Trinity College, Dublin

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Trinity College, Dublin. Founded by charter of Elizabeth I dated 21 December 1591, Trinity, both a college and a university, was intended for ‘the education, training and instruction of youths and students … that they may be better assisted in the study of the liberal arts, and in the cultivation of virtue and religion’. The Elizabethan college, situated outside the walls of the city, was largely modelled on Cambridge. The period of growth was in the 18th cent. when the lord-lieutenant, the duke of Dorset, entered his son as a student in 1731. The college thenceforth attracted the nobility and gentry and its graduates included Berkeley, Burke, Goldsmith, and Grattan. Unlike Oxford and Cambridge at this time, Trinity practised religious toleration, allowing both nonconformists and Roman catholics to follow a full college course, though catholics were debarred from taking a degree until the Act of 1793.

Peter Gordon

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Trinity College, Dublin

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