484 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



Lieutenant were entered into in 1781, and in July of the following- 

 year were completed by the payment to Mr. Robert Clements of a 

 sum of £10,000.1 



The Park appears to have been well cared for by the Eanger and 

 other officials responsible for it down to the accession of George II. ; 

 and in the Irish departmental correspondence at the Record office down 

 to that date are frequent references to expenditure on drainage and 

 repair's to roads. A very considerable part of the Park, especially that 

 in the neighbourhood of the Phoenix Pillar and Viceregal Lodge, is 

 naturally of a very swampy and boggy character ; and large sums were 

 required to drain the surface and make the roads sound. In the middle 

 of the eighteenth century much less attention seems to have been be- 

 stowed on these matters, and the soil relapsed, as boggy land is apt to do, 

 to its original character. At the time when the Yiceregal Lodge was 

 acquii'ed by the Government, deterioration had spread to a very serious 

 extent. ' ' The roads and sui'f ace of this Park continue in a damned state," 

 wrote Eden to Sir John Blaquiere in 1 78 1 .^ Owing, as the Chief Secre- 

 tary complained, to the number of the " co-existing potentates of the 

 Park," it was difficult to fix responsibility on anyone; so that between 

 ranger, keeper and bailiff, what was everyone's business was nobody's 

 business, and the due care of the place was scandalously neglected.^ 

 In another letter, Eden called the bailiff's attention to the grievous 

 results of their carelessness. " Two or three hundred tents," he wrote, 

 "for the sale of whisky were permitted to be established in the 

 beginning of last week, and are still standing in full vigour to the great 

 detriment of the trees and turf, and the destruction of the cows, sheep 

 and deer." It appears from other sources that Blaquiere had given 

 disgracefully little attention to the proper keeping of the Park, and that 

 in his anxiety to make a profit out of the right of grazing which was 

 a part of his Patent he had greatly injured the deer.* 



The Government appears to have qu.ickly repented of its purchase 

 of his Lodge ; for it was no sooner acquired by Lord Carlisle than his 

 successor, the Duke of Portland, sought to get rid of it, and the 

 political circumstances of the moment suggested a graceful occasion 

 for disposing of what the new Viceroy evidently regarded as a white 



1 Letter from Sackville Hamilton, July 13, 1782. 



2 Auckland MSS., Aug. 25, 1781 ; Addit. MS. Brit. Mus., 34, 418, f. 60. 



3 June 6, 1681, Addit. MS. 34, 417. 



* Wm. Low to Nathaniel Clements, March 23, 1778, Brit. Dep. Coit., 1760-89, 

 Irish Eecord Office. 



