“DEANERY-HOUSE, Sept. 26, 1726.

“The continued concourse of beggars from all parts of the kingdom to this city, having made it impossible for the several parishes to maintain their own poor, according to the ancient laws of the land, several lord mayors did apply themselves to the lord Archbishop of Dublin, that his grace would direct his clergy, and his churchwardens of the said city, to appoint badges of brass, copper, or pewter, to be worn by the poor of the several parishes.  The badges to be marked with the initial letters of the name of each church, and numbered 1, 2, 3, etc., and to be well sewed and fastened on the right and left shoulder of the outward garment of each of the said poor, by which they might be distinguished.  And that none of the said poor should go out of their own parish to beg alms; whereof the beadles were to take care.

“His grace the lord Archbishop, did accordingly give his directions to the clergy; which, however, have proved wholly ineffectual, by the fraud, perverseness, or pride of the said poor, several of them openly protesting ‘they will never submit to wear the said badges.’  And of those who received them, almost every one keep them in their pockets, or hang them in a string about their necks, or fasten them under their coats, not to be seen, by which means the whole design is eluded; so that a man may walk from one end of the town to another, without seeing one beggar regularly badged, and in such great numbers, that they are a mighty nuisance to the public, most of them being foreigners.

“It is therefore proposed, that his grace the lord Archbishop would please to call the clergy of the city together, and renew his directions and exhortations to them, to put the affair of badges effectually in practice, by such methods as his grace and they shall agree upon.  And I think it would be highly necessary that some paper should be pasted up in several proper parts of the city, signifying this order, and exhorting all people to give no alms except to those poor who are regularly badged, and only while they are in the precincts of their own parishes.  And if something like this were delivered by the ministers in the reading-desk two or three Lord’s-days successively, it would still be of further use to put this matter upon a right foot.  And that all who offend against this regulation shall be treated as vagabonds and sturdy beggars.” [T.  S.]

[191] Spelt now St. Warburgh’s. [T.  S.]

[192] About the beginning of the eighteenth century, Dr. Gwythers, a physician, and fellow of the University of Dublin, brought over with him a parcel of frogs from England to Ireland, in order to propagate their species in that kingdom, and threw them into the ditches of the University Park; but they all perished.  Whereupon he sent to England for some bottles of the frog-spawn, which he threw into those ditches, by which means the species of frogs was propagated in that kingdom.  However, their number was so small in the year 1720, that a frog was nowhere to be seen in Ireland, except in the neighbourhood of the University Park:  but within six or seven years after, they spread thirty, forty, or fifty miles over the country; and so at last, by degrees, over the whole country. [D.  S.]