Queen's Colleges

Queen's Colleges, created by Peel's government in 1845 as one of a series of reforms intended to undermine the demand for repeal. Established following private consultation with church leaders in Ireland (including those Catholic prelates with whom lines of communication existed), they were intended to meet clerical and lay Catholic demands for the provision of acceptable university education, while respecting the objections of Protestant opinion in England to the establishment of denominational colleges in Ireland, as well as Protestant sensitivity where the interests of Trinity College, Dublin, were concerned.

Under the Colleges (Ireland) Act (1845), three colleges were to be incorporated, all non‐residential (though privately funded halls of residence were provided for), free from religious tests, and without theological faculties. Theology might, however, be taught by private endowment and subject to the visitational powers of the crown. Professors were to be appointed by the crown. The degree‐granting Queen's University of Ireland was incorporated in 1850, by which time the Queen's Colleges at Belfast, Cork, and Galway had opened.

From the outset, the colleges attracted the opprobrium of the more militant Catholic bishops and clergy. Papal rescripts in 1847 and 1848 condemned them as a system ‘to train the youthful mind in indifferentism to every creed’ and admonished the hierarchy to have nothing to do with them. In 1850 Rome forbade clergy to hold office in the colleges and required the bishops to discourage Catholics from attending. O'Connell (to the consternation of the Young Irelanders) denounced the ‘godless colleges’. In 1879 the Queen's University was replaced, as part of a fresh attempt to solve the problem, by the Royal University.

Kenneth Milne