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XXY. 



THE PHCENIX PATIK, ITS ORIGIN AND EAllLT HISTORY, 

 "WITH SOME NOTICES OF ITS ROYAL AND VICEREGAL 

 RESIDENCES. By C. LITTON EALKINER, M.A. 



[Read May 13, 1901.] 



The Phoenix Park is the greatest and most abiding monument of that 

 extraordinary revival and extension of the Irish capital which followed 

 the Restoration, and which in the space of a few years transformed 

 Dublin from a mediaeval city into a modern metropolis. Down to the 

 era of the Commonwealth Dublin had remained a walled town, within 

 the ambit of whose fortifications little or no change affecting its general 

 appearance had taken place for a couple of centuries. From the days 

 of the later Plantagenets to those of the later Stuarts, it may almost 

 be said, no scenic transformation on a large scale was effected in the 

 aspect of the capital, save what was involved in the suppression of the 

 monasteries and the conversion of the abbey of St. Mary's and the 

 priory of All Hallows from religious to civil uses. The disturbed 

 condition of Ireland throughout the whole Tudor period sufficiently 

 engaged the attention of successive deputies from Poynings to Essex ; 

 and when the comparative calm that followed the Plantation of Ulster 

 left leisiu'e to such liberal-minded rulers as Chichester, St. John, and 

 Falkland to contemplate the improvement of the capital, even the 

 expenditto'e which was found to be indispensable to make Dublin 

 Castle habitable was with difficulty sanctioned by the parsimony of 

 James I. Such extensions of the city as took place in the early years 

 of the seventeenth century lay in a south-easterly direction, some 

 part of the empty space between Dublin Castle and Trinity College 

 being appropriated to Chichester House ; but no attempt was made to 

 enlarge the bounds of the metropolis to the west, where on the north 

 the meadows and green of Oxmantown lost themselves in the vague 

 hinterland of Grangegorman, and on the south fresh meadows running- 

 down to the banks of the Liffey extended from James' -street to the 

 old priory of Kilmainham. 



The all-pervading energy of Strafford would probably have 

 embraced the beautifying of the capital had time and fate permitted. 



