1777.

The Square Tower abuts the Bermingham Tower, where the city wall crossed the moat.
It was reduced in height to form a gunnery platform, the remains of which are still
visible. Immediately outside Ship Street Gate is a stretch of medieval town wall, which
contains part of the Stanyhurst Tower. The River Poddle provided drinking water for
Dublin and now runs underground through the Castle from Ship Street gate to the Chapel
Royal and then northwards to the Undercroft.

The remains of the north-west Corke Tower partly support the modern International
Conference Centre.

The butt of the north-east (Gun) Powder Tower is visible at the Undercroft and contains
part of the 10th Century Viking town defence bank. The medieval city wall joins the
Castle at this point and there is a small gateway in the wall which gave access to the
moat.

Bedford Tower occupies the site of the original Norman Gate, which was a twin D
shaped barbican gate, with portcullis and drawbridge. It functioned as guardhouse and
prison block. The River Poddle was diverted to fill the 12.2m x 6.1m dry ditch along the
northern curtain wall, which was 3m thick to facilitate sentry patrols.
Many of the Castle’s functions adapted and changed over the centuries. It was always the
centre of the English colonial administration. It acted as the official residence of
successive royal chief representatives, under the interchangeable titles of Justiciar, Chief
Lieutenant, Lord Lieutenant or Viceroy and visiting English Kings. Their coats of arms
are displayed on the carved oak galleries and stained glass windows of the Chapel Royal.
The Castle played host to a subordinate Royal Court. It was the dungeon for state
prisoners and the seat of Parliament, which met in the Great Hall (it burnt down in the
great fire of 1684 and moved to College Green in 1731). Courts of Law and the Court of
Exchequer also met here. It was also the repository of the royal treasury and site of the
Royal mint. Army and police barracks, armaments factories and weapons stores were all
located within its precincts.

In 1565, thirty years after Henry VIII brought the Reformation to Ireland, the new Lord
Deputy Henry Sidney moved his household into Dublin Castle. From then on the Castle
became the control centre for the vicious wars and religious persecution against the Irish
Chieftains and the ‘Old English’ Catholics, many of whom were of Norman stock. By
the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the whole island of Ireland had been conquered and
new English landholding, political and social structures imposed.

The Castle had been neglected for nearly two hundred years and had become ‘ruinous,
foul, filthy and great decayed’. Sidney moved out the Law Courts and set in motion a
huge, thirteen year, building programme, which resulted in ‘a verie faire house for the
Lord Deputie or the Chief Governer to reside in’. By 1570, he had built the new
Deputie’s House, a Chapel, and Clock Tower, laid out the Castle Gardens and repaired
the Castle Ditch (or Moat).

No longer a colonial outpost, the Castle became the seat of English Government and
administration for all of Ireland. There was an influx of ambitious, Protestant English
officials, lawyers and adventurers, who came to benefit from the spoils of conquest,
reformation and the official policy of religious persecution - which was passed by statute
of the parliament in Dublin Castle in 1585. The darkest century of all began for the
native Irish and ‘Old English’ Catholics (see chapter 8).
In the disastrous fire of 7th April 1684 much of medieval Dublin Castle, including the old
Parliament House, burnt down. Connecting buildings and halls were blown up to prevent
the flames reaching the gunpowder store in the Powder Tower and the State Papers in the
Bermingham Tower. Following this, King James directed that the old walls and as many
walls as required be taken down. Rebuilding works began and more stately
accommodation replaced the medieval fortification.

So began the modern era in the Castle’s history. Charles Brooking’s map of 1728 shows
the Castle in transition, with building work well underway. Much of present-day Dublin
Castle dates from that Georgian era, including the State Apartments, which were
renovated in 1746. Trade and prosperity increased and Dublin ‘jumped its walls’,
expanded rapidly and became the second city of the British Empire.

Following the terror that accompanied the 1798 rebellion, the Irish parliament was
extinguished, and its legislative powers transferred to London. The brass chandeliers in
the Throne Room, of the Castle, commemorate this event – the Union of Great Britain
and Ireland (1800). Dublin Castle’s role as policy maker virtually ceased and the post of
Viceroy degenerated to that of figurehead. The city lost its economic momentum and
unemployment, poverty and population increased significantly.

Viceroy Wellesley moved his household to the new Viceregal Lodge in the Phoenix Park
(now the Irish President’s official residence), in the 1820’s and the Castle was then
mainly used by Government Departments, the army and the police. However, he and his
successors continued to hold court in Dublin Castle, where there had been a history of
lavish entertainment by the Viceregal Court, from the 1670’s. Successive Viceroys
encouraged the participation of the powerful Protestant, ascendancy class in the Castle
social life and it remained the focus of Anglo Irish social life throughout the 18th and 19th
Centuries, with its heady mixture of pomp and splendour, extravagance, rituals and
pageantry.

The most important social period was the six festive weeks of the Castle’s balls, leveés
and lavish dinners, which came to a climax on Saint Patrick’s Day. The Castle was
highly decorated for the duration. All staff were attired in state livery and all guests
dressed in richly ornamented clothes and splendid uniforms. Unfortunately, this
Viceregal entertainment continued undiminished throughout the Great Famine of 1845-
1849 and the lavish life style of the privileged was unaffected by the destitution of two
million people outside the gates.

The Easter Rebellion of 1916 marked the beginning of the end of British rule. The first
fatality was a policeman named O’Brien, who attempted to shut the Cork Hill Gate on an
advancing rebel party. The Guard House (the site of present day Castle Hall reception
and dining facilities) was captured, but the advantage wasn’t pressed home. The first
rebel fatality was Captain Séan Connolly, who shortly before had shot Constable
O’Brien. He was shot by army snipers, from the roof of Bedford Tower, as he raised the
rebel flag on adjacent City Hall.

James Connolly, one of the two principal rebel leaders, had been crippled in the fighting.
Following the general surrender, he was brought to the State Apartments and held for a
week at the site of the present James Connolly Room. He was court martialed and
removed to Kilmainham Gaol where he was executed by firing squad. The series of
executions of rebel leaders, which finished with Connolly’s death, caused public anger to
change to sympathy for the rebels and their cause. A vigorous guerrilla war, the ‘War of
Independence’, got underway with public support.

On 6th December 1921, the Anglo Irish Treaty was signed by which twenty-six (of the
thirty-two) counties of Ireland became the Irish Free State (now a Republic) – so ending
seven and a half centuries of English colonial rule. The rebel military commander
Michael Collins, arrived in the Upper Yard (the Great Courtyard) of Dublin Castle on
16th January 1922 and received the handover of the Castle, from the last Lord Lieutenant
FitzAlan, on behalf of the new Irish Government. Remarkably, FitzAlan’s coat of arms
occupies the final available space in the Castle’s Chapel Royal.

We are fortunate that Dublin Castle survived the subsequent Civil War, the transition to
Irish nationhood and fall into disrepair. The site has been occupied over the ages and
modified to suit its ever-changing functions. All the historic buildings have been restored
and the Castle is now fully integrated into Irish society. It now plays host to European
Union Presidencies, Heads of State, and leaders of business, industry and government. It
is also a major tourist attraction and citizens of all nations experience the varied facilities
and the unique historic layers revealed throughout the complex – from the Medieval
Tower to the world treasures of the Chester Beatty Library and from the Viking Defence
Bank to the splendid State Apartments.
Chapter 1

Prehistoric Dublin

Because of its physical isolation on the fringe of Europe and following the end of the last
Ice Age, Ireland became one of the last countries in Europe to be colonised by humans,
who first appeared about 8,000 BC - during the Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age. The
Dublin region was first inhabited, by hunter-gatherers, approximately seven thousand
years ago. The first farmers appeared in the Neolithic, or New Stone Age. These were
the first to erect stone monuments and evidence of their cultures survive in the burial
cairns on the nearby Dublin Mountains and the Boyne Valley tumuli. Archaeological
excavations east of Dublin Castle, in Suffolk Street, uncovered prehistoric copper axe
heads, which suggests long established occupation in the immediate vicinity of the
Castle.

One of the murals in the Erin Room, State Apartments, depicts the five legendary ancient
invasions of Ireland. The first inhabitants were the Partholonians, who settled in the plain
immediately north of the Liffey and were wiped out by a plague. Next came the
Nemedians, who were killed off by sea pirates. The Fir Bolg were defeated by the fourth
wave of invaders - the Tuatha de Danann – the people of the goddess Dana, (at the 1st
Battle of Moytirra). The Celts (Gaels or Milesians - led by the sons of Mil) arrived after
500 BC, at the beginning of the Iron Age. They overcame the Tuatha de Danann (who
became the ‘fairy folk’ of Irish folklore). Ireland today is unique in being a self-
governing Celtic country.

Dublin originated in the area in and around present day Dublin Castle, on the southern
bank of the estuary of the River Liffey where it entered Dublin Bay. The bay, in the Iron
Age, covered much of the present day city centre, including O’Connell Street and Trinity
College. The Liffey is estimated to have been at least four times wider than at present
and was known in the Irish language as ‘An Ruirthech’ – the tempestuous one. It
justified its name in 770AD, when a raiding party from the Kingdom of Ulster was
drowned, as it returned victorious from the Battle of Áth Cliath. It remained liable to
flash flooding until being harnessed by the erection of hydro dams, upriver, in the last
century.

Áth Cliath, the Ford of the Hurdles, was an important tidal, river crossing and is believed
to have been on the site of present day Church Street/Fr. Matthew Bridge/Bridge Street
area - 1 km west of Dublin Castle. It was made of wattles woven together and anchored
by posts to the Liffey bed. It was also the name of the adjacent fishing and farming
settlement and is today the Gaelic name for Dublin.

It is most probable that a Gaelic Ringfort existed on the present Castle site, which was the
easily defended ‘Druim Choll Coill’ or Hazelwood Ridge and the highest point in the
locality. The four great long distant roadways, or ‘slighe’ - meaning tree clearances,
converged between Dublin Castle and nearby Christchurch Cathedral, with the western,
Slighe Mór, continuing to the present Castle site. In addition, this site was protected on
two sides by the (now underground) River Poddle, which skirted the great ridge before
discharging into the Liffey

These settlements were little more than villages, as the Irish preferred to live in rural
settlements. However, following St. Patrick’s conversion of the local Chieftain,
MacEchold and a large number of his followers, in 450, many monasteries and schools
were founded in the immediate vicinity.

In the area occupied by the present Dubhlinn (Castle) Gardens and Coach House, there
was a sheltered harbour or dark pool, (on the Poddle), known as the Dubhlinn (dubh =
black in Irish), from which Dublin gets its name. The Dubhlinn was a staging post for
exports and imports for the Ecclesiastical centre immediately to the south. The present
day curving street pattern of Stephen Street, Whitefriar Street and Peter’s Row may
preserve the outline of the Dubhlinn Ecclesiastical enclosure, which took its name from
the harbour. The ringfort guarded this harbour, which provided a safe haven for vessels
and had easy access to Dublin Bay.
Chapter 2

Viking Dublin

In 837 sixty Viking ‘Dragon’ warships appeared at the mouth of the Liffey. Five years
later, the harbour of Dublin was taken by a Norwegian force, under the command of King
Turgesius. They then ‘threw up a fort on the high ridge where Dublin Castle later
arose’. The River Poddle formed a natural boundary on two sides and would have been
of primary importance in the choice of this site. They were expelled by the local Irish
and their stronghold was burnt down.

However, they returned seventeen years later, under the command of Olaf the White,
with Danish colleagues and in greater numbers. This time they settled on the, still
evident, hill with Dublin Castle at the east and St. Audeons at the west. They set up a
permanent ‘longphort’ or ship camp, which became their pirate layer and their main
centre for trading silver and slaves. This quickly developed into a thriving organised
settlement, the centre of their kingdom of Dyflinnarskiri - which stretched along the coast
from Skerries to Wicklow and up the Liffey valley as far as Leixlip.

It is from this town of Dyflinn (a corruption of Dubhlinn) that urban Dublin developed.
It was divided into a network of streets, pathways, houses and plots, with industrial areas
set aside for the manufacture of clothes and ornaments. Their market place appears to
have been at the present junction of Castle Street and Werburg Street and the King’s
Palace stood on the present Castle site. Archaeological excavations have located the
remains of some 10th and 11th Century houses, immediately outside the Castle walls in
Castle Street. The thatched rectangular houses had post and interwoven wattle walls,
covered with a mixture of mud and dung.

They fortified this, their chief settlement in Ireland, with encircling earthen banks topped
with strong wooden palisade fencing. Part of the town defences is on view at the
Undercroft in Dublin Castle, where the facing stone revetments offered protection against
erosion by the Poddle.
They controlled the Irish Sea with their powerful naval fleet. However, they with their
Orkney Viking and Leinster Irish allies were decisively defeated on Good Friday 1014 at
the Battle of Clontarf, by a Munster army under the legendary King Brian Boru. They
paid tribute to the Irish, were allowed to remain and were still in Dyflinn one hundred
and sixty years later, when the Normans arrived at their gates.
Chapter 3

Norman Dublin

The Normans were ‘grandchildren’ of the Vikings who had settled in north-west of
France in the 9th Century and following the Battle of Hastings in 1066, conquered
England. By 1100 they ruled southern Italy and were establishing the Crusader States in
Palestine.

Dermot McMurragh, King of Leinster, was ejected by the new High King of Ireland,
Rory O’Connor and fled to the court of King Henry II in Aquitaine. There he received
royal protection and permission to recruit mercenaries. It was perfect timing as Henry
Nicholas Breakspear, son of an English Cistercian monk, had become Pope Adrian IV
and gave papal approval for a conquering crusade of ‘heathen’ Ireland.

The Anglo-Norman invasion began with the landing at Baginbun, Co. Wexford in 1169.
‘At Baginbun Ireland was lost and won’. Neither the Irish nor the Vikings could match
nor withstand the Norman’s advanced military technology of chain mail clad heavy
cavalry, backed by Welsh longbows – equipment previously unknown in Ireland.
Wexford was taken and the next year they force marched through the ‘impenetrable’
Wicklow Mountains and arrived at the gates of Dublin. They attacked Dame Gate (at the
present day junction outside Palace Street Gate). A second attack by shock troops at the
Christchurch end of town proved decisive. ‘The Vikings were slaughtered in their
citadel’ – and so Dublin became a Norman settlement.

King Rory O’Connor laid siege on the town for two months. The position of the Norman
defenders was perilous when Strongbow led a surprise sortie and scattered O’Connor’s
forces, at the site of present day Phoenix Park. Tiernan O’Rourke, Prince of Breifne,
attacked Dublin three times in 1171. First his son was killed and then he was killed in
battle. It would be almost three and a half centuries before Dublin would sustain such
assault again - the next would be that of Silken Thomas in 1534.

The Vikings were forced out and settled in Oastmantown (Norse Town), now
Oxmanstown, on the north side of the Liffey. King Henry II arrived in September 1171,
in order to keep his adventurers in check, to assert his rule and to receive the submission
of Irish Bishops and Chieftains. One of Valdre’s ceiling paintings in St. Patrick’s Hall
commemorates the submission of Irish Chieftains to Henry. He also ‘granted, to his men
of Bristol (England), his city of Dublin to be inhabited, together with all the liberties and
free customs they had at Bristol and throughout his entire land’.

The Normans strengthened the Norse walls, widened them to 1.5m and raised them to
5.6m high. They normally consolidated each territorial gain with a castle. It can be
assumed that their first castle in Dublin was a motte and bailey – a huge steep earthen
mound with wooden tower on top and palisade enclosure and deep ditch at the base - on
the present Dublin Castle site. Archaeological evidence in the Bermingham Tower area,
showed that there was a wooden and stone castle on this site in the 1180’s.

On the 30th August 1204, King John of England commanded the erection of a (larger)
strong castle with strong walls and good ditches, for the defence of the city,
administration of justice and safe custody of treasure. The construction of Dublin Castle
was completed by 1230 and Henry de Londres, Justiciar and Archbishop of Dublin, is
credited with this major engineering achievement. The Great Courtyard (the Upper
Castle Yard) of today corresponds closely with that fortification.

For a while, Dublin had sustained economic growth and the population, including
suburbs, may have reached 10,000. However, the Norman townspeople were vulnerable
to attacks by the Irish Clans and fear of such violence was ever present. The O’Byrnes
and the O’Tooles, made frequent incursions from their strongholds in the Dublin and
Wicklow Mountains. The Castle treasury became depleted as demands were made of the
Justiciar to finance military campaigns in Wales and Scotland. The neglect and near
bankruptcy of the administration prompted an Irish resurgence.

The fragile and precarious nature of the conquest was evident when Edward the Bruce,
brother of Robert – King of Scotland, landed with an army in 1315, to set up a united
Celtic Kingdom. He was joined by many Irish Chieftains and crowned King of Ireland.
At the battle of Ardscull (Co. Kildare) he defeated the army of Justiciar Edmund Butler.
The Dubliners ‘broke the bridge of Dublin’, demolished a number of buildings and used
the stone to strengthen the town defences. Lacking a siege train, Bruce could not press
his advantage and so, Dublin and the royal administration was saved.

Thirty years later (1348) a far more deadly enemy hit Dublin. The Bubonic Plague,
known as the ‘Black Death’, had a deadly effect on the confined crowded town of
Dublin, where the woodened framed, plastered, houses were two or three stories high and
where a citizen could walk from one side of town to the other in less than nine minutes.
The plague thrived in these conditions and some contemporary writers hailed it as ‘the
end of the world’. It left a base of infection in the town that was to surface for decades to
come.

In 1394, King Richard II came with a great army and many Irish Chieftains submitted to
him at his residence in Dublin Castle. Irish Kingship differed completely from the
English model of direct inheritance by eldest son. An Irish King was elected by his
people and if he submitted, could be and often was, deposed and the position given to the
‘best man for the job’ - who was not necessarily from his immediate family. Richard’s
temporary success could only have been maintained by a sustained effort, for which the
means were not available. His second military expedition of 1399 cost him his crown.
While he was in Ireland, Henry Bollingbrook, of the opposing House of Lancaster,
returned from exile and rallied support. He was crowned Henry IV in Westminster
Abbey after Richard was murdered, at the age of 33, at the Tower of London.

This caused the English dynastic quarrel that later burst into the 30 year, ‘War of the
Roses’, between the Houses of Lancaster and York. During the 15th Century, England
was marked by a succession of wars and revolts and Ireland was ‘not on anyone’s
agenda’. The 100 Years War was reopened with France, and the English armies won a
series of victories including the famous Battle of Agincourt. However, they were soon
undermined by the campaigns of Joan of Arc and within a generation, all the conquests
were lost.

Meanwhile, the existence of the Irish colonial outpost became even more precarious and
starved of resources, it shrank rapidly, until the Dublin Government was effective only in
the ‘four obedient counties of the Pale’ – i.e. Dublin, Louth, Kildare and Meath. That
situation was to change dramatically, with the accession of the Tudor dynasty to the
English Crown.
Chapter 4

The Revolt of Silken Thomas

Beyond the Pale, the great Anglo Irish magnates held power. One of the strongest was
Garret Mór Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare. He was the most powerful Lord Deputy of all and
held that position, not at Dublin Castle, but at his stronghold at Maynooth Castle, (which
is open to visitors) until his death in 1513. A report of the time stated that Dublin Castle
‘wherein the courts are kept is ruinous and likely to fall’.

As the Kildares had backed the opposing Yorkist claim to the English throne, the Tudor
King Henry VIII, who had recently broken with the Papacy, summoned Garret Mór’s
son, Garret Óg, to London in 1533. Garret left his Lord Deputy duties to his 21-year-old
son Thomas - known as Silken Thomas because of the silk worn on his followers
helmets.

Henry was anxious to extinguish the power of the ‘Old English’ Fitzgerald dynasty and
false rumours spread that Garret had been executed in the Tower of London. Silken
Thomas reacted rashly. On the 11th June 1534, he rode through Dublin with a large band
of followers, entered the Chapter House of St. Mary’s Abbey (which is also open to
visitors) where the King’s Council were awaiting him and flung down his Sword of State.
This was a dramatic act of defiance, by which he hoped to force his claim to power.
Henry VIII treated it an act of open revolt and confined Garret Óg and his brothers to the
Tower, where Garret died two months later.

John Allen the fifty-seven year old, Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Dublin, was an
enemy of the Kildares. He sought refuge in Dublin Castle, but fearing for his safety, tried
to escape to England. He left in a small boat via the Poddle and transferred to a larger
boat moored on the Liffey. This ran aground in Dublin Bay and he was later discovered
in a friend’s house. Silken Thomas handed him over to his supporters, who ‘brained and
hacked him in gobbets’.
Thomas’s men cut the water supply to Dublin. The Constable of the Castle, John White,
heard of this and that Thomas was holding citizens hostage and so had supplies delivered
to the Castle. The siege began.

Cannons and handguns had taken over from traditional siege engines a century earlier
and made even heavily fortified castles vulnerable. Thomas’s first assault was made with
three falcon cannons directed at the main Castle Gate. However, they were too light and
the town citizens turned on the besiegers, many of who were captured or killed. Then he
turned his attack to Ship Street but his men ‘were dislodged by the ordnance of the
fortress’. This attack is commemorated on the front wall murals of Osmond House,
directly outside Ship Street Gate. Thomas was then side tracked by his archenemy, the
Anglo Irish Butlers of Kilkenny. When he returned to Dublin, he found the gates shut in
his face and his final attack went badly wrong.

A relief force, under the newly appointed Lord Deputy, William Skeffington, arrived and
laid siege to his Kildare stronghold of Maynooth Castle. When the occupants agreed to
surrender terms, they were promptly put to death. This is still remembered as the ‘Pardon
of Maynooth’.

The fall of the House of Kildare further facilitated the dawning of a new era of English
power in Ireland.
Chapter 5

The Towers and Walls of Medieval Dublin Castle

The Great Courtyard (The Upper Castle Yard enclosure) today corresponds closely
with the medieval castle.

The south-east Record Tower is the last intact tower, not only of Dublin Castle but also
of the town itself. It was the mightiest of all with 4.6m thick walls – very suited to its
function as a high security prison. The Irish Chieftain, Red Hugh O’Donnell, made his
second and successful escape from here, on the evening of the 12th January 1592. He was
being held to guarantee the good behaviour of his father, at the time of the attempt of the
Spanish Armada to invade England.

The D Shaped Tower in the southern curtain wall was replaced following the disastrous
fire of 1684 and the present Octagonal Tower is on its approximate site. The original
tower had loopholes for archers to cover attack from the south and to provide effective
cover for the adjoining walls.

The south-west Bermingham Tower and its adjoining buildings served as the main cell
and dungeon block in the Castle. It was named after Sir William Bermingham who was
arrested and imprisoned there, in 1331 by the newly appointed Viceroy, Sir Anthony
Lacey. Bermingham was hanged for treason, ‘notwithstanding his great military services
against the natives’. Following structural damage caused by an explosion in the nearby
armoury, this tower was taken down to its first floor level and rebuilt in 1777 with thinner
walls and ornate internal decoration.

The Square Tower abutted the Bermingham Tower, where the city wall crossed the
moat. It was reduced in height to form a gunnery platform, the remains of which are still
visible at Ship Street Gate.

Immediately outside this gate is a stretch of the medieval town wall, which contains a
substantial remnant of Stanyhurst Tower. James Stanyhurst was one of the boy hostages
taken by Silken Thomas’s men during his rebellion. Later he became Mayor of Dublin
and Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. He also worked for a time in the Castle as
‘Recorder of the City’.

The remains of the north-west Corke Tower partly support the modern International
Conference Centre. This was originally three storeys high and included a dungeon. It
was weakened and collapsed following a gunpowder explosion at nearby Wood Quay, on
11th March 1596 and rebuilt by the Lord Treasurer, Richard Boyle.

Bedford Tower occupies the site of the original Norman gate. It was a twin D shaped
guard house and prison block unit, with portcullis and drawbridge. The River Poddle,
which forms a natural defence on the south and east sides of the Castle, had been diverted
to fill the 18m x 9.1m Castle ditch along this northern curtain wall, which was 3m thick
to facilitate sentry patrols. This was then a more substantial river, part of which was
divided to provide drinking water for the citizens of Dublin. It now flows underground
through the Castle, from Ship Street Gate to the Chapel Royal, then northwards near the
Undercroft, before entering the River Liffey at Wellington Quay.

The butt of the five-story north-east Powder Tower is visible at the Undercroft and
contains part of the Viking town defence bank. The moat narrowed here to allow the city
wall join the castle over an arch. This, still visible, double archway allowed the moat to
fill from the Poddle and provided access for small feeder boats to deliver provisions
through the postern gate in the wall, from larger vessels moored on the Liffey. This
tower was originally five stories high and the Lord Deputy occupied the top floor. Later
it stored gunpowder. Archaeological excavations found plates of iron and off cuts and
mounts of bronze and buckles, which indicate that it may have contained the workshop of
an armourer in the 14th Century.
Chapter 6

Dublin Castle and Tudor Conquest

The Irish Reformation Parliament, met under Lord Lieutenant Grey, in 1535 and declared
King Henry VIII of England to be ‘supreme head of the Irish Church’ - following the
divorce of his first wife of 23 years, Catherine of Aragon. She was the youngest daughter
of Ferdinand and Isobel of Spain and had failed to produce a son. She could be
considered fortunate, in that Henry executed his second wife for that same reason.

The Augustinian Priest George Brown, who married Henry to Ann Boleyn, succeeded the
murdered Archbishop Allen and became the new Archbishop of Dublin. He set about the
destruction of ‘Romish’ relics and images on a large bonfire outside Christchurch
Cathedral. The dissolution of the monasteries and the ‘disrobing of the Churchmen’ had
begun. All but one site were acquired by government supporters or demolished and used
as building material. The Abbey of St. Mary de Hogges at College Green was
demolished and the materials carried away for repair works to Dublin Castle.

Henry himself gave the Priory of All Hallows to the ‘Mayor, bailiffs, commons and
citizens of Dublin and their successors forever’ as a reward for their support during
Silken Thomas’s rebellion (see Chapter 4). It provided the site for the new University of
Trinity College, which Queen Elizabeth I (the last Tudor monarch and daughter of Henry
VIII and Ann Boleyn) said was to be for “the education, training and instruction of
youths in the study of the liberal arts and in the cultivation of virtue and religion”.

The Castle was now becoming the seat of a series of Lord Deputies who were powerful,
ambitious, Protestant Englishmen and the headquarters of a horde of officials, lawyers
and adventurers who came to benefit from the spoils of conquest and reformation. Force
‘when necessity requireth’ was applied with unprecedented savagery against the ‘Old
English’ as well as the native Irish.

On the 25th February 1570 Pope Pius V excommunicated Queen Elizabeth as a heretic
and declared that her ‘subjects’ owed her no allegiance, spiritual or temporal. As a result,
the allegiance of the Irish subjects became of major concern to the English Crown.
Martial Law allowed total power over life and death and was normally applied only as a
temporary measure. It proved to be successful in Laois and Offaly and its application
was extended to the whole country. Furthermore it paid for itself, those implementing it
being entitled to one third of ‘traitors’ goods. Summary executions became
commonplace and no section of society was safe. The Irish Chieftains were powerless to
protect their people.

The Lord Deputy, Sir Henry Sidney, wrote the following about the deaths of Irish varlets
since his arrival, under ordinary and martial law, in a letter to the Privy Council in 1573:
‘I assure you that the number of them is great, and some of the best, and the rest tremble
for the most part…Down they go in every corner and down they shall go’. The following
year fifty O’Moores of Laois were treacherously killed having agreed to attend a ‘parley’
with crown officials at Mullaghmast, Co. Kildare. The ambush had been carried out in
accordance with a commission signed by Sidney, on the 18th March. The main
perpetrator was knighted.

Sidney moved his household into Dublin Castle, which had been neglected for nearly two
hundred years. It had become ‘ruinous, foul, filthy and greatly decayed’. He set in
motion a huge thirteen-year building programme, which resulted in a ‘verie faire house
for the Lord Deputie or the Chief Governor to reside and dwell in’. By 1570 he had built
the Deputy’s House on the south side of the Castle, including a Clock-Tower and a new
Council Chamber on the north side. He was also responsible for the laying out of the
Castle Gardens on the site of the old Dubhlinn. In 1582 the Law Courts moved across the
Liffey, to the site of the dissolved ‘Priory of Friars Preachers’ - the present day Four
Courts.

To Sidney the position of Lord Deputy had been a thankless job. No one questioned his
record but Elizabeth felt that he was too ambitious and in 1578, unjustly charged him
with squandering her money. He had spent too much of his personal fortune in Ireland
and his son Phillip depended on his uncle, the Earl of Stafford, to maintain him. Sidney’s
health had suffered from the Irish campaigns. On retirement, he described himself as
being ‘fifty-four years of age, toothless and rambling and £5,000 in debt’. He became
increasingly disillusioned and circulated papers criticising England’s Irish policy.
The new English of Elizabeth’s administration saw Ireland and it’s natives as a territory
and a population to be conquered and civilised, much as the Spanish “Conquistadores” of
the same century saw South America. Sir John Davies the Irish Attorney General stated
that “a barbarous country must first be broken by war before it will be capable of good
government”. The Lord Lieutenant Essex (Robert - 1599-1603) wrote that “reformation
and total conquest was the only way to subdue Ireland”. Religious persecution caused
the once unimaginable to happen - the ‘Old English’ Catholics and their long time
enemies, the Gaelic Irish, combined and their hostility to English rule flared. There were
no less than six separate rebellions in a short space of time.

The poet Spencer spent nine years in Dublin Castle as Secretary to Lord Grey, where he
wrote his masterpiece ‘The Faerie Queen’. He summed up the horror of the time and the
futility of the final days of conquest, where each side traded atrocity for atrocity: “Why
must it go on? - Because it has already gone too far!”. It did end, but the hostility of the
now united ‘Old English’ and the Gaelic Irish Catholics to English rule did not.

Queen Elizabeth wrote to her Lord Deputy at Christmas: ‘The mighty hand of the
Almighty’s Power hath showed manifestly the force of his strength in the weakness of the
fairer sex’. Her forty-five year reign which ended in 1603, was a golden age for England
– the age of Shakespeare, but conversely was the darkest time for Ireland and the Irish
whom she described as ‘vile rebels’. Ireland had been totally conquered and Dublin
Castle had become in reality the centre of English Government and administration, the
full time residence of the Lord Deputy and the meeting place of the Council.
Chapter 7

The Dark Side of Dublin Castle

The Parliament that assembled in Dublin Castle in 1585 passed a statute making Catholic
Priests and seminarians guilty of treason simply by being present in Ireland. The
possibility of religious wars and pogroms was always present. Dublin Castle viewed
newly ordained Priests returning to Ireland from mainland Europe as fulfilling the dual
role of pastor to their flock and agitator for the religious Counter Reformation. Some of
them were.

This was the political and social atmosphere that Dermot Hurley the new Catholic
Archbishop of Cashel met with on his return in 1581, from his position of Dean of Law at
Louvain. He was recognised in the company of the Baron of Slane, Thomas Fleming and
was reported to the Council in Dublin Castle by Fleming’s first cousin, Sir Robert Dillon,
Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. Fleming, who was now under accusation of treason -
punishable by death, hurried after the Archbishop. He caught up with him at Carrick-on-
Suir and pleaded with him to go to Dublin Castle to clear his name. Almost incredibly,
Hurley did so. He walked into the Castle and was immediately arrested and imprisoned.

The unimaginable horror of imprisonment in chains in Dublin Castle, that ‘dark dismal
and fetid prison’, became his living hell for the next eight months. He was interrogated
under barbarous torture, his feet boiled in oil, but he had no information to give. By
order of Queen Elizabeth, Lord Deputy Perrot signed the writ for his execution on the
19th June 1584 and he was hanged early next morning on the Parkgate gallows, near the
entrance to the Phoenix Park.

At that time there were thirty-one hostages, three priests and one Bishop held in Dublin
Castle. One of them, the seventy-seven year old widow Mrs. Margaret Bell, was dying.
She was a committed ‘Old English’ Catholic who had been discovered attending Mass in
her own home. Her son Walter, Mayor of Dublin, had her arrested and drawn through
the streets on a wooden hurdle, as she couldn’t walk. The conditions of this, her second
imprisonment in Dublin Castle, proved too harsh for her failing health and she died in
captivity three years later.
The great irony was that prisoners had to pay for their imprisonment, including bed
nights and meals. While those rich enough could have their servants with them, inability
to pay necessitated dependence on charity and the meagre donations of Parliament. In
effect this often led to near starvation and postponement of release dates, until debts were
settled in full.

Shortly after the recent Desmond rebellion had been crushed with unprecedented
slaughter, Eleanor Countess of Desmond spent eight months in Dublin Castle with her
children. Her husband, her parents, her aunt, her brother and her brother-in-law had all
been imprisoned in the Castle at one time or another. Following here release she wrote
that they endured extreme want and were almost famished. On occasions Lord Deputy
Perrot took pity on them and sent them a dish from his table. One of Desmond’s sons, an
eight-year old boy had been sent to the Castle and later to the Tower of London as a
hostage. He wrote this dejected note from his cell: “I am young yet old in misery. I have
never, since my infancy, breathed out of prison”. He died in 1601, not long after release
from twenty-two years imprisonment.

Mortal Combat took place in Dublin Castle on the site of the present Upper Yard during
1583. Conor and Teigh of the O’Connor Clan were involved in a dispute that normally
would have been settled by a feud. As this would have violated a declared truce, Conor
resolved to use the law and approached the Lord Justice who recommended that he press
charges. Teigh, the accused, travelled to Dublin where he, in turn, was persuaded to
bring charges of high treason against Conor. It was further decreed that mortal combat
was the only remedy.

At 9 o’clock the following morning before they could change their minds, they were
paraded into the Castle Yard that had been decorated in medieval tournament fashion for
the occasion. The Lords Justices were on a dais and the galleries were full with military
officers, their wives and the leading citizens of Dublin.

The combatants were stripped to their waist and armed only with shield, sword and
skullcap. The trumpet sounded and after some hesitation, on both their parts, they were
warned that their lack of action mocked the Queen’s justice and that either they fought to
the death ‘to prove their innocence’ or both would be executed. The struggle then began
in earnest. Conor, the smaller of the two, was wounded twice in the leg and once in the
eye and found his adversary too strong for him. Teigh, who had held back, received a
slash in the ribs. Angered, he struck out so forcefully that he beheaded his opponent. He
then presented Conor’s head, on the point of his sword, to the Lords Justices. Teigh and
Conor were seen as traitorous fools and the Gaelic world resolved to observe their own
Brehon Laws and avoid the Queen’s Bench.
Chapter 8

The End of the old Gaelic Order

Red Hugh O’Donnell, son of the Earl of Tyrconnell made a dramatic escape from the
Record Tower on the 6th June 1592. He returned to Co. Donegal and assumed leadership
of his Clan. He united with his neighbour, Hugh O’ Neill, the head of the confederacy of
Ulster Chieftains, and began a major campaign of open revolt against the English
garrisons in Ulster, which was the least anglicised province of Ireland. They achieved
many victories in the Nine Years War and nearly succeeded in their goal, when they
dramatically defeated an English army at the ‘Battle of the Yellow Ford’ – a defeat ‘that
shook the Dublin administration till it tottered’. Dublin’s normal compliment of 1,200
armed soldiers was seriously depleted and the town left inadequately defended, as many
were sent to the war. A report in the Calendar of State Papers of October 1597 describe
that ‘the rebels rage all over the Pale, so that almost no part of it is free from their
killings, burnings, preying and despoiling’.

Following their victories, O’Neill and O’Donnell force-marched their army in the midst
of winter, to the southern coast of Co. Cork in order to relieve a Spanish invasion force of
3,500 men under Don Juan de Agila. They had landed at Kinsale on the 21st September
to help the Irish cause and were under siege by forces of the new Lord Deputy Mountjoy.
The last stand of Gaelic Ireland took place in the early hours of Christmas morning 1601,
when they were beaten by superior discipline and routed in open warfare at the Battle of
Kinsale - the Spanish failing to take part.

O’Donnell went to Spain in another attempt to get help, but Phillip II was short of money
for another such expedition. He died in mysterious circumstances at Simicas and was
believed to have been poisoned by Blake - an agent of the Lord Deputy. O’Neill, a hunted
man, eventually gave up his guerrilla war, submitted to Lord Deputy Mountjoy and
signed the ‘Treaty of Melifont’ on the 30th March 1603. He was taken to Dublin Castle
where he received a pardon and was informed that Queen Elizabeth had died six days
previously. He is reported to have been unable to hold back his tears.
On 4th September 1607, feeling threatened by the influx of settlers and the persecutionary
policies of the new Lord Deputy, Arthur Chichester, O’Neill and the new Chieftain Rory
O’Donnell, sailed from Rathmullin, Co. Donegal, with one hundred followers, never to
return. This exodus of the great Irish Chieftains was a total disaster for the Gaelic Irish;
who now had no protection against what was foreign domination and assimilation. This,
the ‘Flight of the Earls’ has long been lamented by successive generations of poets and
bards. “This night sees Éireann desolate, our very souls pass overseas”.

The Earls were convicted of high treason and their lands forfeited. Lord Deputy
Chichester saw his opportunity for immediate removal of the Irish and replacement with
‘loyal subjects’. He put this plan to the English Council to ensure that rebellion would
never again take place in Ulster and it was accepted. Two years later the ‘Articles of
Plantation’ stated that the majority of Irish Catholics should be removed to specially
designated areas – an idea similar to the later North American Indian reservations.
Chichester, who later became founder and First Baron of Belfast, stated in his notes of
remembrance that he had killed all the Irish he had come across, irrespective of sex or
rank.

The former Earls’ lands of Counties Donegal, Derry, Tyrone, Armagh and Fermanagh
were targeted for colonisation. That same year, 1609, he urged “motives and reasons to
induce the Citie of London to undertake plantation in the North of Ireland”. The City of
London Guilds, were granted the area and Derry was named Londonderry. The use of
either name - Derry or Londonderry, still signifies political allegiance. This plantation
was a relocation of people on a massive scale, far greater than had been previously
attempted and proved to be permanent. By 1700 approximately 170,000 planters
including thirteen thousand Lowland Scots settled in these ‘new lands’. Native labour
was required to make the land viable and in 1628, the Government allowed Irish tenants
to live on one quarter of the lands.

The grievances of the dispossessed Irish festered and exploded in the Rebellion of 1641.
A confederate army marched on Dublin and came close to capturing the city. However
the plot to take Dublin Castle was betrayed and the attempted seizure thwarted. In Ulster,
upwards of 80 Protestants were killed at Portadown Bridge and possibly 12,000 in all
during the six months of the rebellion. These atrocities sent a shock wave through the
Ulster Protestant community that is still remembered today. A Catholic Confederate
army which supported King Charles I of the House of Stuart, was led by Owen Roe
O’Neill, the Spanish born nephew of Red Hugh, defeated an English army at the Battle of
Benburb. King Charles was deposed and beheaded after the English Civil War.

The army of the royalist Lord Lieutenant Ormonde was defeated by that of
Parliamentarian Colonel Michael Jones at the Battle of Rathmines, 1649. In retaliation
for the disloyalty of the Irish, the newly appointed Lord Lieutenant, Oliver Cromwell
was sent to Ireland by the English Parliament. He landed in Dublin in 1649 with an
invasion force of 4,000 cavalry and 7,000 soldiers. In a short ferocious campaign, 4,000
towns’ people of Drogheda and Wexford were massacred. All opposition was crushed
and Cromwell gave the ‘disloyal Irish’ the choice of going ‘to Hell or to Connaught’ –
which is the least fertile of Ireland’s four provinces. While in Ireland, his home was in
Dublin Castle and one of his sons was born there. After Cromwell’s death, the English
monarchy was restored under Charles II, son of Charles I. Cromwell’s body was
disinterred at Westminster Abbey and ceremonially executed.

The Dutch, Protestant, Prince William of the House of Orange (son-in-law of Charles I)
deposed the Catholic King James II (brother of Charles II & brother-in-law of William
of Orange) and became King William III of England. James landed in Kinsale on the 12th
March 1689, with the intention of regaining his crown throughout Ireland. He marched
to Dublin accompanied by the French Ambassador, French, Jacobean and Irish Officers
with 6,000 French soldiers that were supplied by King Louis the XIV, who was at war
with the Netherlands.

Leaving Dublin Castle, James proceeded in full procession to King’s Inns, where the
Parliament convened, reversed the ‘Act of Settlement’ and other penal restrictions and
resolved that the Parliament of England could not legislate for Ireland. On the 7th May,
Ireland possessed a complete and independent government. He had the Dean of St.
Patrick’s imprisoned in the Castle’s Wardrobe Tower (the present Record Tower) and
marched north to Derry with an army of largely Irish Catholics but which also contained
Protestant royalists. However the Presbyterians of Derry refused to recognise him as
their Monarch and on the 7th of December 1689, slammed the gates of the town before
King James’s ‘Redshanks’. Non-combatants were allowed to leave and over the next 105
days, starvation and disease crippled the city. The Siege of Derry was eventually lifted
by ‘hesitant’ Williamite ships, which breached the boom across the River Foyle. ‘No
surrender’ has remained the watchword of Protestant Ulster ever since.

William came in pursuit, landed at Carrickfergus and quickly took Dublin. With a force
of 36,000 soldiers (comprising of English, German, Dutch and Danish troops as well as
French Huguenots who had fled Louis XIV persecutions in France, and Ulster
Protestants), he defeated King James’ army of 25,000 at the Battle of the Boyne on the
12th July 1690 and so solidified Protestant rule. King James left the field of battle first
and spent the night, of that ‘glorious twelfth’ at Dublin Castle before sailing for France.
William attended a thanks-giving service in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Protestant Dublin
rejoiced and William attended court at the Castle. Pope Innocent XI, an enemy of Louis
XIV, also celebrated when he was informed of the welcome news of Williams victory
and ordered a ‘Te Deum’ to be sung in St. Peters Basilica, Rome.

The war ended a year later, with the death of 10,000 Irish troops at the ‘Battle of
Aughrim’. The resultant ‘Treaty of Limerick’ guaranteed the rights and property of the
defeated Irish in return for loyalty. The 17th Century, had opened with the defeat of the
Irish Chieftains at the Battle of Kinsale and saw the end of the Gaelic order with the
‘Flight of the Earls’- ‘Would that God have permitted them to remain in their
inheritance!’. The 17th Century closed with the ‘Flight of the Wild Geese’, when 14,000
fighting men left Ireland forever to form the Irish Brigades of Continental Europe. The
poet Emily Lawless captured the anguish in her collection ‘With the Wild Geese’ (1902)

War battered dogs are we,

Fighters in every clime;
Fillers of trench and of grave,
Mockers bemocked by time,
War-dogs hungry and grey,
Gnawing a naked bone,
Fighters in every clime..
Every cause but our own.
Chapter 9

Oppression and Dispossession

The agreed terms of the Treaty of Limerick were quickly contravened. In 1678, Lord
Lieutenant Ormond barred Catholics from entering Dublin Castle without his expressed
permission. Every session of the Irish Parliament, from 1695 to 1746, brought into law
draconian measures against Catholics and assigned them a subservient position in Irish
society. Their aim was to exclude ‘Papists’ from political life, dispossess them of their
remaining lands and to encourage conversions.

The Banishment Act of 1697 exiled all Catholic Bishops, registered resident Priests and
forbade their replacement ‘under pain of death’. Rewards of £30 were offered to Priests
to convert and £5 paid per capita to ‘Priest Catchers’. Inherited Catholic land had to be
divided among all sons - unless one converted and so obtained the entire holding. Due to
the 1704 Popery Act, Catholics could not purchase land - only rent it for less than 31
years.

This 1704 Act, by barring all non-Anglicans from political and government offices, also
discriminated against Presbyterians, Quakers and other ‘dissenters’. They were treated
less severely than Catholics, in that their land holdings were unaffected. However they
resented the policy of discrimination and the fact that they had to pay tithes to support the
Anglican clergy. Many thousands emigrated to the American colonies. Lord Lieutenant
Harcourt (1772 – 1777) wrote that ‘the Presbyterians in the North are in their hearts
American’. Eleven Presidents of the United States were descendants of Ulster Protestant
emigrants (as were Davy Crockett and Elvis Presley).

In 1726 the Lord Chancellor, Richard West, declared that: “The law does not suppose any
such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic”. The right to vote was removed from
Catholics by act of Parliament in 1727. Other Penal Laws included the closure of
Catholic schools (which forced education of Catholics underground) and the barring of
Catholics from entering a profession, the army, or attending Catholic worship – however
they were required to attend Anglican service.
The Dubliner and Member of Parliament, Edmund Burke, whose statue stands in the
front lawn outside Trinity College, summed up the Penal Laws as “a machine of wise
and elaborate contrivance, as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and
degradation of a people and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever
proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man”.

Jonathan Swift, the Dean of St. Patrick’s and author of the literary classic ‘Gulliver’s
Travels’ and many satirical pieces, reacted to the widespread abject poverty of the
downtrodden Catholics and Huguenots made unemployed because of England’s
restrictive Irish policy. He satirised the politicians for their pride, greed and small
mindedness and mankind itself for being blighted by depravity. He lampooned the
Viceroy, John Carteret, with these bitter lines: “So to effect his monarch’s ends, from hell
a viceroy ascends. His budget with corruptions crammed – the contributions of the
dammed, which with unsparing hand he strews”.

Swift was born at No. 7 Hoey’s Court, immediately outside the Castle’s western wall.
There is a plaque commemorating him at the ‘Forty Steps’ outside Ship Street Gate and
his sculptured bust is above that of St. Peter’s, at the entrance to the Chapel Royal.
Chapter 10

The Growth of Dublin Fair City and The Great Castle Fire
of 1684

As late as the 1640’s, Dublin was a medieval town largely confined within its town walls.
International trade was limited to importation of wine and export of animal hides and
wool. The arrival of the new Lord Deputy Wentworth in 1633, in a period of relative
stability, heralded the beginning of economic growth and urban expansion. He was one
of the most efficient ‘administrators and extractor of leases’ ever to work in Dublin
Castle. However, he was recalled to London and beheaded – a foreshadowing of the fate
of his master, King Charles.

Cromwellian soldiers, Huguenot refugees and Palatine families settled in Dublin and the
population rose steadily. It doubled to 60,000 by the end of the century – making Dublin
the second city of the British Empire. Despite the embargoes placed on the Irish colony,
trade grew by adapting and becoming more market orientated – dairy produce for
Continental Europe, woollen produce for the English market. Large-scale deforestation
opened up new tracts of land and agricultural methods improved.

Imports too expanded and provided a large range of produce, including hops and salt.
However the English ‘Act for Encouragement of Trade’ of 1667, prohibited export of
Irish cattle to England and ruined that business. Five years later, another Act prohibited
the export of produce from colonies directly to Ireland. Smaller ports suffered and some,
such as Kinsale, never recovered. Dublin’s trade grew, however, through this process of
centralised distribution. In January 1669, duties were imposed on Irish woollen exports
and two months later, were extended to prohibit woollen exports to countries other than
England.

The enclosure of the Poddle-Liffey confluence, immediately north of the Castle, took
place in the 1620’s and the land was walled in and reclaimed. Lord Deputy St. John
erected a wharf (and crane) on the first Custom House Quay. This remained the main
quay for a century, until the new Carlisle (now O’Connell) Bridge limited access. In
1656 Sir John Temple was given a lease along the new shoreline and the present Temple
Bar area retains his name.

The appointment of the now Marquis of Ormond, James Butler, for his second term as
Lord Lieutenant in 1662, following his exile during the Cromwellian era, turned out to be
the biggest stimulus to expansion of the city and Dublin ‘burst through its medieval
walls’. Ormond actively encouraged development of Trinity College-Grafton Street area
– which had previously been known as being ‘near Dublin’ and the land between the new
park of Saint Stephen’s Green (which was ‘set to the advantage of the city’) and the old
city became very fashionable. The developer Henry Jervis began construction of the
north side quays and constructed Essex (now Grattan) Bridge to his new suburb of Capel
Street (Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex was Lord Lieutenant from 1672 – 1677). This came
only two years after the construction of Dublin’s second bridge at Watling Street, which
became known as Bloody Bridge on account of the Ferrymen’s riot at its opening.

We are fortunate that William Robinson produced a ground floor plan of Dublin Castle in
1673. It is the last view of the old Castle before the disastrous fire of 1684 changed
everything. The Gate towers were used for the ‘custody of his majesty’s prisoners’.
Immediately west were the Constables lodgings, which were ‘very much beautified in
Ormond’s time’. The Constable was the Chief Security Officer in charge of prisoners of
State and had overall defence of the Castle. The old Parliament House was raised on
several stately pillars, ‘where the Courts of Justice and the Houses of Parliament used to
sit, until the wisdom of the State thought fit to free the Castle from so great a concourse
of people, as usually frequented that great assembly’. The Lord Lieutenant’s lodgings,
which had been converted from Council Chambers, were at the north curtain wall. A
postern gate in the eastern wall allowed access to the stables, (for sixty horses), the
furniture store, mint and workshop for manufacturing arms.

The great fire began at 1 a.m. on the 7th April 1684. There was strong suspicion that it
was started deliberately by Ormond’s son, the Earl of Arran, who wrote a full and
perfectly structured account, which further fuelled rumours. The fire began in his newly
built lodgings, on the wooden flooring under the fire grate of his dressing room. The
crackling of the flames woke him and he fled through the State Rooms as far as the long
Gallery, leaving all the doors open behind him. He then looked back and saw his bed in
flames. The sentries raised the alarm. Arran sent for Robert Cuffe, the Engineer - the
Architect, Robinson, being out of town. Cuffe arrived shortly afterwards with six barrels
of gunpowder from a private store. A controlled explosion at the southern end of the
Long Gallery failed to halt the flames. So, another was set off at the northern end and
this prevented the fire reaching the Lord Lieutenant’s lodgings and the Gunpowder
Tower, through the Coal Yard. There was a westerly wind blowing and a final explosion,
near the Presence Chamber, succeeded in halting the fire advancing along the south-
western range, to the Kitchen Tower (now known as the Bermingham Tower), which
housed the public records at that time.

King James II issued a royal warrant on the 24th July, stating that the fire started
accidentally. Suspicion remained and many believed that the warrant was a ‘pay off’ in
gratitude to Marquis Ormond for services rendered - including his three years leadership
of the royal army against the Ulster rebels during the 1641 rebellion. The King also
directed that the old walls and as many towers as required be taken down and a new
Chief Governors residence be built ‘the same to be still and forever called by the name of
the Castle of Dublin’. Building works got underway and more stately accommodation
replaced the medieval fortress.

Lord Lieutenant Ormond laid the foundation stone for the Royal Hospital Kilmainham on
the former lands of the dissolved Priory of the Knights Hospitallers, 3km west of the
Castle. This was an asylum for disabled veteran soldiers and was inspired by Louis XIV
‘Les Invalides’, in Paris. It is now an important Banqueting Venue and the Museum of
Modern Art (see Royal Hospital Kilmainham link). William Robinson, the King’s Chief
Surveyor in Ireland, designed it and the new south-east range of the Castle’s Great
Courtyard.

Ormond is also responsible for the existence of the Phoenix Park (from the Irish ‘fionn
uisce’ - white water), the largest walled park in Europe. King Charles II had promised
this to his mistress, Lady Castlemaine, but Ormond persuades him to change his mind
and utilise it as a deer park instead. Lord Lieutenant Philip Stanhope, Earl of
Chesterfield, opened a large part of the Phoenix Park to the public in 1746.
Transportation was still crude at this time. But fast growing Dublin was becoming a
modern city, with primitive public lighting, a fire service (a wooden engine from this
time is in St. Werburg’s Church, immediately outside the western wall of the Castle), a
newspaper – ‘The Dublin Newsletter’, a flourishing theatre and social life with increasing
use of tobacco and bookshops such as the ‘Stationer’s Arms’ in Castle Street, (which also
boasted the first Irish Post Office).

The last description we have of Dublin Castle in the 17th Century, is that of the English
bookseller, John Dunton, who made an ‘inquisitive ramble’ in 1698 and left the following
account: Dublin Castle ‘is encompassed with(in) a wall and dry ditch, over which is a
drawbridge and within that, an iron gate. Opposite, in the inner court (yard) are two
brass field pieces and others on top of one of the towers. Yet it is not a place of great
strength, such as is able to endure the battery of great guns. Whenever the government
go out or come in, they are received with colours flying and drums beating. To the north
side lies the chapel, to which Lord Galway goes constantly every morning to prayers and
on his return, spends some time in receiving petitions. Next the chapel is the office of the
Ordnance, near which the King’s gunsmiths and armourers work. In the stable yard, two
companies of foot (soldiers) parade every morning, one of which mounts the town guard
and the other that of the Castle. At the back, lies a broad terrace walk, the length of the
building, the walls covered with greens and flowerpots. From hence, on a stone arch
over a little river, you descend by two spacious pair of stone stairs into the garden, which
is handsomely laid out in grass plots with green and gravel walks. On the other side
stands the coach houses and the biggest hay stacks that ever I saw’.
Chapter 11

Rebirth of Dublin Castle

For much of the 18th Century, Dublin thrived in the new era of peace and prosperity. The
population is estimated to have risen from 60,000 at its beginning, to 172,000 at the end
of the Century. This was the time when the famous squares of Dublin, Fitzwilliam,
Mountjoy etc. were laid out and the Royal and Grand Canals completed. It was also the
time when Dublin Castle and the surrounding streets took on their modern form.

The illustration in Charles Brooking’s map of Dublin of 1728 shows the Castle in
transition, with building work well underway. The east, south-east and west ranges had
been completed and are recognisable today. The south-west range was under
construction, with the Gate Towers still in existence, beside the site where the north-east
wall had been demolished.

By 1720, building works had been completed for the Trustees of the Linen in the East
Building and the Auditor General, the Treasury and the Ordinance in the new building in
the Lower Castle Yard. Today, the Comptroller and Auditor General occupies that same
building. A munitions explosion in the Armoury, in 1764, damaged the Ballroom (now
St. Patrick’s Hall) and the (south-western) Bermingham Tower, which had to be taken
down to first floor level and rebuilt. In 1737 King George II issued a royal warrant for
the pulling down of part of the Castle – ‘the Great Staircase, Battleaxe Hall, Chaplain’s
Apartments and the Castle entrance being in most ruinous condition’.

When the ‘Wide Street Commissioners’ were set up in 1757 (their functions were later
taken over by Dublin Corporation), they were given extensive powers for the widening of
streets – including compulsory purchase and control of building standards. The
following year an act was passed to make ‘a wide and convenient street from Essex (now
Grattan) Bridge to the Royal Castle of Dublin’. When the owners of the planned site
changed their minds about selling, the Commission ‘unroofed the houses in the middle of
the night to get people out for the street widening’. Parliament Street opened in 1762.
Plans had been made for the construction of a new entrance to Dublin Castle, in line with
Cork Hill, which necessitated demolition of all the houses from ‘Doran the Joiner’ to the
Castle Gate. The properties were compulsorily purchased. An article in ‘Faulkner’s
Journal’ of 12th July 1768, stated that ‘the workmen began to throw down the old
buildings of Cork Hill, in order to widen the avenue and prepare the ground for erecting
the new Exchange (or Merchant’s Business Centre) at Cork Hill’. The following year,
Lord Lieutenant Townsend laid the first stone of the Royal Exchange, what is now, City
Hall.

A new gateway and entrance were erected to the Lower Castle Yard, where Castle Lane
had been widened and renamed Palace Street. The new Cork Hill Gate, the Guard House
and Court Marshall Room, which were constructed beside the old Gate Towers, were
completed in 1751. Human skulls were unearthed during the digging of the foundations.
The scaffolding was taken down in September, in time for the beginning of the new
‘Castle Season’. Bedford Tower, with balcony for state musicians, became the
centrepiece of the newly completed Great Courtyard, or Upper Castle Yard. It mainly
housed the offices of the Second Secretary, subsequently the Master of Ceremonies and
the Aide-de-Camps to the Lord Lieutenant. Later still, this was the Office of Arms, from
which the ‘Crown Jewels’ of the Illustrious Order of St. Patrick were stolen.

The north side of the Great Courtyard is acknowledged as presenting one of the most
beautiful architectural compositions in Dublin, ‘reflecting the serene architecture of the
Renaissance’. The image of Bedford Tower is now the logo of the modern Dublin Castle
Conference Centre and State Apartments facilities, while the flanking archway
supporting Van Nost the Younger’s Statue of Justice (in which the sensitive Castle
authorities bored holes to restore equilibrium to the tilting scales), is the logo of the
Revenue Commissioners.
Chapter 12

The Illustrious Order of St. Patrick

The Great Hall, or Ballroom, became known as St. Patrick’s Hall when George III
instituted the ‘Illustrious Order of St. Patrick’ in 1783. The central panel, of Valdre’s
ceiling paintings in St. Patrick’s Hall, depicts the event with King George seated on a
dais, between the symbolic figures of Great Britain with the then British flag and Ireland
with her harp, while Justice and Liberty are in attendance. The stall plates along the
walls chronologically record the names and the banners show the family crests of the
Knights of St. Patrick. Their insignia, an eight-pointed star, is above the eastern doorway
and one of their ceremonial badges is on view in a glass case on the north wall.

The ‘Illustrious Order of St. Patrick’ was the Irish equivalent of the English ‘Order of the
Garter’ and the Scottish ‘Order of the Thistle’. Knights were required to be ‘decended of
three decents of nobleness’ on both paternal and maternal sides. Its purpose was to give
social advancement to senior peers and so, further secure their loyalty. An award of
Knighthood was seen as evidence of the high social standing of the recipient and there
was considerable competition for the limited places.

The lavish investiture ceremony of Knighthood took place in St. Patrick’s Hall. As
soldiers lined the route, the new knights in elaborate garb, walked in ceremonial
procession to an installation ceremony in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. A celebratory banquet
took place later in the Castle.

The ‘Irish Crown Jewels’ was the name by which the Insignia of the Knights of St.
Patrick became known. They consisted of the Grand Master’s diamond badge set in
silver with a trefoil in emeralds on a ruby cross and various other valuable jewels. They
were stored in a bank vault, except when in use. In 1903, they were transferred to a safe,
which was to be placed in the newly constructed strong room in Bedford Hall. However,
the steel safe proved to be too large for the doorway and Arthur Vicars, the Officer of
Arms, agreed to them being stored in the Library.
It was discovered that they had been stolen only four days before the State Visit of King
Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. The King had intended to invest Lord Castletown as
a Knight of the Order, but was furious on account of the theft and cancelled the
ceremony.

Although under great pressure, Vicars refused to resign. Rumours were spread about his
sexual orientation, with the objective of shaming him into leaving. It didn’t work, and he
refused to appear at the sworn Viceregal Commission, demanded a public royal inquiry
instead and accused his second in command, Francis Shackleton (brother of Ernest - the
Antarctic Explorer) of the wrongdoing. However Shackleton was exonerated by the
commission, while Vicars was found culpable.

Later Shackleton was jailed for misappropriating a widow’s savings. Arthur Vicars spent
his remaining years as a recluse, in a ‘big house’ (ascendancy manor) in Co. Kerry. On
the 14th April 1921, in the period between the War of Independence and the Civil War, an
armed IRA contingent brought him out of Kilmorna Castle and shot him dead, before
burning the building.

As Ireland is a Republic, this Order of Knighthood is no longer in existence. St. Patrick’s

Hall is now mainly used for State functions, including inaugurations of Ireland’s
Presidents. The Office of Arms is now part of Dublin Castle Conference Centre
facilities. The Irish Crown Jewels have never been located.
Chapter 13

The 1798 Rebellion

Europe and the Americas exploded into revolution in the closing decades of the 18th
Century and many liberal English Statesmen sympathised with their social, economic and
national causes – provided they took place ‘not in their back yard’. As only land-owning
Anglicans males could vote, the creation of a secular Republic with ‘liberty, equality and
fraternity’ became the ideal of new revolutionary groups such as the ‘United Irishmen’.
They were founded in Belfast in 1791, by disillusioned members of the Protestant
ascendancy, with the intention of advancing human rights issues, including equality for
Catholics.

In 1796, the Irish Parliament passed the ‘Insurrection Act’, which allowed the Lord
Lieutenant, Earl of Camden, to place any district under martial law, to impose curfews
and arms searches and pass sentence of death on anyone administering illegal oaths.
‘Flogging rebellion out of the radicals’ only drove others to insurrection. Alarmingly for
the Castle administration, the spectre of French invasion loomed large as Wolf Tone, the
founder of the United Irishmen, persuaded the French Directory to send a large invasion
fleet of 48 ships, with 13,000 men to liberate Ireland and create a Republic. Bad weather
prevented the fleet from landing at Bantry Bay, in December 1796.

Following the defeat of two smaller invasions, the Dublin Castle authorities commenced
a relatively successful military campaign of ruthlessly disarming the civilian population.
When, two years later rebellion erupted, it was only in a number of counties – most
notably in Down, Antrim and Wexford.

Many of the Dublin leaders were betrayed by the Castle’s network of spies and
informers. The rebels on the south side of the city intended to take Dublin Castle by
surprise, while the north side, Santry village men assailed the Ship Street Barracks.
However, as the Castle authorities had been informed in advance, a company of dragoons
surprised, sabred and dispersed them.
Sir Jonah Barrington gave the following description: ‘Some dead bodies of insurgents,
sabred the night before by Lord Roden’s dragoons, were brought in a cart to Dublin.
The carcasses were stretched out in the (Upper) Castle Yard, where the Viceroy then
resided. In full view of the Secretaries window, they lay on the pavement as trophies of
the first skirmish, during a hot day, cut and gashed in every part covered in clotted blood
and dust, the most frightful spectacle which ever disgraced a royal residence save the
seraglio. After several hours’ exposure, some appearance of life was perceived in one of
the mutilated carcasses. The man had been stabbed and gashed in various parts. His
body was removed to the guardroom and means were taken to restore animation. The
efforts succeeded. He entirely recovered and was pardoned by Lord Camden. He was an
extraordinarily fine young man, about six feet high (1.8m), the son of a Mr. Keogh, an
opulent landholder of Rathfarnham. He did not, however, change his principles and was
ultimately, sent out of the country’.

The near success of the 1798 rebellion persuaded the Irish Government of the urgency of
regaining effective control. Reprisals were swift and ferocious. The Royal Exchange
(now City Hall) immediately outside Cork Hill Gate was converted into a military depot
in which courts martial were held. Torture was inflicted here and ‘the screams of the
sufferers might have been audible in the very offices where the Ministers of the
Government met to perform their functions’.

Robert Emmet - a member of the Executive of the United Irishman, delivered the final
chapter of the rebellion. He was a son of the State Physician - whose family lived in the
Sick and Indigent Room Keepers Society building immediately outside the Palace St.
Gate. He had been ‘on the run’ in France in ’98. On the 23rd July 1803, he led a mob, of
only ninety rebels (he had hoped for 2,000), on an abortive attack of Dublin Castle in
order to establish a ‘Provisional Government’. They never got that far. On their way
through the ‘Liberties’ (less than 1 km to the east of the Castle), they came upon the
carriage of the Lord Chief Justice Kilwarden. Some believed it was the Viceroy himself.
They dragged him out and killed him. His daughter raised the alarm at the Castle and the
mob dispersed.

Emmet’s trial, at which a Castle spy represented him, is mainly remembered by his
stirring speech and his stab at the ‘hanging judge’ that “Lord Norbury might easily drown
in the blood of those he had sent to the gallows”. Norbury sentenced him to a traitor’s
death. He was hung, drawn and quartered outside St. Catherine’s Church, Thomas Street,
on 20th September 1803. It is not known where his body was buried. Norbury’s dining
table is now on view in the State Apartments.

Emmet’s rising once more made defence an issue, for the Castle administration. A new
Gate House and Guard House were constructed at Ship Street Gate and the route from
Palace Street to Ship Street was closed to the public. Houses adjoining Ship Street Gate
were compulsorily purchased, demolished and the ‘Forty Steps’ constructed to facilitate
easy access from one gate to the other, by the Castle Guard.
Chapter 14

Dublin Castle in the Aftermath of the Union

Following the terror that accompanied the 1798 rebellion, the English Prime Minister Pitt
was determined to extinguish the Irish Parliament and transfer its legislative power to
Westminster, London. It met for the last time in the Parliament Building (now occupied
by Bank of Ireland) directly opposite Trinity College, on August 2nd 1799. A number of
politicians were awarded peerages. Patronages and bribes were distributed generously
and the Irish Government voted itself out of existence.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland came into existence on 1st January
1800. The brass chandeliers in the Throne Room and Bermingham Tower Room, of the
State Apartments, commemorate this event, with interwoven shamrocks, roses and
thistles, symbolising Ireland, England and Scotland.

The economic effect on the city was devastating and unemployment rose almost
immediately as the city lost its economic momentum. The population and poverty
increased alarmingly. The Castle’s role as policy maker virtually ceased, as the Chief
Secretary and Under Secretary at Westminster, took over control. The post of Viceroy
degenerated to that of a figurehead. The former Ranger’s house, in the Phoenix Park,
was greatly extended and renovated and Viceroy Wellesley moved his household to the
new Viceregal Lodge, (which is now the Irish President’s official residence of Áras an
Uachtaráin).

The Viceroy continued to hold court in the Castle, which was then mainly used by
Government Departments and administrators. He retained his prominent role in the
distribution of patronage, by drafting pension lists and appointing local sheriffs, who in
turn appointed the Grand Juries. Regular donations were also made, on his behalf, to
‘loyal press’. His immediate staff came and went with his term of office and the size of
his retinue was seen as a measure of his importance.
Robert Peel took up his role of Chief Secretary in Dublin Castle, in 1812 and set about
reforming the Dublin ‘Night Watch’ and Dublin Constabulary. The Under Secretary,
Thomas Drummond, continued Peel’s work, by forming an armed Irish Constabulary to
deal agrarian unrest and agitation. On the instructions of Queen Victoria, Viceroy Mayo
renamed this force the Royal Irish Constabulary, on the 6th September 1867, in
appreciation of their role in quashing the Fenian rebellion earlier that year. Medals were
distributed.

Drummond was also responsible for setting up the unarmed Dublin Metropolitan Police,
under the Constabulary of Ireland Act, of 1836. Two years later, on the 5th January, eight
hundred men of the DMP paraded in frock coats and top hats reinforced with whalebone
(to stand on and see over obstructions). They were inspected by the Lord Lieutenant,
Earl of Musgrave, to whom Dublin was described in the new commissioners first report
as being ‘a lawless city, criminals having usurped control over a considerable portion of
their fellow citizens’ and that the Diggis Lane area, close to the south-east corner of the
Castle, was ‘a hotbed of human temptitude’. On the 17th August 1922, following the
handover of political power to the Provisional Irish Government, the newly formed
unarmed Civic Guard marched into Dublin Castle. The Gardai have retained their
presence in the Police Office Yard, ever since. There is now also a Garda museum in the
Record Tower.

The Dublin Street Directory of 1850 gives comprehensive information on the occupancy
of Dublin Castle. The Upper Castle Yard (Great Courtyard) housed the Council Chamber
and Office, Chief Secretaries Office and Lunatic Inspectors Office. The Lower Castle
Yard accommodated the Aide-de-Camps quarters, extensive stables, forge and Riding
School, Castle Mews, Office of Arms and the Offices of the Metropolitan Police
Commissioners, Paymaster of the Civil Services and Prison Inspector. An icehouse, for
provision of ice at banquets, adjoined the Record Tower, which was then known as the
Wardrobe Tower as it housed ceremonial robes for State occasions - it got its present
name later, when the State papers were stored there. In the Piquet Yard was housed the
cavalry and their stables and in the garden area was the Police office and Army Barracks.

We also know that, at that time, the State kitchen was located on the ground floor of the
Bermingham Tower, close to St. Patrick’s Hall. Nearby were stewards’ rooms, servants’
quarters and bedrooms, meat and fish larders, sculleries and a stillroom for distillation of
liquor. In the basement, beneath the State Apartments, were (silver) plate and glass
pantries, brushing and lamp rooms, a servants’ hall and wine cellar.

The Street Directory also shows the economic and social effects of the Castle on its
surroundings in the 1850’s. Dame Street had many fashionable shops, which catered for
the wealthy and the Castle courtiers. Premises on this street included solicitors, a button
maker to the Lord Lieutenant, wine, spirits, tobacco and snuff merchants, gun
manufacturers and a furrier to Lord Lieutenant and Countess Clarendon. Ship Street had
dairies, boot and shoe and watch case makers, wire works, timber merchants, grocers, a
French stay and corset maker and a fireproof safe manufacturer.
Chapter 15

Dublin Castle Social Scene and ‘The Great Hunger’

There was a history of lavish entertainment by the Viceregal Court, from the early 1670s
when Lady Essex was a renowned hostess. The Duke of Ormond created a sumptuous
Viceregal Court, during his second tenure of office, 1677 – 1685, with over one hundred
servants and officials. A few years later, Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnell, orchestrated the use
of pageantry and cheering crowds for the arrival of his master, King James.

Successive Viceroys encouraged the participation of the powerful Protestant landlord

ascendancy class in Viceregal Court life. The Illustrious Order of St. Patrick was
instituted by George III in St. Patrick’s Hall in 1783 and being honoured with that
distinction was seen as evidence of the high social standing of the recipients. The Castle
remained the focus of Anglo Irish social life with its mixture of pomp, splendour,
extravagance, rituals and pageantry throughout the 18th and 19th Centuries.
Unfortunately, the Castle’s social scene and the privileged lifestyles of this wealthy elite
continued undiminished, throughout the famine of 1645 – 1849, when 1.5 million Irish
people died and a similar number emigrated, mainly to Britain, U.S.A. and Australia.

The Permanent Secretary at the British Treasury, Charles Trevelyan, had responsibility
for social and economic policy in Ireland. He was well intentioned but not very humane
and passionately believed that market forces should never be interfered with. This policy
was responsible for many deaths. Along with most of his Whig colleagues, he saw the
famine as a visitation of God on the Irish – a belief that the starving Irish later came to
share.

The most important period in Dublin’s social calendar was the six festive weeks of the
Castle’s balls and dinners, which culminated on St. Patrick’s Day, 17th March. During
this ‘Castle Season’ the Viceroy resided in Dublin Castle with his personal staff,
chaplain, secretary, gentlemen-at-large and aides-de-camp in waiting. Dublin hotel and
boarding rooms were booked well in advance. Gentry, aspiring gentry and debutantes
from the great houses of Ireland eagerly awaited the Viceroy’s gilt edged invitation to
attend.

The Viceroy’s Levée opened the proceedings with a parading of the men of court. On
that evening a stream of carriages made their entry through Cork Hill Gate. ‘They are of
all sorts and condition, from the handsome brougham which conveys the Lord
Chancellor in his wig and gown, to the jarvey upon which lounge a couple of officers in
resplendent uniform’. The Levée is but an inferior occasion when compared with the
‘Drawing Room’ of the second evening ‘when the Castle is a scene of wonderful
animation. The windows blaze with light, scarlet cloth covers the staircase and
corridors, which are filled with lovely debutantes and handsome matrons. There is frou
frou of silken dresses and the chatter of many voices. There is the crowding into the
antechamber, the passing into the pen, the letting down of trains, the final presentation’.

Lady Fingal in her memoirs – seventy years young – remembers being presented as a
debutante at her first ‘Drawing Room’, to Lord Spencer (great great grandfather of
Princess Diana) who was in court dress with ‘glittering orders’. “It is the beard that I
remember. In those days the Lord Lieutenant kissed each of the debutantes as they were
presented – an ordeal for both. I can remember now the feeling of that long thick red
beard against my cheek, tickling it. Then it is over and now I curtsey to the lovely golden
haired, rose and white, but rather pompous-looking lady in her glittering jewels, beside
Lord Spencer, and walk backwards a few steps as I have been taught to do; without, I
pray, falling over my train. An ADC picks it up and replaces it on my arm, and the
ceremony is over. In the long gallery, refreshments are served, and one meets one’s
friends as at an ordinary evening party”.

In contrast to many of her ascendancy colleagues who were untouched by the destitution
of the majority, she was aware of her position in relation to society at large. “There was a
crowd about the gates of the Castle. The Dublin poor always turned out to see any sight
that there was. They shivered on the pavement in their thin, ragged clothes, waiting for
hours sometimes, so that they might see the ladies in their silks and satins and furs step
from their carriages into the warmth and light and gaiety that received them. The poor
were incredibly patient. Even then I was dimly aware the appalling contrast between
their lives and ours, and wondered how long they would remain patient”.
Another account however suggests that the crowd could be less than patient. “The motley
throng in the side-walks indulge their pungent wit, not unmixed with sarcasm, at the
expense of each individual as he goes by”.

The Castle social season culminated on St. Patrick’s Day, 17th March. That day began
with an inspection of the guard and military manoeuvres, by the Viceroy and his
entourage on the State Apartments balcony, while the State Band played from the other
balcony in Bedford Tower. It was customary for them to then ‘make merry’ and ‘drown
the shamrock’. On that festive night he gave a banquet at the Castle which was followed
by the St. Patrick’s Ball ‘in the hall of that name which hardly holds the crowd of
dancers’.

Dublin escaped the worst horrors of starvation but experienced a huge influx of refugees.
However, the silent killers of disease and infection (typhus, dysentery and yellow fever)
accompanied the famine and Asiatic cholera broke out and spread quickly in the
congested city of Dublin. It decimated the garrison of Ship Street Barrack at the time of
the intended royal visit.

The famine ruined many businesses and the Viceroy Clarendon encouraged the visit of
Queen Victoria, as he believed it would stimulate trade. On August 6th 1849 Queen
Victoria landed at Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) accompanied by their Royal
Highnesses the Prince Consort, the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal. She did not
mention the famine in her letters. However, in a letter dated 6th August from the
Viceregal Lodge to her Uncle Leopold (King of the Belgians) she stated that “you see
more ragged and wretched people here than I ever saw anywhere else” and that
“tomorrow we have a levée (in Dublin Castle) where 1,700 are to be presented and the
next day a review (of the troops) and in the evening the Drawing Room, where 900 ladies
are to be presented”.

As was normal, a series of toasts were drunk at dinner. The first was made to the health
of the monarch, the next to the Prince of Wales. This was followed by one to the glorious
memory of King William of Orange and again to his glorious victory at the Battle of the
Boyne on the 12th July 1690. The final four toasts were made to the prosperity of the
city, the linen industry, the prosperity of Ireland and its trade.

The royal visit passed off without the slightest incident – in contrast to her third visit of
1861 during which there were street protests and stones were thrown at Prince Albert.
Chapter 16

The ‘Troubles’ and the End of British Rule

During the First World War (1914-1918) parts of Dublin Castle were used as a Red Cross
military hospital for British troops wounded on the front lines. Indeed, a huge number of
Irishmen fought and almost 50,000 died in the British army in the hope of achieving
‘Home Rule’ after the war.

However, militant nationalists felt that self-government would not be granted to Ireland
and their discontent erupted into another rebellion – that of Easter 1916. Due to internal
conflicts it was only the rebel hard core who took part stating that their generation would
be disgraced if they failed to seize the moment – ‘England’s difficulty was Ireland’s
opportunity’.

The first fatality was at 12.10 p.m. that Easter Monday. A policeman named O’Brien
was shot dead as he tried to shut the Cork Hill Gate on an advancing party of ten men and
nine women, of the Irish Citizens Army. They took the Guard House and tied up the
soldiers (today the Guard House forms part of the Conference Centre dining facilities and
the bayonet marks, made by the British Sentries, can be plainly seen). This advantage
was not pressed home and they withdrew to the adjacent City Hall, as ‘when they found
no resistance, they believed it must be a trap to entice them into an ambush and that Ship
Street Barracks would be too strong for them’.

The first rebel fatality was Captain Séan Connolly, a professional actor, who had shortly
before shot Constable O’Brien. He was hit by sniper fire from the roof of Bedford
Tower, while raising the rebel flag on City Hall and died at 2 p.m. City Hall was
vulnerable to attack and was heavily shelled from the Castle. Dr. Kathleen Lynn, a
Captain in the Citizens Army, surrendered the rebel position that night.

The attack had been a total surprise to the Castle authorities. The Castle was defended by
raw recruits that day. The majority of the soldiers were at the Fairy House Races
believing the rebellion, which had been planned for the day before, to be cancelled. The
normal compliment was a company of two hundred soldiers in the Ship Street Barracks,
some of which were billeted detachments of ‘Inniskillings’ on the way to the Somme.
They were later rotated with the ‘Shropshires’, who were present at final hand over to
Irish Free State Forces. In addition there were twenty-four armed RIC sentries and
bodyguards to the Viceroy. The Battleaxe Guards (bodyguards) - were similar to the
‘Beefeaters’ at the Tower of London and were disbanded on grounds of cost in 1831.

Although heavily outgunned and outnumbered the rebellion lasted the week. One of the
two principal leaders, James Connolly had been badly wounded in the leg. Following the
general surrender he was brought by his men to the Dublin Castle Hospital where he was
given a bed in a room previously reserved for royalty (and now the site of the James
Connolly Room). He was held there for a week, and court martialed, before being taken
to Kilmainham Gaol for execution by firing squad, while tied to a chair.

The series of fifteen executions of leaders of the rebellion, which finished with the death
of Connolly, appalled public opinion. Anger against turned to sympathy for the rebels
and their cause and they returned from interment in Wales to a heroes’ welcome.
Michael Collins, who had played a minor role in the rebellion, now rose to prominence
within the Republican movement. He became the brilliant military brain behind a new
guerrilla war against the British Army and the Police. This continued against the Black
and Tans and the Auxiliaries, who were brought in when the police system collapsed.
The ‘War of Independence’ and two years of terror began on the 21st January 1919.

Four informants at Detective Headquarters, in the Castle, reported directly to Collins and
supplied him with itineraries and photographs. One, Ned Broy, allowed him access to ‘G
Division’ records. An unsuccessful assassination attempt was made on the Viceroy, at
Ashtown railway station, adjoining the Phoenix Park, on the 19th December 1919. He,
Viscount French, complained that “our secret service is simply non existent”.

Collins had also formed a special ‘Squad’ that systematically assassinated agents of
Dublin Castle Intelligence ‘G Division’. On Sunday 11th November 1920, they shot dead
eleven members of the British Counter-Intelligence network, including members of the
infamous ‘Cairo Gang’. The effect was devastating. Military officers were now ordered
to live in Dublin Castle. Increasing numbers of English civil servants and intelligence
staff also took up quarters there and in the adjoining six buildings which had been
commandeered for security purposes. The Castle became so overcrowded that no more
army wives could be accommodated.

Power rested with the military rather than the Castle civil administration. The regular
departure of General Tudor in his armoured Rolls Royce and of the platoon of auxiliaries
bristling with guns provided some ‘glamour of war’. There was a mantrap outside the
Castle Gate and barbed wire and bomb catching mesh works across the archways. The
culvert River Poddle was checked daily to ensure that the barbed wire obstructions
remained securely in place. Machine gun nests proliferated. The three tennis courts in
the garden were strictly reserved for the Viceroy’s household and top military personnel
and there was little recreational opportunity for the majority. The confined conditions
and the imposed curfew, as well as the increasing amount of rebel attacks, made for poor
morale.

Two IRA men, Dick McKee and Peadar Clancy and an innocent citizen, Conor Clune,
were killed on 21st November 1920, while ‘trying to escape’ from interrogation in the
holding cells of the (night-time) Guard House at Exchange Court – behind City Hall
which had been taken over for court martials. Their bodies are reported to have had tell
tale signs of torture.

Reprisal followed atrocity in the continuing spiral of violence and terror. Eventually a
truce was called, which was followed by the Anglo Irish Treaty. This was signed in
London on 6th December 1921. Twenty-six counties, of the thirty-two counties of
Ireland, became the Irish Free State so ending seven and a half centuries of English rule.

Michael Collins arrived in Dublin Castle on 16th January 1922 to receive the handover of
the Castle on behalf of the new Irish Free State Government. Lord Lieutenant FitzAlan is
reported to have said, “You are seven minutes late Mr. Collins” to which he received the
reply “We’ve been waiting over seven hundred years, you can have the extra seven
minutes”. The Dublin playwright Séan O’ Casey, described how FitzAlan handed over
Dublin Castle and seemed to be doing it as if in a dream: “here’s the key to the throne
room, and this one’s the key of St. Patrick’s Hall, my good man”.
Chapter 17

Modern Dublin Castle

It was fortunate that Dublin Castle survived the devastation of the 1916 rebellion, the
subsequent Civil War and transition to Irish nationhood. It wasn’t destroyed, blown up or
burnt down like many other colonial buildings were, nor were the trappings of colonial
rule removed. It did however suffer loss of stature and significance. It was neglected and
over time, fell into disrepair.

The Four Courts moved into the State Apartments. The Revenue Commissioners (whose
function had been carried out in the Castle since medieval times) took over the Ship
Street Army Barracks and the former Ordnance Office of the Royal Engineers (currently
the Chester Beatty Library). Offices of Government Departments, such as the General
Post Office engineers, secretaries and savings bank, took other accommodation. A rare
stately use of the Castle was the inauguration of Douglas Hyde as the first President of
Ireland in St. Patrick’s Hall on 25th June 1938.

The Children’s Court moved into the north-west corner of the Upper Yard in 1939. Their
neighbours at that time included the Chief State Solicitor’s Office and the Genealogical
Office, which had been in the Bedford Tower since 1903. The Lower Yard housed the
Civic Guards Office and Barracks (they took over from the Dublin Metropolitan Police in
1922), the Statics, Claims and Record Office, Gas, Weights and Measures, Revenue
Commissioners and offices of the Department of Industry and Commerce.

Fire damaged the State Drawing and Ante Drawing Rooms in the south-east corner of the
State Apartments in 1941. The adjoining cross block had been divided between offices
of the Chief Secretary and the Viceroy. The Council Chamber, which was used for
swearing in new Viceroys and by the Privy Council, lay between them, over the archway.
It had structural weaknesses and was completely rebuilt in 1962. Works in the adjoining
State Drawing Room area were completed in 1968 and the Apollo Room now contains
the ornate plaster ceiling and fireplace of the demolished Georgian, Tracton House.
A new modern office block was built in the Lower Yard, on the site of the former stables
and occupied by the Revenue Commissioners in 1974. George’s Hall was constructed in
1911, as a supper room for the last royal visit – that of King George V and Queen Mary
and adjoins the western end of the State Apartments. It was adapted for use, in
conjunction with St. Patrick’s Hall, for Ireland’s First Presidency of the European Union
in 1975 - Ireland having joined three years previously.

Architectural investigations had discovered that Block 8 in the north range was ‘breaking
its backs on the old Castle foundations’. This 18th Century building straddled both the
old foundations and the moat, and uneven subsidence was cracking its spine. In 1986, the
front wall was held in place and a new building erected behind it. The adjoining Block
10, an infill building of the 1830’s, was taken down. Archaeological investigations
revealed the Castle ditch (moat), parts of the medieval walls, the remains of the Powder
Tower and Viking defence banks - with external stone facing protecting it from the
Poddle. These were preserved in a chamber, known as the Undercroft beneath the
basement level of the new building and can now be viewed on the guided tour of the
Castle.

A modern, purpose-built, International Conference Centre was constructed by the Office

of Public Works, behind the façade of the north-east corner of the Upper Castle Yard for
Ireland’s Presidency of the European Union, 1990. The main hall partly rests on the
excavated base of the Cork Tower and former Castle moat, from which thousands of
artefacts were found during archaeological excavations. It had been used as a convenient
dump over the centuries and houses and gardens were built on it by the 17th Century. The
finds included pottery and glass, roof and floor tiles, tools and ornaments of iron and
bronze, animal and human bones and weapons, which illuminate Dublin and Castle life in
former times. A colourful selection is displayed in the main conference lobby. Paintings
from the ‘Castle Collection’ and modern works of art by Irish artists are on view
throughout the centre.

The ‘Blind’ Gate of Fortitude, between the Conference Centre and the Bedford Clock
Tower, was opened and a new La Touche Bridge gives further access across the new
moat pool. The arcade of the former La Touche Bank, which had encroached on the
Castle Ditch or Moat, now forms the walkway between the International Conference
Centre and the new Castle Hall, which, in conjunction with Bedford Tower, comprises
the conference dining and meeting facilities. The new façade of Castle Hall is faced with
granite, with limestone bands, to distinguish them from the brick elevations of the older
buildings. The top floor of Bedford Tower, which was added in the 1820’s, was removed
during these renovation works – so restoring the architectural symmetry of the Upper
Castle Yard. A dial from the old clock face is displayed in the ground floor dining area.

The Gothic Chapel Royal was designed by Francis Johnston and opened by Lord
Lieutenant Whitworth in 1814. His secluded private passageway to the State Apartments
can still be used. It is famous for its carved stone heads by Edward Smyth and
plasterwork by Stapleton. Its carved oak galleries and stained glass windows display the
coats of arms of the Justiciars, Lord Deputies, Lord Lieutenants and Viceroys, (these
titles were often interchangeable), from the first – Hugh de Lacy (1172) to the last –
FitzAlan (1922). It was refurbished and the foundations strengthened in the 1990’s as it
was in danger of subsiding into the Poddle.

The Ship Street Barrack and Ordnance Office were also renovated by the Office of Public
Works and adapted to new usage for old clients – the Revenue Commissioners. So also
was the Lord Lieutenant’s Coach House, where the castellated frontage had been erected
to obscure the back of nearby houses and provide Queen Victoria with a regal view. It is
now a very successful conference and dining venue.

The Castle site has been occupied over the ages and modified to suit its ever-changing
functions. All the historic buildings have been restored and it is now been fully
integrated into Irish Society. Dublin Castle now plays host to European Union
Presidencies, Heads of State, leaders of business, industry and government. It is also a
major tourist attraction and citizens of all nations savour the variety of the facilities and
experience the unique historic layers revealed throughout the complex – from the
Norman Tower to the world treasures of the Chester Beatty Library and from the Viking
defence bank to the splendid State Apartments.