From ‘Dublin Under the Georges‘ by Constantina Maxwell (Chapter V, ‘Intellectual and Artistic Life’, dealing with life in eighteenth-century Trinity College Dublin):-
“The most sensational event in student history in the early part of the century was the murder of one of the Fellows in 1734. The Junior Dean, Edward Ford, having made himself very unpopular with the undergraduates, received warning that the windows of his room would be broken. The students, duly arriving one evening, commenced to throw stones, whereupon Ford, who had deliberately laid in a stock of ammunition, began to fire down upon them. The infuriated young men ran away, but returned with a gun, and the Junior Dean was wounded and died. Public opinion in Dublin sympathized with the students and condemned Ford. The punishment awarded therefore was light, especially as some of the offenders belonged to families of consequence.”
John William Stubbs in his History of the University of Dublin (1889) is fairly scathing of Ford, describing him as an “obnoxious… obstinate and ill-judging man”. Damn character flaws, leading to one’s destruction sure as night follows day; always a risk when you don’t belong to a family of consequence…
Poor Dr (Reverend?) Ford, who may or may not have been the Junior Dean or just a Junior Fellow (accounts vary). I feel so sorry for him. 
Pic above (not Ford, but John Barrett, Doctor of Divinity and Vice-Provost) from the National Library collection. Apparently Ford’s ghost still treads the cobblestones of the Rubrics (shown in background). See here.
They might have simply, say, tarred and feathered him, or come up with some other sort of public humiliation which would have been less fatal.
Even for the heinous crime of being a bad lecturer, I thought the punishment was disproportionate.
No really – I can sympathise with the students here. Even nowadays the only way to remove a useless academic is often by promotion.