478 Proceedhu/s of the Royal Irish Ac(ule)ny. 



keeper lasted far into the eighteenth, centiiiy ; the last to hold th& 

 Eangership as a separate office being jS'athaniel Clements, the builder 

 of the Yiceregal Lodge. In 1785 the two offices were amalgamated 

 in the person of Sackville Hamilton, then Under-Secretary, and 

 thenceforward were held for many years together with the Lodge 

 of Ashtown, by the Under-Secretary for the time being. Thi& 

 latter arrangement lasted without interruption down to 1830, when 

 the control of the Park was handed over to the Commissioners of 

 Woods and Uorests,^ the predecessors of the Board of Works. Ten 

 years later, on the death of Thomas Drnmmond, who was the last 

 Under-Secretary to hold the position, the office of Sanger of the Phoenix 

 Park was finally abolished.- But the charming residence in the Park, 

 formerly Ashtown Castle, and certain delectable perquisites in the 

 shajje of venison from the Park preserves, survive to remind the present 

 occupant of the ancient glories of his office. 



A public improvement on a scale so magnificent naturally attracted 

 attention, and the opulent possibilities of a demesne so close to the 

 capital to which Ormond had successfully attracted the Irish nobility 

 as a place of residence soon excited the cupidity of the rapacious 

 favourites who thronged the Court of St. James. Ormond, entangled 

 in the same web of intrigue which had procxu-ed the disgrace of his old 

 friend Clarendon, was removed fi'om his post in 1668, and, with the 

 withdrawal of his authority, the future of the Park he had been at 

 such pains to form, was soon endangered.'^ It was first promised to the 

 ill-starred Duke of Monmouth, who, however, withdi'ew his request 

 for it in deference to the remonstrances evoked from Ireland by the 

 proposal. But ere long the Park became the subject of a more serious 

 intrigue. On the death of Lord Dungannon in 1672, the Eangership 

 was bestowed on Sir Henry, afterwards Lord Brouncker, a Court 

 favouiite with a shady reputation, whose sufficient epitaph is an 

 unsavoury paragraph in Pepys's Diary, but who should be mentioned 

 with charity in any learned assembly as the brother of the first 

 President of the Eoyal Society. Brouncker belonged to the section of 

 Charles the Second's Court which, before she had been superseded in 

 the royal graces by younger rivals, revolved in the brilliant orbit of 

 Barbara Yilliers, Duchess of Cleveland. To her the new Eanger 



1 Statute 10 Geo. IV., cap. 50. 



^Letter from Commissioners of "Woods, etc, to Lord Morpeth, Irish State Paper 

 Office. The -writer has to thank Sir David Harrel for this reference. 

 3 " Essex Papers," vol. i. p. 59. 



