{0a} _Notes and Queries_, Sixth Series, x. 287.
{0b} See letter from Swift to John Temple, February 1737. She was then
“quite sunk with years and unwieldliness.”
{0c} _Athenæum_, Aug. 8, 1891.
{0d} _Journal_, May 4, 1711.
{0e} Craik’s _Life of Swift_, 269.
{0f} _Unpublished Letters of Dean Swift_, pp. 189–96.
{0g} In 1730 he wrote, “Those who have been married may form juster
ideas of that estate than I can pretend to do” (Dr. Birkbeck Hill’s
_Unpublished Letters of Dean Swift_, p. 237).
{0h} Scott added a new incident which has become incorporated in the
popular conception of Swift’s story. Delany is said to have met Swift
rushing out of Archbishop King’s study, with a countenance of
distraction, immediately after the wedding. King, who was in tears,
said, “You have just met the most unhappy man on earth; but on the
subject of his wretchedness you must never ask a question.” Will it be
believed that Scott—who rejects Delany’s inference from this alleged
incident—had no better authority for it than “a friend of his (Delany’s)
relict”?
{0i} This incident, for which there is probably some foundation of
fact—we cannot say how much—has been greatly expanded by Mrs. Woods in
her novel _Esther Vanhomrigh_. Unfortunately most of her readers cannot,
of course, judge exactly how far her story is a work of imagination.
{0j} In October Swift explained that he had been in the country “partly
to see a lady of my old acquaintance, who was extremely ill”
(_Unpublished Letters of Dean Swift_, p. 198).
{0k} There is a story that shortly before her death Swift begged Stella
to allow herself to be publicly announced as his wife, but that she
replied that it was then too late. The versions given by Delany and
Theophilus Swift differ considerably, while Sheridan alters the whole
thing by representing Swift as brutally refusing to comply with Stella’s
last wishes.
{0l} There has also been the absurd suggestion that the impediment was
Swift’s knowledge that both he and Stella were the illegitimate children
of Sir William Temple—a theory which is absolutely disproved by known
facts.
{0m} It is curious to note the intimate knowledge of some of Swift’s
peculiarities which was possessed by the hostile writer of a pamphlet
called _A Hue and Cry after Dr. S—t_, published in 1714. That piece
consists, for the most part, of extracts from a supposed Diary by Swift,
and contains such passages as these: “_Friday_. Go to the Club . . . Am
treated. Expenses one shilling.” “_Saturday_. Bid my servant get all
things ready for a journey to the country: mend my breeches; hire a
washerwoman, making her allow for old shirts, socks, dabbs and markees,
which she bought of me . . . Six coaches of quality, and nine hacks,
this day called at my lodgings.” “_Thursday_. The Earl looked queerly:
left him in a huff. Bid him send for me when he was fit for company. . . .
Spent ten shillings.”
{0n} The “little language” is marked chiefly by such changes of letters
(e.g., l for r, or r for l) as a child makes when learning to speak. The
combinations of letters in which Swift indulges are not so easy of
interpretation. For himself he uses Pdfr, and sometimes Podefar or FR
(perhaps Poor dear foolish rogue). Stella is Ppt (Poor pretty thing).
MD (my dears) usually stands for both Stella and Mrs. Dingley, but
sometimes for Stella alone. Mrs. Dingley is indicated by ME (Madam
Elderly), D, or DD (Dear Dingley). The letters FW may mean Farewell, or
Foolish Wenches. Lele seems sometimes to be There, there, and sometimes
Truly.
{1a} Addressed “To Mrs. Dingley, at Mr. Curry’s house over against the
Ram in Capel Street, Dublin, Ireland,” and endorsed by Esther Johnson,
“Sept. 9. Received.” Afterwards Swift added, “MD received this Sept. 9,”
and “Letters to Ireland from Sept.1710, begun soon after the change of
Ministry. Nothing in this.”
{1b} Beaumont is the “grey old fellow, poet Joe,” of Swift’s verses “On
the little house by the Churchyard at Castlenock.” Joseph Beaumont, a
linen-merchant, is described as “a venerable, handsome, grey-headed man,
of quick and various natural abilities, but not improved by learning.”
His inventions and mathematical speculations, relating to the longitude
and other things, brought on mental troubles, which were intensified by
bankruptcy, about 1718. He was afterwards removed from Dublin to his
home at Trim, where he rallied; but in a few years his madness returned,
and he committed suicide.
{1c} Vicar of Trim, and formerly a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin.
In various places in his correspondence Swift criticises the failings of
Dr. Anthony Raymond, who was, says Scott, “a particular friend.” His
unreliability in money matters, the improvidence of his large family, his
peculiarities in grammar, his pride in his good manners, all these points
are noticed in the journal and elsewhere. But when Dr. Raymond returned
to Ireland after a visit to London, Swift felt a little melancholy, and
regretted that he had not seen more of him. In July 1713 Raymond was
presented to the Crown living of Moyenet.
{2a} A small township on the estuary of the Dee, between twelve and
thirteen miles north-west of Chester. In the early part of the
eighteenth century Parkgate was a rival of Holyhead as a station for the
Dublin packets, which started, on the Irish side, from off Kingsend.
{2b} Dr. St. George Ashe, afterwards Bishop of Derry, who had been
Swift’s tutor at Trinity College, Dublin. He died in 1718. It is this
lifelong friend who is said to have married Swift and Esther Johnson in
1716.
{2c} The Commission to solicit for the remission of the First-Fruits and
twentieth parts, payable to the Crown by the Irish clergy, was signed by
the Archbishops of Armagh, Dublin, and Cashel, and the Bishops of
Kildare, Meath, and Killala.
{2d} Dr. William Lloyd was appointed Bishop of Killala in 1690. He had
previously been Dean of Achonry.
{2e} Dr. John Hough (1651–1743). In 1687 he had been elected President
of Magdalen College, Oxford, in place of the nominee of James II. Hough
was Bishop of Oxford, Lichfield, and Worcester successively, and declined
the primacy in 1715.
{2f} Steele was at this time Gazetteer. The Cockpit, in Whitehall,
looked upon St. James’s Palace, and was used for various Government
purposes.
{2g} This coffee-house, the resort of the Whig politicians, was kept by
a man named Elliot. It is often alluded to in the _Tatler_ and
_Spectator_.
{2h} William Stewart, second Viscount Mountjoy, a friend and
correspondent of Swift’s in Ireland. He was the son of one of William’s
generals, and was himself a Lieutenant-General and Master-General of the
Ordnance; he died in 1728.
{2i} Catherine, daughter of Maurice Keating, of Narraghmore, Kildare,
and wife of Garret Wesley, of Dangan, M.P. for Meath. She died in 1745.
On the death of Garret Wesley without issue in 1728, the property passed
to a cousin, Richard Colley, who was afterwards created Baron Mornington,
and was grandfather to the Duke of Wellington.
{3a} The landlady of Esther Johnson and Mrs. Dingley.
{3b} Swift’s housekeeper at Laracor. Elsewhere Swift speaks of his “old
Presbyterian housekeeper,” “who has been my Walpole above thirty years,
whenever I lived in this kingdom.” “Joe Beaumont is my oracle for public
affairs in the country, and an old Presbyterian woman in town.”
{3c} Isaiah Parvisol, Swift’s tithe-agent and steward at Laracor, was an
Irishman of French extraction, who died in 1718 (Birkbeck’s _Unpublished
Letters of Dean Swift_, 1899, p.85).
{4a} In some MS. Accounts of Swift’s, in the Forster Collection at South
Kensington there is the following entry:—“Set out for England Aug. 31st
on Thursday, 10 at night; landed at Parkgate Friday 1st at noon. Sept.
1, 1710, came to London. Thursday at noon, Sept. 7th, with Lord
Mountjoy, etc. Mem.: Lord Mountjoy bore my expenses from Chester to
London.”
{4b} In a letter to Archbishop King of the same date Swift says he was
“equally caressed by both parties; by one as a sort of bough for drowning
men to lay hold of, and by the other as one discontented with the late
men in power.”
{4c} The Earl of Godolphin, who was severely satirised by Swift in his
_Sid Hamet’s Rod_, 1710. He had been ordered to break his staff as
Treasurer on August 8. Swift told Archbishop King that Godolphin was
“altogether short, dry, and morose.”
{4d} Martha, widow of Sir Thomas Giffard, Bart., of County Kildare, the
favourite sister of Sir William Temple, had been described by Swift in
early pindaric verses as “wise and great.” Afterwards he was to call her
“an old beast” (_Journal_, Nov. 11, 1710). Their quarrel arose, towards
the close of 1709, out of a difference with regard to the publication of
Sir William Temple’s Works. On the appearance of vol. v. Lady Giffard
charged Swift with publishing portions of the writings from an unfaithful
copy in lieu of the originals in his possession, and in particular with
printing laudatory notices of Godolphin and Sunderland which Temple
intended to omit, and with omitting an unfavourable remark on Sunderland
which Temple intended to print. Swift replied that the corrections were
all made by Temple himself.
{4e} Lord Wharton’s second wife, Lucy, daughter of Lord Lisburn. She
died in 1716, a few months after her husband. See Lady M. W. Montagu’s
_Letters_.
{4f} Mrs. Bridget Johnson, who married, as her second husband, Ralph
Mose or Moss, of Farnham, an agent for Sir William Temple’s estate, was
waiting-woman or companion to Lady Giffard. In her will (1722) Lady
Giffard left Mrs. Moss £20, “with my silver cup and cover.” Mrs. Moss
died in 1745, when letters of administration were granted to a creditor
of the deceased.
{4g} Dr. William King (1650–1729), a Whig and High Churchman, had more
than one difference with Swift during the twenty years following Swift’s
first visit to London in connection with the First-Fruits question.
{4h} Swift’s benefice, in the diocese of Meath, two miles from Trim.
{5a} Steele, who had been issuing the _Tatler_ thrice weekly since April
1709. He lost the Gazetteership in October.
{5b} James, second Duke of Ormond (1665–1745) was appointed Lord
Lieutenant on the 26th of October. In the following year he became
Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief. He was impeached of high treason
and attainted in 1715; and he died in exile.
{5c} “Presto,” substituted by the original editor for “Pdfr,” was
suggested by a passage in the _Journal_ for Aug. 2, 1711, where Swift
says that the Duchess of Shrewsbury “could not say my name in English,
but said Dr. Presto, which is Italian for Swift.”
{5d} Charles Jervas, the popular portrait-painter, has left two
portraits of Swift, one of which is in the National Portrait Gallery, and
the other in the Bodleian Library.
{5e} Sir William Temple’s nephew, and son of Sir John Temple (died
1704), Solicitor and Attorney-General, and Speaker of the Irish House of
Commons. “Jack” Temple acquired the estate of Moor Park, Surrey, by his
marriage with Elizabeth, granddaughter of Sir William Temple, and elder
daughter of John Temple, who committed suicide in 1689. As late as 1706
Swift received an invitation to visit Moor Park.
{5f} Dr. Benjamin Pratt, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, was
appointed Dean of Down in 1717. Swift calls him “a person of wit and
learning,” and “a gentleman of good birth and fortune, . . . very much
esteemed among us” (_Short Character of Thomas_, _Earl of Wharton_). On
his death in 1721 Swift wrote, “He was one of the oldest acquaintance I
had, and the last that I expected to die. He has left a young widow, in
very good circumstances. He had schemes of long life. . . . What a
ridiculous thing is man!” (_Unpublished Letters of Dean Swift_, 1899, p.
106).
{6a} A Westmeath landlord, whom Swift met from time to time in London.
The Leighs were well acquainted with Esther Johnson.
{6b} Dr. Enoch Sterne, appointed Dean of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, in 1704.
Swift was his successor in the deanery on Dr. Sterne’s appointment as
Bishop of Dromore in 1713. In 1717 Sterne was translated to the
bishopric of Clogher. He spent much money on the cathedrals, etc., with
which he was connected.
{6c} Archdeacon Walls was rector of Castle Knock, near Trim. Esther
Johnson was a frequent visitor at his house in Queen Street, Dublin.
{6d} William Frankland, Comptroller of the Inland Office at the Post
Office, was the second son of the Postmaster-General, Sir Thomas
Frankland, Bart. Luttrell (vi. 333) records that in 1708 he was made
Treasurer of the Stamp Office, or, according to Chamberlayne’s _Mag.
Brit. Notitia_ for 1710, Receiver-General.
{6e} Thomas Wharton, Earl and afterwards Marquis of Wharton, had been
one of Swift’s fellow-travellers from Dublin. Lord Lieutenant of Ireland
under the Whig Government, from 1708 to 1710, Wharton was the most
thorough-going party man that had yet appeared in English politics; and
his political enemies did not fail to make the most of his well-known
immorality. In his Notes to Macky’s _Characters_ Swift described Wharton
as “the most universal villain that ever I knew.” On his death in 1715
he was succeeded by his profligate son, Philip, who was created Duke of
Wharton in 1718.
{6f} This money was a premium the Government had promised Beaumont for
his Mathematical Sleying Tables, calculated for the improvement of the
linen manufacture.
{6g} The bellman was both town-crier and night-watchman.
{7a} Dr. William Cockburn (1669–1739), Swift’s physician, of a good
Scottish family, was educated at Leyden. He invented an electuary for
the cure of fluxes, and in 1730, in _The Danger of Improving Physick_,
satirised the academical physicians who envied him the fortune he had
made by his secret remedy. He was described in 1729 as “an old very rich
quack.”
{7b} Sir Matthew Dudley, Bart., an old Whig friend, was M.P. for
Huntingdonshire, and Commissioner of the Customs from 1706 to 1712, and
again under George I., until his death in 1721.
{7c} Isaac Manley, who was appointed Postmaster-General in Ireland in
1703 (Luttrell, v. 333). He had previously been Comptroller of the
English Letter Office, a post in which he was succeeded by William
Frankland, son of Sir Thomas Frankland. Dunton calls Manley “loyal and
acute.”
{7d} Sir Thomas Frankland was joint Postmaster-General from 1691 to
1715. He succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his father, Sir
William Frankland, in 1697, and he died in 1726. Macky describes Sir
Thomas as “of a sweet and easy disposition, zealous for the Constitution,
yet not forward, and indulgent to his dependants.” On this Swift
comments, “This is a fair character.”
{7e} Theophilus Butler, elected M.P. for Cavan, in the Irish Parliament,
in 1703, and for Belturbet (as “the Right Hon. Theophilus Butler”) in
1713. On May 3, 1710, Luttrell wrote (_Brief Relation of State Affairs_,
vi. 577), “’Tis said the Earl of Montrath, Lord Viscount Mountjoy . . .
and Mr. Butler will be made Privy Councillors of the Kingdom of Ireland.”
Butler—a contemporary of Swift’s at Trinity College, Dublin—was created
Baron of Newtown-Butler in 1715, and his brother, who succeeded him in
1723, was made Viscount Lanesborough. Butler’s wife was Emilia, eldest
daughter and co-heir of James Stopford, of Tara, County Meath.
{8a} No. 193 of the _Tatler_, for July 4, 1710, contained a letter from
Downes the Prompter—not by Steele himself—in ridicule of Harley and his
proposed Ministry.
{8b} Charles Robartes, second Earl of Radnor, who died in 1723. In the
_Journal_ for Dec. 30, 1711, Swift calls him “a scoundrel.”
{8c} Benjamin Tooke, Swift’s bookseller or publisher, lived at the
Middle Temple Gate. Dunton wrote of him, “He is truly honest, a man of
refined sense, and is unblemished in his reputation.” Tooke died in 1723.
{8d} Swift’s servant, of whose misdeeds he makes frequent complaints in
the _Journal_.
{9a} Deputy Vice-Treasurer of Ireland. In one place Swift calls him
Captain Pratt; and in all probability he is the John Pratt who, as we
learn from Dalton’s _English Army Lists_, was appointed captain in
General Erle’s regiment of foot in 1699, and was out of the regiment by
1706. In 1702 he obtained the Queen’s leave to be absent from the
regiment when it was sent to the West Indies. Pratt seems to have been
introduced to Swift by Addison.
{9b} Charles Ford, of Wood Park, near Dublin, was a great lover of the
opera and a friend of the Tory wits. He was appointed Gazetteer in 1712.
Gay calls him “joyous Ford,” and he was given to over-indulgence in
conviviality. See Swift’s poem on Stella at Wood Park.
{9c} Lord Somers, to whom Swift had dedicated _The Tale of a Tub_, with
high praise of his public and private virtues. In later years Swift said
that Somers “possessed all excellent qualifications except virtue.”
{9d} At the foundation school of the Ormonds at Kilkenny (see p. 10,
note 6.)
{9e} A Whig haberdasher.
{9f} Benjamin Hoadley, the Whig divine, had been engaged in controversy
with Sacheverell, Blackall, and Atterbury. After the accession of George
I. he became Bishop of Bangor, Hereford, Salisbury, and Winchester in
success.
{9g} Dr. Henry Sacheverell, whose impeachment and trial had led to the
fall of the Whig Government.
{10a} Sir Berkeley Lucy, Bart., F.R.S., married Katherine, daughter of
Charles Cotton, of Beresford, Staffordshire, Isaac Walton’s friend. Lady
Lucy died in 1740, leaving an only surviving daughter, Mary, who married
the youngest son of the Earl of Northampton, and had two sons, who became
successively seventh and eighth Earls of Northampton. Forster and others
assumed that “Lady Lucy” was a Lady Lucy Stanhope, though they were not
able to identify her. It was reserved for Mr. Ryland to clear up this
difficulty. As he points out, Lady Lucy’s elder sister, Olive, married
George Stanhope, Dean of Canterbury, and left a daughter Mary,—Swift’s
“Moll Stanhope,”—a beauty and a madcap, who married, in 1712, William
Burnet, son of Bishop Burnet, and died in 1714. Mary, another sister of
Lady Lucy’s, married Augustine Armstrong, of Great Ormond Street, and is
the Mrs. Armstrong mentioned by Swift on Feb. 3, 1711, as a pretender to
wit, without taste. Sir Berkeley Lucy’s mother was a daughter of the
first Earl of Berkeley, and it was probably through the Berkeleys that
Swift came to know the Lucys.
{10b} Ann Long was sister to Sir James Long, and niece to Colonel
Strangeways. Once a beauty and toast of the Kit-Cat Club, she fell into
narrow circumstances through imprudence and the unkindness of her
friends, and retired under the name of Mrs. Smythe to Lynn, in Norfolk,
where she died in 1711 (see _Journal_, December 25, 1711). Swift said,
“She was the most beautiful person of the age she lived in; of great
honour and virtue, infinite sweetness and generosity of temper, and true
good sense” (Forster’s _Swift_, 229). In a letter of December 1711,
Swift wrote that she “had every valuable quality of body and mind that
could make a lady loved and esteemed.”
{10c} Said, I know not on what authority, to be Swift’s friend, Mrs.
Barton. But Mrs. Barton is often mentioned by Swift as living in London
in 1710–11.
{10d} One of Swift’s cousins, who was separated from her husband, a man
of bad character, living abroad. Her second husband, Lancelot, a servant
of Lord Sussex, lived in New Bond Street, and there Swift lodged in 1727.
{10e} £100,000.
{10f} Francis Stratford’s name appears in the Dublin University Register
for 1686 immediately before Swift’s. Budgell is believed to have
referred to the friendship of Swift and Stratford in the _Spectator_, No.
353, where he describes two schoolfellows, and says that the man of
genius was buried in a country parsonage of £160 a year, while his
friend, with the bare abilities of a common scrivener, had gained an
estate of above £100,000.
{10g} William Cowper, afterwards Lord Cowper.
{11a} Sir Simon Harcourt, afterwards Viscount Harcourt, had been counsel
for Sacheverell. On Sept. 19, 1710, he was appointed Attorney-General,
and on October 19 Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. In April 1713 he became
Lord Chancellor.
{11b} This may be some relative of Dr. John Freind (see p. 65), or, more
probably, as Sir Henry Craik suggests, a misprint for Colonel Frowde,
Addison’s friend (see _Journal_, Nov. 4, 1710). No officer named Freind
or Friend is mentioned in Dalton’s _English Army Lists_.
{11c} See the _Tatler_, Nos. 124, 203. There are various allusions in
the “Wentworth Papers” to this, the first State Lottery of 1710; and two
bluecoat boys drawing out the tickets, and showing their hands to the
crowd, as Swift describes them, are shown in a reproduction of a picture
in a contemporary pamphlet given in Ashton’s _Social Life in the Reign of
Queen Anne_, i. 115.
{11d} A few weeks later Swift wrote, “I took a fancy of resolving to
grow mad for it, but now it is off.”
{11e} Sir John Holland, Bart., was a leading manager for the Commons in
the impeachment of Sacheverell. He succeeded Sir Thomas Felton in the
Comptrollership in March 1710.
{12a} Dryden Leach. (see p. 51.)
{12b} William Pate, “_bel esprit_ and woollen-draper,” as Swift called
him, lived opposite the Royal Exchange. He was Sheriff of London in
1734, and died in 1746. Arbuthnot, previous to matriculating at Oxford,
lodged with Pate, who gave him a letter of introduction to Dr. Charlett,
Master of University College; and Pate is supposed to have been the
woollen-draper, “remarkable for his learning and good-nature,” who is
mentioned by Steele in the _Guardian_, No. 141.
{12c} James Brydges, son of Lord Chandos of Sudeley, was appointed
Paymaster-General of Forces Abroad in 1707. He succeeded his father as
Baron Chandos in 1714, and was created Duke of Chandos in 1729. The
“princely Chandos” and his house at Canons suggested to Pope the Timon’s
villa of the “Epistle to Lord Burlington.” The Duke died in 1744.
{12d} Charles Talbot, created Duke of Shrewsbury in 1694, was held in
great esteem by William III., and was Lord Chamberlain under Anne. In
1713 he became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and held various offices under
George I., until his death in 1718. “Before he was o. age,” says
Macaulay, “he was allowed to be one of the finest gentlemen and finest
scholars of his time.”
{13a} See p. 230.
{13b} William Cavendish, second Duke of Devonshire (1673–1729), who was
Lord Steward from 1707 to 1710 and from 1714 to 1716. Afterwards he was
Lord President of the Council. Swift’s comment on Macky’s character of
this Whig nobleman was, “A very poor understanding.”
{13c} John Annesley, fourth Earl of Anglesea, a young nobleman of great
promise, had only recently been appointed joint Vice-Treasurer,
Receiver-General, and Paymaster of the Forces in Ireland, and sworn of
the Privy Council.
{14a} Nichols, followed by subsequent editors, suggested that “Durham”
was a mistake for “St. David’s,” because Dr. George Bull, Bishop of St.
David’s, died in 1710. But Dr. Bull died on Feb. 17, 1710, though his
successor, Dr. Philip Bisse, was not appointed until November; and Swift
was merely repeating a false report of the death of Lord Crewe, Bishop of
Durham, which was current on the day on which he wrote. Luttrell says,
on Sept. 19, “The Lord Crewe . . . died lately”; but on the 23rd he adds,
“The Bishop of Durham is not dead as reported” (_Brief Relation_, vi.
630, 633).
{14b} Lady Elizabeth (“Betty”) Butler, who died unmarried in 1750.
{14c} Swift wrote in 1734, “Once every year I issued out an edict,
commanding that all ladies of wit, sense, merit, and quality, who had an
ambition to be acquainted with me, should make the first advances at
their peril: which edict, you may believe, was universally obeyed.”
{14d} Charles, second Earl of Berkeley (1649–1710), married Elizabeth,
daughter of Baptist Noel, Viscount Campden. The Earl died on Sept. 24,
1710, and his widow in 1719. Swift, it will be remembered, had been
chaplain to Lord Berkeley in Ireland in 1699.
{14e} Lady Betty and Lady Mary Butler. (see p. 44.)
{14f} Henry Boyle, Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1702 to 1708, was
Secretary of State from 1708 to 1710, when he was succeeded by St. John.
In 1714 he was created Baron Carleton, and he was Lord President from
1721 until his death in 1725.
{15a} On Sept. 29 Swift wrote that his rooms consisted of the first
floor, a dining-room and bed-chamber, at eight shillings a week. On his
last visit to England, in 1726, he lodged “next door to the Royal Chair”
in Bury Street. Steele lived in the same street from 1707 to 1712; and
Mrs. Vanhomrigh was Swift’s next-door neighbour.
{15b} In Exchange Alley. Cf. _Spectator_, No. 454: “I went afterwards
to Robin’s, and saw people who had dined with me at the fivepenny
ordinary just before, give bills for the value of large estates.”
{16a} John Molesworth, Commissioner of the Stamp Office, was sent as
Envoy to Tuscany in 1710, and was afterwards Minister at Florence,
Venice, Geneva, and Turin. He became second Viscount Molesworth in 1725,
and died in 1731.
{16b} Misson says, “Every two hours you may write to any part of the
city or suburbs: he that receives it pays a penny, and you give nothing
when you put it into the Post; but when you write into the country both
he that writes and he that receives pay each a penny.” The Penny Post
system had been taken over by the Government, but was worked separately
from the general Post.
{17a} The Countess of Berkeley’s second daughter, who married, in 1706,
Sir John Germaine, Bart. (1650–1718), a soldier of fortune. Lady Betty
Germaine is said to have written a satire on Pope (Nichols’ _Literary
Anecdotes_, ii. 11), and was a constant correspondent of Swift’s. She
was always a Whig, and shortly before her death in 1769 she made a
present of £100 to John Wilkes, then in prison in the Tower. Writing of
Lady Betty Butler and Lady Betty Germaine, Swift says elsewhere, “I saw
two Lady Bettys this afternoon; the beauty of one, the good breeding and
nature of the other, and the wit of either, would have made a fine
woman.” Germaine obtained the estate at Drayton through his first wife,
Lady Mary Mordaunt—Lord Peterborough’s sister—who had been divorced by
her first husband, the Duke of Norfolk. Lady Betty was thirty years
younger than her husband, and after Sir John’s death she remained a widow
for over fifty years.
{17b} The letter in No. 280 of the _Tatler_.
{17c} Discover, find out. Cf. Shakespeare’s _All’s Well that Ends
Well_, iii. 6: “He was first smoked by the old Lord Lafeu.”
{17d} A village near Dublin.
{17e} Excellent.
{18a} See p. 3.
{18b} John Molesworth, and, probably, his brother Richard, afterwards
third Viscount Molesworth, who had saved the Duke of Marlborough’s life
at the battle of Ramillies, and had been appointed, in 1710, colonel of a
regiment of foot.
{18c} Presumably at Charles Ford’s.
{18d} _The Virtues of Sid Hamet the Magician’s Rod_, published as a
single folio sheet, was a satire on Godolphin.
{19a} Apparently Marcus Antonius Morgan, steward to the Bishop of
Kildare (Craik). Swift wrote to the Duke of Montagu on Aug. 12, 1713
(_Buccleuch MSS._, 1899, i. 359). “Mr. Morgan of Kingstrope is a friend,
and was, I am informed, put out of the Commission of justice for being
so.”
{19b} Dr. Raymond is called Morgan’s “father” because he warmly
supported Morgan’s interests.
{19c} The Rev. Thomas Warburton, Swift’s curate at Laracor, whom Swift
described to the Archbishop as “a gentleman of very good learning and
sense, who has behaved himself altogether unblamably.”
{19d} The tobacco was to be used as snuff. About this time ladies much
affected the use of snuff, and Steele, in No. 344 of the _Spectator_,
speaks of Flavilla pulling out her box, “which is indeed full of good
Brazil,” in the middle of the sermon. People often made their own snuff
out of roll tobacco, by means of rasps. On Nov. 3, 1711, Swift speaks of
sending “a fine snuff rasp of ivory, given me by Mrs. St. John for
Dingley, and a large roll of tobacco.”
{20a} Katherine Barton, second daughter of Robert Barton, of Brigstock,
Northamptonshire, and niece of Sir Isaac Newton. She was a favourite
among the toasts of the Kit-Cat Club, and Lord Halifax, who left her a
fortune, was an intimate friend. In 1717 she married John Conduitt,
afterwards Master of the Mint.
{20b} See p. 17.
{20c} William Connolly, appointed a Commissioner of the Revenue in 1709,
was afterwards Speaker of the Irish House of Commons. He died in 1729.
Francis Robarts, appointed a Commissioner of the Revenue in 1692, was
made a Teller of the Exchequer in England in 1704, and quitted that
office, in September 1710, on his reappointment, in Connolly’s place, as
Revenue Commissioner in Ireland. In 1714 Robarts was removed, and
Connolly again appointed Commissioner.
{20d} Enoch Sterne, Collector of Wicklow and Clerk to the Irish House of
Lords. Writing to Dr. Sterne on Sept. 26, Swift said, “I saw Collector
Sterne, who desired me to present his service to you, and to tell you he
would be glad to hear from you, but not about business.”
{20e} In his _Character of Mrs. Johnson_ Swift says, “She was never
known to cry out, or discover any fear, in a coach.” The passage in the
text is obscure. Apparently Esther Johnson had boasted of saving money
by walking, instead of riding, like a coward.
{21a} John Radcliffe (1650–1714), the well-known physician and wit, was
often denounced as a clever empiric. Early in 1711 he treated Swift for
his dizziness. By his will, Radcliffe left most of his property to the
University of Oxford.
{21b} Charles Barnard, Sergeant-Surgeon to the Queen, and Master of the
Barber Surgeons’ Company. His large and valuable library, to which Swift
afterwards refers, fetched great prices. Luttrell records Barnard’s
death in his diary for Oct. 12, 1710.
{21c} Robert Harley, afterwards Earl of Oxford, had been appointed
Chancellor of the Exchequer in August 1710. In May 1711 he was raised to
the peerage and made Lord High Treasurer; and he is constantly referred
to in the _Journal_ as “Lord Treasurer.” He was impeached in 1715, but
was acquitted to 1717; he died in 1724.
{22a} The Right Hon. Thomas Bligh, M.P., of Rathmore, County Meath, died
on Aug. 28, 1710. His son, mentioned later in the _Journal_, became Earl
of Darnley.
{22b} Penalty.
{23a} Erasmus Lewis, Under Secretary of State under Lord Dartmouth, was
a great friend of Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot. He had previously been one
of Harley’s secretaries, and in his _Horace Imitated_, _Book I. Ep.
vii_., Swift describes him as “a cunning shaver, and very much in
Harley’s favour.” Arbuthnot says that under George I. Lewis kept company
with the greatest, and was “principal governor” in many families. Lewis
was a witness to Arbuthnot’s will. Pope and Esther Vanhomrigh both left
him money to buy rings. Lewis died in 1754, aged eighty-three.
{23b} Charles Darteneuf, or Dartiquenave, was a celebrated epicure, who
is said to have been a son of Charles II. Lord Lyttleton, in his
_Dialogues of the Dead_, recalling Pope’s allusions to him, selects him
to represent modern _bon vivants_ in the dialogue between Darteneuf and
Apicius. See _Tatler_ 252. Darteneuf was Paymaster of the Royal Works
and a member of the Kit-Cat Club. He died in 1737.
{23c} No. 230.
{23d} Good, excellent.
{23e} Captain George Delaval, appointed Envoy Extraordinary to the King
of Portugal in Oct. 1710, was with Lord Peterborough in Spain in 1706.
In May 1707 he went to Lisbon with despatches for the Courts of Spain and
Portugal, from whence he was to proceed as Envoy to the Emperor of
Morocco, with rich presents (Luttrell, vi. 52, 174, 192).
{23f} Charles Montagu, Earl of Halifax, as Ranger of Bushey Park and
Hampton Court, held many offices under William III., and was First Lord
of the Treasury under George I., until his death in 1715. He was great
as financier and as debater, and he was a liberal patron of literature.
{24a} John Manley, M.P. for Bossiney, was made Surveyor-General on Sept.
30, 1710, and died in 1714. In 1706 he fought a duel with another
Cornish member (Luttrell, vi. 11, 535, 635). He seems to be the cousin
whom Mrs. De la Riviere Manley accuses of having drawn her into a false
marriage. For Isaac Manley and Sir Thomas Frankland, see p. 7.
{24b} The Earl of Godolphin (see p. 18).
{24c} Sir John Stanley, Bart., of Northend, Commissioner of Customs,
whom Swift knew through his intimate friends the Pendarves. His wife,
Anne, daughter of Bernard Granville, and niece of John, Earl of Bath, was
aunt to Mary Granville, afterwards Mrs. Delany, who lived with the
Stanleys at their house in Whitehall.
{24d} Henry, Viscount Hyde, eldest son of Laurence Hyde, Earl of
Rochester, succeeded his father in the earldom in 1711, and afterwards
became Earl of Clarendon. His wife, Jane, younger daughter of Sir
William Leveson Gower,—who married a daughter of John Granville, Earl of
Bath,—was a beauty, and the mother of two beauties—Jane, afterwards
Countess of Essex (see _Journal_, Jan. 29, 1712), and Catherine,
afterwards Countess of Queensberry. Lady Hyde was complimented by Prior,
Pope, and her kinsman, Lord Lansdowne, and is said to have been more
handsome than either of her daughters. She died in 1725; her husband in
1753. Lord Hyde became joint Vice-Treasurer for Ireland in 1710; hence
his interest with respect to Pratt’s appointment.
{24e} See p. 9.
{24f} Sir Paul Methuen (1672–1757), son of John Methuen, diplomatist and
Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Methuen was Envoy and Ambassador to Portugal
from 1697 to 1708, and was M.P. for Devizes from 1708 to 1710, and a Lord
of the Admiralty. Under George I. he was Ambassador to Spain, and held
other offices. Gay speaks of “Methuen of sincerest mind, as Arthur
grave, as soft as womankind,” and Steele dedicated to him the seventh
volume of the _Spectator_. In his Notes on Macky’s _Characters_, Swift
calls him “a profligate rogue . . . without abilities of any kind.”
{24g} Sir James Montagu was Attorney-General from 1708 to Sept. 1710,
when he resigned, and was succeeded by Sir Simon Harcourt. Under George
I. Montagu was raised to the Bench, and a few months before his death in
1723 became Chief Baron of the Exchequer.
{25a} The turnpike system had spread rapidly since the Restoration, and
had already effected an important reform in the English roads. Turnpike
roads were as yet unknown in Ireland.
{25b} Ann Johnson, who afterwards married a baker named Filby.
{25c} An infusion of which the main ingredient was cowslip or
palsy-wort.
{25d} William Legge, first Earl of Dartmouth (1672–1750), was St. John’s
fellow Secretary of State. Lord Dartmouth seems to have been a plain,
unpretending man, whose ignorance of French helped to throw important
matters into St. John’s hands.
{25e} Richard Dyot was tried at the Old Bailey, on Jan. 13, 1710–11, for
counterfeiting stamps, and was acquitted, the crime being found not
felony, but only breach of trust. Two days afterwards a bill of
indictment was found against him for high misdemeanour.
{26a} Sir Philip Meadows (1626–1718) was knighted in 1658, and was
Ambassador to Sweden under Cromwell. His son Philip (died 1757) was
knighted in 1700, and was sent on a special mission to the Emperor in
1707. A great-grandson of the elder Sir Philip was created Earl Manvers
in 1806.
{26b} Her eyes were weak.
{26c} The son of the Sir Robert Southwell to whom Temple had offered
Swift as a “servant” on his going as Secretary of State to Ireland in
1690. Edward Southwell (1671–1730) succeeded his father as Secretary of
State for Ireland in 1702, and in 1708 was appointed Clerk to the Privy
Council of Great Britain. Southwell held various offices under George I.
and George II., and amassed a considerable fortune.
{27a} Nicholas Rowe (1674–1718), dramatist and poet laureate, and one of
the first editors of Shakespeare, was at this time under-secretary to the
Duke of Queensberry, Secretary of State for Scotland.
{27b} No. 238 contains Swift’s “Description of a Shower in London.”
{27c} This seems to be a vague allusion to the text, “Cast thy bread
upon the waters,” etc.
{27d} Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723), the fashionable portrait-painter
of the period.
{28a} At the General election of 1710 the contest at Westminster excited
much interest. The number of constituents was large, and the franchise
low, all householders who paid scot and lot being voters. There were,
too, many houses of great Whig merchants, and a number of French
Protestants. But the High Church candidates, Cross and Medlicott, were
returned by large majorities, though the Whigs had chosen popular
candidates—General Stanhope, fresh from his successes in Spain, and Sir
Henry Dutton Colt, a Herefordshire gentleman.
{28b} Sir Andrew Fountaine (1676–1753), a distinguished antiquary, of an
old Norfolk family, was knighted by William III. in 1699, and inherited
his father’s estate at Norfolk in 1706. He succeeded Sir Isaac Newton as
Warden of the Mint in 1727, and was Vice-Chamberlain to Queen Caroline.
He became acquainted with Swift in Ireland in 1707, when he went over as
Usher of the Black Rod in Lord Pembroke’s Court.
{28c} See p. 6. The Bishop was probably Dr. Moreton, Bishop of Meath
(see _Journal_, July 1, 1712).
{28d} The game of ombre—of Spanish origin—is described in Pope’s _Rape
of the Lock_. See also the _Compleat Gamester_, 1721, and _Notes and
Queries_, April 8, 1871. The ace of spades, or Spadille, was always the
first trump; the ace of clubs (Basto) always the third. The second trump
was the worst card of the trump suit in its natural order, _i.e._ the
seven in red and the deuce in black suits, and was called Manille. If
either of the red suits was trumps, the ace of the suit was fourth trump
(Punto). Spadille, Manille, and Basto were “matadores,” or murderers, as
they never gave suit.
{28e} See p. 12
{29a} In the _Spectator_, No. 337, there is a complaint from “one of the
top China women about town,” of the trouble given by ladies who turn over
all the goods in a shop without buying anything. Sometimes they
cheapened tea, at others examined screens or tea-dishes.
{29b} The Right Hon. John Grubham Howe, M.P. for Gloucestershire, an
extreme Tory, had recently been appointed Paymaster of the Forces. He is
mentioned satirically as a patriot in sec. 9 of _The Tale of a Tub_.
{30a} George Henry Hay, Viscount Dupplin, eldest son of the sixth Earl
of Kinnoull, was made a Teller of the Exchequer in August, and a peer of
Great Britain in December 1711, with the title of Baron Hay. He married,
in 1709, Abigail, Harley’s younger daughter, and he succeeded his father
in the earldom of Kinnoull in 1719.
{30b} Edward Harley, afterwards Lord Harley, who succeeded his father as
Earl of Oxford in 1724. He married Lady Henrietta Cavendish Holles,
daughter of the Duke of Newcastle, but died without male issue in 1741.
His interest in literature caused him to form the collection known as the
Harleian Miscellany.
{30c} William Penn (1644–1718), the celebrated founder of Pennsylvania.
Swift says that he “spoke very agreeably, and with much spirit.”
{30d} This “Memorial to Mr. Harley about the First-Fruits” is dated Oct.
7, 1710.
{30e} Henry St. John, created Viscount Bolingbroke in July 1712. In the
quarrel between Oxford and Bolingbroke in 1714, Swift’s sympathies were
with Oxford.
{31a} _I.e._, it is decreed by fate. So Tillotson says, “These things
are fatal and necessary.”
{31b} See p. 8.
{31c} Obscure. Hooker speaks of a “blind or secret corner.”
{31d} Ale served in a gill measure.
{31e} Scott suggests that the allusion is to _The Tale of a Tub_.
{31f} An extravagant compliment.
{32a} See p. 62.
{32b} L’Estrange speaks of “trencher-flies and spungers.”
{32c} See p. 2.
{32d} Samuel Garth, physician and member of the Kit-Cat Club, was
knighted in 1714. He is best known by his satirical poem, _The
Dispensary_, 1699.
{32e} Gay speaks of “Wondering Main, so fat, with laughing eyes” (_Mr.
Pope’s Welcome from Greece_, st. xvii.).
{32f} See p. 24, note 3.
{33a} See the letter of Oct. 10, 1710, to Archbishop King.
{33b} See p. 6.
{33c} “Seventy-three lines in folio upon one page, and in a very small
hand.” (Deane Swift).
{34a} _I.e._, Lord Lieutenant.
{34b} _Tatler_, No. 238.
{34c} See p. 2.
{34d} Charles Coote, fourth Earl of Mountrath, and M.P. for
Knaresborough. He died unmarried in 1715.
{34e} Henry Coote, Lord Mountrath’s brother. He succeeded to the
earldom in 1715, but died unmarried in 1720.
{35a} The Devil Tavern was the meeting-place of Ben Jonson’s Apollo
Club. The house was pulled down in 1787.
{35b} Addison was re-elected M.P. for Malmesbury in Oct. 1710, and he
kept that seat until his death in 1719.
{35c} Captain Charles Lavallee, who served in the Cadiz Expedition of
1702, and was appointed a captain in Colonel Hans Hamilton’s Regiment of
Foot in 1706 (Luttrell, v. 175, vi. 640; Dalton’s _English Army Lists_,
iv. 126).
{35d} See p. 25.
{36a} The _Tatler_, No. 230, _Sid Hamet’s Rod_, and the ballad (now
lost) on the Westminster Election.
{36b} The Earl of Galway (1648–1720), who lost the battle of Almanza to
the Duke of Berwick in 1707. Originally the Marquis de Ruvigny, a French
refugee, he had been made Viscount Galway and Earl of Galway successively
by William III.
{36c} William Harrison, the son of a doctor at St. Cross, Winchester,
had been recommended to Swift by Addison, who obtained for him the post
of governor to the Duke of Queensberry’s son. In Jan. 1711 Harrison
began the issue of a continuation of Steele’s _Tatler_ with Swift’s
assistance, but without success. In May 1711, St. John gave Harrison the
appointment of secretary to Lord Raby, Ambassador Extraordinary at the
Hague, and in Jan. 1713 Harrison brought the Barrier Treaty to England.
He died in the following month, at the age of twenty-seven, and Lady
Strafford says that “his brother poets buried him, as Mr. Addison, Mr.
Philips, and Dr. Swift.” Tickell calls him “that much loved youth,” and
Swift felt his death keenly. Harrison’s best poem is _Woodstock Park_,
1706.
{37a} The last volume of Tonson’s _Miscellany_, 1708.
{37b} James Douglas, second Duke of Queensberry and Duke of Dover
(1662–1711), was appointed joint Keeper of the Privy Seal in 1708, and
third Secretary of State in 1709. Harrison must have been “governor”
either to the third son, Charles, Marquis of Beverley (born 1698), who
succeeded to the dukedom in 1711, or to the fourth son, George, born in
1701.
{37c} Anthony Henley, son of Sir Robert Henley, M.P. for Andover, was a
favourite with the wits in London. He was a strong Whig, and
occasionally contributed to the _Tatler_ and Maynwaring’s _Medley_.
Garth dedicated _The Dispensary_ to him. Swift records Henley’s death
from apoplexy in August 1711.
{37d} Sir William Ashurst, Sir Gilbert Heathcote, and Mr. John Ward were
replaced by Sir Richard Hoare, Sir George Newland, and Mr. John Cass at
the election for the City in 1710. Scott was wrong in saying that the
Whigs lost also the fourth seat, for Sir William Withers had been member
for the City since 1707.
{37e} Sir Richard Onslow, Bart., was chosen Speaker of the House of
Commons in 1708. Under George I. he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and
was elevated to the peerage as Baron Onslow in 1716. He died in the
following year.
{38a} “The upper part of the letter was a little besmeared with some
such stuff; the mark is still on it” (Deane Swift).
{38b} John Bolton, D.D., appointed a prebendary of St. Patrick’s in
1691, became Dean of Derry in 1699. He died in 1724. Like Swift, Bolton
was chaplain to Lord Berkeley, the Lord Lieutenant, and, according to
Swift, he obtained the deanery of Derry through Swift having declined to
give a bribe of £1000 to Lord Berkeley’s secretary. But Lord Orrery says
that the Bishop of Derry objected to Swift, fearing that he would be
constantly flying backwards and forwards between Ireland and England.
{38c} See p. 6, note 2.
{39a} “That is, to the next page; for he is now within three lines of
the bottom of the first” (Deane Swift).
{39b} See p. 20.
{39c} Joshua Dawson, secretary to the Lords Justices. He built a fine
house in Dawson Street, Dublin, and provided largely for his relatives by
the aid of the official patronage in his hands.
{39d} He had been dead three weeks (see pp. 14, 25).
{39e} In _The Importance of the Guardian Considered_, Swift says that
Steele, “to avoid being discarded, thought fit to resign his place of
Gazetteer.”
{40a} As Swift never used the name “Stella” in the _Journal_, this
fragment of his “little language” must have been altered by Deane Swift,
the first editor. Forster makes the excellent suggestion that the
correct reading is “sluttikins,” a word used in the _Journal_ on Nov. 28,
1710. Swift often calls his correspondents “sluts.”
{40b} Godolphin, who was satirised in _Sid Hamel’s Rod_ (see p. 4).
{40c} No. 230.
{40d} “This appears to be an interjection of surprise at the length of
his journal” (Deane Swift).
{41a} Matthew Prior, poet and diplomatist, had been deprived of his
Commissionership of Trade by the Whigs, but was rewarded for his Tory
principles in 1711 by a Commissionership of Customs.
{41b} “The twentieth parts are 12d. in the £1 paid annually out of all
ecclesiastical benefices as they were valued at the Reformation. They
amount to about £500 per annum; but are of little or no value to the
Queen after the offices and other charges are paid, though of much
trouble and vexation to the clergy” (Swift’s “Memorial to Mr. Harley”).
{41c} Charles Mordaunt, the brilliant but erratic Earl of Peterborough,
had been engaged for two years, after the unsatisfactory inquiry into his
conduct in Spain by the House of Lords in 1708, in preparing an account
of the money he had received and expended. The change of Government
brought him relief from his troubles; in November he was made
Captain-General of Marines, and in December he was nominated Ambassador
Extraordinary to Vienna.
{41d} Tapped, nudged.
{41e} _I.e._, told only to you.
{41f} Sir Hew Dalrymple (1652–1737), Lord President of the Court of
Session, and son of the first Viscount Stair.
{41g} Robert Benson, a moderate Tory, was made a Lord of the Treasury in
August 1710, and Chancellor of the Exchequer in the following June, and
was raised to the peerage as Baron Bingley in 1713. He died in 1731.
{42a} The Smyrna Coffee-house was on the north side of Pall Mall,
opposite Marlborough House. In the _Tatler_ (Nos. 10, 78) Steele laughed
at the “cluster of wise heads” to be found every evening at the Smyrna;
and Goldsmith says that Beau Nash would wait a whole day at a window at
the Smyrna, in order to receive a bow from the Prince or the Duchess of
Marlborough, and would then look round upon the company for admiration
and respect.
{42b} See p. 19.
{42c} See p. 25.
{42d} An Irish doctor, with whom Swift invested money.
{43a} Enoch Sterne, Collector of Wicklow and Clerk to the House of Lords
in Ireland.
{43b} Claret.
{43c} Colonel Ambrose Edgworth, a famous dandy, who is supposed to have
been referred to by Steele in No. 246 of the _Tatler_. Edgworth was the
son of Sir John Edgworth, who was made Colonel of a Regiment of Foot in
1689 (Dalton, iii, 59). Ambrose Edgworth was a Captain in the same
regiment, but father and son were shortly afterwards turned out of the
regiment for dishonest conduct in connection with the soldiers’ clothing.
Ambrose was, however, reappointed a Captain in General Eric’s Regiment of
Foot in 1691. He served in Spain as Major in Brigadier Gorge’s regiment;
was taken prisoner in 1706; and was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel of
Colonel Thomas Allen’s Regiment of Foot in 1707.
{43d} This volume of _Miscellanies in Prose and Verse_ was published by
Morphew in 1711.
{43e} Dr. Thomas Lindsay, afterwards Bishop of Raphoe.
{44a} The first mention of the Vanhomrighs in the _Journal_. Swift had
made their acquaintance when he was in London in 1708.
{44b} Lady Elizabeth and Lady Mary (see p. 40 and below).
{44c} John, third Lord Ashburnham, and afterwards Earl of Ashburnham
(1687–1737), married, on Oct. 21, 1710, Lady Mary Butler, younger
daughter of the Duke of Ormond. She died on Jan. 2, 1712–3, in her
twenty-third year. She was Swift’s “greatest favourite,” and he was much
moved at her death.
{45a} Edward Wortley Montagu, grandson of the first Earl of Sandwich,
and M.P. for Huntingdon. He was a great friend of Addison’s, and the
second volume of the _Tatler_ was dedicated to him. In 1712 he married
the famous Lady Mary Pierrepont, eldest daughter of the Duke of Kingston,
and under George I. he became Ambassador Extraordinary to the Porte. He
died in 1761, aged eighty.
{45b} See p. 28. No copy of these verses is known.
{45c} Henry Alexander, fifth Earl of Stirling, who died without issue in
1739. His sister, Lady Judith Alexander, married Sir William Trumbull,
Pope’s friend.
{46} “These words, notwithstanding their great obscurity at present,
were very clear and intelligible to Mrs. Johnson: they referred to
conversations, which passed between her and Dr. Tisdall seven or eight
years before; when the Doctor, who was not only a learned and faithful
divine, but a zealous Church-Tory, frequently entertained her with
Convocation disputes. This gentleman, in the year 1704, paid his
addresses to Mrs. Johnson” (Deane Swift). The Rev. William Tisdall was
made D.D. in 1707. Swift never forgave Tisdall’s proposal to marry
Esther Johnson in 1704, and often gave expression to his contempt for
him. In 1706 Tisdall married, and was appointed Vicar of Kerry and
Ruavon; in 1712 he became Vicar of Belfast. He published several
controversial pieces, directed against Presbyterians and other
Dissenters.
{47a} No. 193 of the _Tatler_, for July 4, 1710, contained a letter from
Downes the Prompter in ridicule of Harley’s newly formed Ministry. This
letter, the authorship of which Steele disavowed, was probably by Anthony
Henley.
{48a} William Berkeley, fourth Baron Berkeley of Stratton, was sworn of
the Privy Council in September 1710, and was appointed Chancellor of the
Duchy of Lancaster. He married Frances, youngest daughter of Sir John
Temple, of East Sheen, Surrey, and died in 1740.
{48b} Probably the widow of Sir William Temple’s son, John Temple (see
p. 5). She was Mary Duplessis, daughter of Duplessis Rambouillet, a
Huguenot.
{48c} The Rev. James Sartre, who married Addison’s sister Dorothy, was
Prebendary and Archdeacon of Westminster. He had formerly been French
pastor at Montpelier. After his death in 1713 his widow married a Mr.
Combe, and lived until 1750.
{48d} William Congreve’s last play was produced in 1700. In 1710, when
he was forty, he published a collected edition of his works. Swift and
Congreve had been schoolfellows at Kilkenny, and they had both been
pupils of St. George Ashe—afterwards Bishop of Clogher—at Trinity
College, Dublin. On Congreve’s death, in 1729, Swift wrote, “I loved him
from my youth.”
{49a} See p. 19.
{49b} Dean Sterne.
{49c} See p. 38.
{49d} When he became Dean he withheld from Swift the living of St.
Nicholas Without, promised in gratitude for the aid rendered by Swift in
his election.
{49e} Crowe was a Commissioner for Appeals from the Revenue
Commissioners for a short time in 1706, and was Recorder of Blessington,
Co. Wicklow. In his _Short Character of Thomas_, _Earl of Wharton_,
1710, Swift speaks of Whartons “barbarous injustice to . . . poor Will
Crowe.”
{50a} See p. 9.
{50b} See p. 13.
{50c} See p. 3.
{50d} Richard Tighe, M.P. for Belturbet, was a Whig, much disliked by
Swift. He became a Privy Councillor under George I.
{51a} Dryden Leach, of the Old Bailey, formerly an actor, was son of
Francis Leach. Swift recommended Harrison to employ Leach in printing
the continuation of the _Tatler_; but Harrison discarded him. (See
_Journal_, Jan. 16, 1710–11, and Timperley’s _Literary Anecdotes_, 600,
631).
{51b} The _Postman_, which appeared three days in the week, written by
M. Fonvive, a French Protestant, whom Dunton calls “the glory and mirror
of news writers, a very grave, learned, orthodox man.” Fonvive had a
universal system of intelligence, at home and abroad, and “as his news is
early and good, so his style is excellent.”
{51c} Sir William Temple left Esther Johnson the lease of some property
in Ireland.
{52a} See p. 27.
{52b} An out-of-the-way or obscure house. So Pepys (_Diary_, Oct. 15,
1661) “To St. Paul’s Churchyard to a blind place where Mr. Goldsborough
was to meet me.”
{52c} Sir Richard Temple, Bart., of Stowe, a Lieutenant-General who saw
much service in Flanders, was dismissed in 1713 owing to his Whig views,
but on the accession of George I. was raised to the peerage, and was
created Viscount Cobham in 1718. He died in 1749. Congreve wrote in
praise of him, and he was the “brave Cobham” of Pope’s first _Moral
Essay_.
{52d} Richard Estcourt, the actor, died in August 1712, when his
abilities on the stage and as a talker were celebrated by Steele to No.
468 of the _Spectator_. See also _Tatler_, Aug. 6, 1709, and
_Spectator_, May 5, 1712. Estcourt was “providore” of the Beef-Steak
Club, and a few months before his death opened the Bumper Tavern in James
Street, Covent Garden.
{52e} See p. 32.
{52f} Poor, mean. Elsewhere Swift speaks of “the corrector of a hedge
press in Little Britain,” and “a little hedge vicar.”
{52g} Thomas Herbert, eighth Earl of Pembroke, was Lord Lieutenant from
April 1707 to December 1708. A nobleman of taste and learning, he was,
like Swift, very fond of punning, and they had been great friends in
Ireland.
{53a} See p. 9.
{53b} See p. 10.
{53c} A small town and fortress in what is now the Pas de Calais.
{53d} Richard Stewart, third son of the first Lord Mountjoy (see p. 2),
was M.P. at various times for Castlebar, Strabane, and County Tyrone. He
died in 1728.
{54a} See p. 7.
{54b} Swift, Esther Johnson, and Mrs. Dingley seem to have begun their
financial year on the 1st of November. Swift refers to “MD’s allowance”
in the _Journal_ for April 23, 1713.
{55a} Samuel Dopping, an Irish friend of Stella’s, who was probably
related to Anthony Dopping, Bishop of Meath (died 1697), and to his son
Anthony (died 1743), who became Bishop of Ossory.
{55b} See p. 6.
{55c} The wife of Alderman Stoyte, afterwards Lord Mayor of Dublin.
Mrs. Stoyte and her sister Catherine; the Walls; Isaac Manley and his
wife; Dean Sterne, Esther Johnson and Mrs. Dingley, and Swift, were the
principal members of a card club which met at each other’s houses for a
number of years.
{55d} See p. 2.
{56a} “This cypher stands for Presto, Stella, and Dingley; as much as to
say, it looks like us three quite retired from all the rest of the world”
(Deane Swift).
{56b} Steele’s “dear Prue,” Mary Scurlock, whom he married as his second
wife in 1707, was a lady of property and a “cried-up beauty.” She was
somewhat of a prude, and did not hesitate to complain to her husband, in
and out of season, of his extravagance and other weaknesses. The other
lady to whom Swift alludes is probably the Duchess of Marlborough.
{56c} See p. 46.
{56d} Remembers: an Irish expression.
{57a} This new Commission, signed by Narcissus Marsh, Archbishop of
Armagh, and William King, was dated Oct. 24, 1710. In this document
Swift was begged to take the full management of the business of the
First-Fruits into his hands, the Bishops of Ossory and Killala—who were
to have joined with him in the negotiations—having left London before
Swift arrived. But before this commission was despatched the Queen had
granted the First-Fruits and Twentieth Parts to the Irish clergy.
{57b} Lady Mountjoy, wife of the second Viscount Mountjoy (see p. 2),
was Anne, youngest daughter of Murrough Boyle, first Viscount
Blessington, by his second wife, Anne, daughter of Charles Coote, second
Earl of Mountrath. After Lord Mountjoy’s death she married John
Farquharson, and she died in 1741.
{58a} Forster suggests that Swift wrote “Frond” or “Frowde” and there is
every reason to believe that this was the case. No Colonel Proud appears
in Dalton’s _Army Lists_. A Colonel William Frowde, apparently third son
of Sir Philip Frowde, Knight, by his third wife, Margaret, daughter of
Sir John Ashburnham, was appointed Lieutenant-Colonel in Colonel
Farrington’s (see 59) Regiment of Foot in 1694. He resigned his
commission on his appointment to the First Life Guards in 1702, and he
was in this latter regiment in 1704. In November and December 1711 Swift
wrote of Philip Frowde the elder (Colonel William Frowde’s brother) as
“an old fool,” in monetary difficulties. It is probable that Swift’s
Colonel Proud (? Frowde) was not Colonel William Frowde, but his nephew,
Philip Frowde, junior, who was Addison’s friend at Oxford, and the author
of two tragedies and various poems. Nothing seems known of Philip
Frowde’s connection with the army, but he is certainly called “Colonel”
by Swift, Addison, and Pope (see Forster’s _Swift_, 159; Addison’s
_Works_, v. 324; Pope’s _Works_, v. 177, vi. 227). Swift wrote to
Ambrose Philips in 1705, “Col. Frond is just as he was, very friendly and
_grand rêveur et distrait_. He has brought his poems almost to
perfection.” It will be observed that when Swift met Colonel “Proud” he
was in company with Addison, as was also the case when he was with
Colonel “Freind” (p. 11).
{58b} Charles Davenant, LL.D., educated at Balliol College, Oxford, was
the eldest son of Sir William Davenant, author of _Gondibert_. In
Parliament he attacked Ministerial abuses with great bitterness until, in
1703, he was made secretary to the Commissioners appointed to treat for a
union with Scotland. To this post was added, in 1705, an
Inspector-Generalship of Exports and Imports, which he retained until his
death in 1714. _Tom Double_, a satire on his change of front after
obtaining his place, was published in 1704. In a Note on Macky’s
character of Davenant, Swift says, “He ruined his estate, which put him
under a necessity to comply with the times.” Davenant’s _True Picture of
a Modern Whig_, _in Two Parts_, appeared in 1701–2; in 1707 he published
_The True Picture of a Modern Whig revived_, _set forth in a third
dialogue between Whiglove and Double_, which seems to be the piece
mentioned in the text, though Swift speaks of the pamphlet as “lately put
out.”
{58c} Hugh Chamberlen, the younger (1664–1728), was a Fellow of the
College of Physicians and Censor in 1707, 1717, and 1721. Atterbury and
the Duchess of Buckingham and Normanby were among his fashionable
patients. His father, Hugh Chamberlen, M.D., was the author of the Land
Bank Scheme of 1693–94.
{58d} Sir John Holland (see p. 11).
{59a} Swift may mean either rambling or gambolling.
{59b} Thomas Farrington was appointed Colonel of the newly raised 29th
Regiment of Foot in 1702. He was a subscriber for a copy of the _Tatler_
on royal paper (Aitken, _Life of Steele_, i. 329, 330).
{59c} In _The History of Vanbrugh’s House_, Swift described everyone as
hunting for it up and down the river banks, and unable to find it, until
at length they—
“— in the rubbish spy
A thing resembling a goose pie.”
Sir John Vanbrugh was more successful as a dramatist than as an
architect, though his work at Blenheim and elsewhere has many merits.
{59d} For the successes of the last campaign.
{60a} John Sheffield, third Earl of Mulgrave, was created Duke of
Buckingham and Normanby in 1703, and died in 1721. On Queen Anne’s
accession he became Lord Privy Seal, and on the return of the Tories to
power in 1710 he was Lord Steward, and afterward (June 1710) Lord
President of the Council. The Duke was a poet, as well as a soldier and
statesman, his best known work being the _Essay on Poetry_. He was
Dryden’s patron, and Pope prepared a collected edition of his works.
{60b} Laurence Hyde, created Earl of Rochester in 1682, died in 1711.
He was the Hushai of Dryden’s _Absalom and Achitophel_, “the friend of
David in distress.” In 1684 he was made Lord President of the Council,
and on the accession of James II., Lord Treasurer; he was, however,
dismissed in 1687. Under William III. Rochester was Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland, an office he resigned in 1703; and in September 1710 he again
became Lord President. His imperious temper always stood in the way of
popularity or real success.
{60c} Sir Thomas Osborne, Charles II.’s famous Minister, was elevated to
the peerage in 1673, and afterwards was made successively Earl of Danby,
Marquis of Caermarthen, and Duke of Leeds. On Nov. 29, 1710, a few days
after this reference to him, the Duke was granted a pension of £3500 a
year out of the Post Office revenues. He died in July 1712, aged
eighty-one, and soon afterwards his grandson married Lord Oxford’s
daughter.
{60d} See p. 12.
{60e} See p. 48.
{60f} See p. 11.
{60g} See p. 52.
{60h} This is, of course, a joke; Swift was never introduced at Court.
{60i} Captain Delaval (see p. 23).
{60j} Admiral Sir Charles Wager (1666–1743) served in the West Indies
from 1707 to 1709, and gained great wealth from the prizes he took.
Under George I. he was Comptroller of the Navy, and in 1733 he became
First Lord of the Admiralty, a post which he held until 1742.
{60k} See p. 52.
{60l} See p. 24.
{60m} Isaac Bickerstaff’s “valentine” sent him a nightcap, finely
wrought by a maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth (_Tatler_, No. 141). The
“nightcap” was a periwig with a short tie and small round head, and
embroidered nightcaps were worn chiefly by members of the graver
professions.
{61a} _Tatler_, No. 237.
{61b} _Tatler_, No. 230.
{62a} See pp. 32, 68.
{62b} “Returning home at night, you’ll find the sink
Strike your offended sense with double stink.”
(Description of a City Shower, ll. 5, 6.)
{62c} Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.
{63a} See p. 1.
{63b} See p. 55.
{64a} See p. 34.
{64b} See p. 2.
{65} The bellman’s accents. Cf. Pepys’ _Diary_, Jan. 16, 1659–60: “I
staid up till the bellman came by with his bell just under my window as I
was writing of this very line, and cried, ‘Past one of the clock, and a
cold, frosty, windy morning.’”
{66a} John Freind, M.D. (1675–1728), was a younger brother of the Robert
Freind, of Westminster School, mentioned elsewhere in the _Journal_.
Educated under Dr. Busby at Westminster, he was in 1694 elected a student
of Christ Church, where he made the acquaintance of Atterbury, and
supported Boyle against Bentley in the dispute as to the authorship of
the letters of Phalaris. In 1705 he attended the Earl of Peterborough to
Spain, and in the following year wrote a defence of that commander
(_Account of the Earl of Peterborough’s Conduct in Spain_). A steady
Tory, he took a share in the defence of Dr. Sacheverell; and in 1723,
when M.P. for Launceston, he fell under the suspicion of the Government,
and was sent to the Tower. On the accession of George II., however, he
came into favour with the Court, and died Physician to the Queen.
{66b} See p. 59.
{66c} St. John was thirty-two in October 1710. He had been Secretary at
War six years before, resigning with Harley in 1707. Swift repeats this
comparison elsewhere. Temple was forty-six when he refused a
Secretaryship of State in 1674.
{66d} Sir Henry St. John seems to have continued a gay man to the end of
his life. In his youth he was tried and convicted for the murder of Sir
William Estcourt in a duel (Scott). In 1716, after his son had been
attainted, he was made Viscount St. John. He died in 1742, aged ninety.
{67a} See p. 4.
{67b} “Swift delighted to let his pen run into such rhymes as these,
which he generally passes off as old proverbs” (Scott). Many of the
charming scraps of “Old Ballads” and “Old Plays” at the head of Scott’s
own chapters are in reality the result of his own imagination.
{67c} See p. 10.
{67d} Sir Richard Levinge, Bart., had been Solicitor-General for Ireland
from 1704 to 1709, and was Attorney-General from 1711 to 1714.
Afterwards he was Speaker of the Irish House of Commons and Chief-Justice
of the Common Pleas in Ireland.
{68a} See pp. 32, 62.
{68b} See p. 6.
{68c} Thomas Belasyse, second Viscount Fauconberg, or Falconbridge (died
1700), a nobleman of hereditary loyalty, married, in 1657, the
Protector’s youngest daughter, Mary Cromwell, who is represented as a
lady of high talent and spirit. She died on March 14, 1712. Burnet
describes her as “a wise and worthy woman,” who would have had a better
prospect of maintaining her father’s post than either of her brothers.
{69a} Richard Freeman, Chief Baron, was Lord Chancellor of Ireland from
1707 until his death in November 1710.
{69b} See p. 49.
{69c} Sir Richard Cox, Bart. (1650–1733), was Lord Chancellor of Ireland
from 1703 to 1707. In 1711 he was appointed Chief-Justice of the Queen’s
Bench, but he was removed from office on the death of Queen Anne. His
zealous Protestantism sometimes caused his views to be warped, but he was
honest and well-principled.
{69d} Sir Thomas Hanmer, Bart. (1676–1746), succeeded Bromley as Speaker
in 1714. In February 1713 Swift said, “He is the most considerable man
in the House of Commons.” His edition of Shakespeare was published by
the University of Oxford in 1743–44. Pope called it “pompous,” and
sneered at Hanmer’s “superior air” (_Dunciad_, iv. 105).
{70} See p. 24.
{72a} Elliot was keeper of the St. James’s Coffee-house (see 2).
{72b} Forster suggested that the true reading is “writhing.” If so, it
is not necessary to suppose that Lady Giffard was the cause of it.
Perhaps it is the word “tiger” that is corrupt.
{72c} The Hon. Charles Boyle (1676–1731), of the Boyle and Bentley
controversy, succeeded to the peerage as Lord Orrery in 1703. When he
settled in London he became the centre of a Christ Church set, a strong
adherent of Harley’s party, and a member of Swift’s “club.” His son
John, fifth Earl of Orrery, published _Remarks on the Life and Writings
of Jonathan Swift_ in 1751.
{73a} William Domville, a landed proprietor in County Dublin, whom Swift
called “perfectly as fine a gentleman as I know.”
{73b} On May 16, 1711, Swift wrote, “There will be an old to do.” The
word is found in Elizabethan writers in the sense of “more than enough.”
Cf. _Macbeth_, ii. 3: “If a man were porter of hell gate, he should have
old turning the key.”
{73c} See p. 9. Clements was related to Pratt, the Deputy
Vice-Treasurer, and was probably the Robert Clements who became Deputy
Vice-Treasurer, and whose grandson Robert was created Earl of Leitrim in
1795.
{73d} See p. 24.
{74a} Swift’s sister Jane, who had married a currier in Bride Street,
named Joseph Fenton, a match to which Swift strongly objected. Deane
Swift says that Swift never saw his sister again after the marriage; he
had offered her £500 if she would show a “proper disdain” of Fenton. On
her husband’s dying bankrupt, however, Swift paid her an annuity until
1738, when she died in the same lodging with Esther Johnson’s mother,
Mrs. Bridget Mose, at Farnham (Forster’s _Swift_, pp. 118–19).
{74b} Welbore Ellis, appointed Bishop of Kildare in 1705. He was
translated to Meath in 1731, and died three years later.
{74c} The expression of the Archbishop is, “I am not to conceal from you
that some expressed a little jealously, that you would not be acceptable
to the present courtiers; intimating that you were under the reputation
of being a favourite of the late party in power” (King to Swift, Nov. 2,
1710).
{75} This indignant letter is dated Nov. 23, 1710. It produced an
apologetic reply from the Archbishop (Nov. 30, 1710), who represented
that the letter to Southwell was a snare laid in his way, since if he
declined signing it, it might have been interpreted into disrespect to
the Duke of Ormond. Of the bishops King said, “You cannot do yourself a
greater service than to bring this to a good issue, to their shame and
conviction.”
{76a} William Bromley (died 1732) was M.P. for the University of Oxford.
A good debater and a strong High Churchman, he was Secretary of State
from August 1713 until the Queen’s death in the following year.
{76b} Colonel, afterwards Major-General, John Hill (died 1735) was
younger brother of Mrs. Masham, the Queen’s favourite, and a poor
relation of the Duchess of Marlborough. He was wounded at Mons in 1709,
and in 1711 was sent on an unsuccessful expedition to attack the French
settlements in North America. In 1713 he was appointed to command the
troops at Dunkirk.
{76c} “The footmen in attendance at the Houses of Parliament used at
this time to form themselves into a deliberative body, and usually
debated the same points with their masters. It was jocularly said that
several questions were lost by the Court party in the menial House of
Lords which were carried triumphantly in the real assembly; which was at
length explained by a discovery that the Scottish peers whose votes were
sometimes decisive of a question had but few representatives in the
convocation of lacqueys. The sable attendant mentioned by Swift, being
an appendage of the brother of Mrs. Masham, the reigning favourite, had a
title to the chair, the Court and Tory interest being exerted in his
favour” (Scott). Steele alludes to the “Footmen’s Parliament” in No. 88
of the _Spectator_.
{77a} See p. 1.
{77b} A Court of Equity abolished in the reign of Charles I. It met in
the _Camera Alba_, or Whitehall, and the room appears to have retained
the name of the old Court.
{78a} See p. 24.
{78b} Swift’s first contribution to the _Examiner_ (No. 13) is dated
Nov. 2, 1710.
{78c} Seduced, induced. Dryden (_Spanish Friar_) has “To debauch a king
to break his laws.”
{80a} Freeman (see p. 69).
{80b} “To make this intelligible, it is necessary to observe, that the
words ‘_this fortnight_’, in the preceding sentence, were first written
in what he calls their little language, and afterwards scratched out and
written plain. It must be confessed this little language, which passed
current between Swift and Stella, has occasioned infinite trouble in the
revisal of these papers” (Deane Swift).
{80c} Trim. An attack upon the liberties of this corporation is among
the political offences of Wharton’s Lieutenancy of Ireland set forth in
Swift’s _Short Character of the Earl of Wharton_.
{80d} Apologies.
{80e} “A Description of the Morning,” in No. 9 of the _Tatler_.
{81a} See p. 38.
{81b} William Palliser (died 1726).
{81c} See p. 20.
{81d} “Here he writ with his eyes shut; and the writing is somewhat
crooked, although as well in other respects as if his eyes had been open”
(Deane Swift).
{81e} _Tatler_, No. 249; cf. p. 93. During this visit to London Swift
contributed to only three _Tatlers_, viz. Nos. 230, 238, and 258.
{81f} St. Andrew’s Day.
{82a} No. 241.
{82b} _Tatler_, No. 258.
{84a} Lieutenant-General Philip Bragg, Colonel of the 28th Regiment of
Foot, and M.P. for Armagh, died in 1759.
{84b} James Cecil, fifth Earl of Salisbury, who died in 1728.
{84c} See p. 5.
{84d} See p. 60.
{84e} Kneller seems never to have painted Swift’s portrait.
{85a} On Nov. 25 and 28.
{85b} Arthur Annesley, M.P. for Cambridge University, had recently
become fifth Earl of Anglesea, on the death of his brother (see p. 13).
Under George I. he was Joint Treasurer of Ireland, and Treasurer at War.
{85c} _A Short Character of the Earl of Wharton_, by Swift himself,
though the authorship was not suspected at the time. “Archbishop King,”
says Scott, “would have hardly otherwise ventured to mention it to Swift
in his letter of Jan. 9, 1710, as ‘a wound given in the dark.’”
Elsewhere, however, in a note, Swift hints that Archbishop King was
really aware of the authorship of the pamphlet.
{86a} A false report: see p. 88 below.
{86b} None of these Commissioners of Revenue lost their places at this
time. Samuel Ogle was Commissioner from 1699 to 1714; John South from
1696 until his death in 1711; and Sir William St. Quintin, Bart., from
1706 to 1713. Stephen Ludlow succeeded South in September 1711.
{86c} See p. 53.
{86d} James Hamilton, sixth Earl of Abercorn (1656–1734), a Scotch peer
who had strongly supported the Union of 1706.
{87a} L’Estrange speaks of “insipid twittle twattles.” Johnson calls
this “a vile word.”
{87b} A cousin of Swift’s; probably a son of William Swift.
{87c} Nicholas Sankey (died 1722) succeeded Lord Lovelace as Colonel of
a Regiment of Foot in Ireland in 1689. He became Brigadier-General in
1704, Major-General 1707, and Lieutenant-General 1710. He served in
Spain, and was taken prisoner at the battle of the Caya in 1709.
{88a} See p. 88.
{88b} The Earl of Abercorn (see p. 86) married, in 1686, Elizabeth, only
child of Sir Robert Reading, Bart., of Dublin, by Jane, Dowager Countess
of Mountrath. Lady Abercorn survived her husband twenty years, dying in
1754, aged eighty-six.
{88c} Charles Lennox, first Duke of Richmond and Gordon (1672–1723), was
the illegitimate son of Charles II. by Madame de Querouaille.
{88d} Sir Robert Raymond, afterwards Lord Raymond (1673–1733), M.P. for
Bishop’s Castle, Shropshire, was appointed Solicitor-General in May 1710,
and was knighted in October. He was removed from office on the accession
of George I., but was made Attorney-General in 1720, and in 1724 became a
judge of the King’s Bench. In the following year he was made Lord
Chief-Justice, and was distinguished both for his learning and his
impartiality.
{88e} Lynn-Regis.
{88f} Richard Savage, fourth Earl Rivers, the father of Richard Savage,
the poet. Under the Whigs Lord Rivers was Envoy to Hanover; and after
his conversion by Harley, he was Constable of the Tower under the Tories.
He died in 1712.
{89a} Chancellor of the Exchequer in Ireland from 1695 until his death
in 1717.
{89b} Lord Shelburne’s clever sister, Anne, only daughter of Sir William
Petty, and wife of Thomas Fitzmaurice, Lord of Kerry, afterwards created
first Earl of Kerry.
{89c} Mrs. Pratt, an Irish friend of Lady Kerry, lodged at Lord
Shelburne’s during her visit to London. The reference to Clements (see
p. 73), Pratt’s relative, in the _Journal_ for April 14, 1711, makes it
clear that Mrs. Pratt was the wife of the Deputy Vice-Treasurer of
Ireland, to whom Swift often alludes (see p. 9).
{89d} Lieutenant-General Thomas Meredith, Major-General Maccartney, and
Brigadier Philip Honeywood. They alleged that their offence only
amounted to drinking a health to the Duke of Marlborough, and confusion
to his enemies. But the Government said that an example must be made,
because various officers had dropped dangerous expressions about standing
by their General, Marlborough, who was believed to be aiming at being
made Captain General for life. For Maccartney see the _Journal_ for Nov.
15, 1712, seq. Meredith, who was appointed Adjutant-General of the
Forces in 1701, was made a Lieutenant-General in 1708. He saw much
service under William III., and Marlborough, and was elected M.P. for
Midhurst in 1709. He died in 1719 (Dalton’s _Army Lists_, iii. 181).
Honeywood entered the army in 1694; was at Namur; and was made a
Brigadier-General before 1711. After the accession of George I. he
became Colonel of a Regiment of Dragoons, and commanded a division at
Dettingen. At his death in 1752 he was acting as Governor of Portsmouth,
with the rank of General (Dalton, iv. 30).
{90a} Or “malkin”; a counterfeit, or scarecrow.
{90b} William Cadogan, Lieutenant-General and afterwards Earl Cadogan
(1675–1726), a great friend of Marlborough, was Envoy to the United
Provinces and Spanish Flanders. Cadogan retained the post of Lieutenant
to the Tower until 1715.
{90c} Earl Cadogan’s father, Henry Cadogan, barrister, married Bridget,
daughter of Sir Hardresse Waller, and sister of Elizabeth, Baroness
Shelburne in her own right.
{90d} See p. 28.
{90e} Cadogan married Margaretta, daughter of William Munter, Counsellor
of the Court of Holland.
{91a} Presumably the eldest son, William, who succeeded his father as
second Earl of Kerry in 1741, and died in 1747. He was at Eton and
Christ Church, Oxford, and was afterwards a Colonel in the Coldstream
Guards.
{91b} Henry Petty, third Lord Shelburne, who became Earl of Shelburne in
1719. His son predeceased him, without issue, and on Lord Shelburne’s
death, in 1751, his honours became extinct. His daughter Anne also died
without issue.
{91c} The menagerie, which had been one of the sights of London, was
removed from the Tower in 1834. In his account of the Tory Fox Hunter in
No. 47 of the _Freeholder_, Addison says, “Our first visit was to the
lions.”
{91d} Bethlehem Hospital, for lunatics, in Moorfields, was a popular
“sight” in the eighteenth century. Cf. the _Tatler_, No. 30: “On Tuesday
last I took three lads, who are under my guardianship, a rambling, in a
hackney coach, to show them the town: as the lions, the tombs, Bedlam.”
{91e} The Royal Society met at Gresham College from 1660 to 1710. The
professors of the College lectured on divinity, civil law, astronomy,
music, geometry, rhetoric, and physic.
{91f} The most important of the puppet-shows was Powell’s, in the Little
Piazza, Covent Garden, which is frequently mentioned in the _Tatler_.
{91g} The precise nature this negligent costume is not known, but it is
always decried by popular writers of the time.
{91h} Retched. Bacon has “Patients must not keck at them at the first.”
{92a} Swift was born on November 30.
{92b} Mrs. De la Riviere Manley, daughter of Sir Roger Manley, and
cousin of John Manley, M.P., and Isaac Manley (see pp. 7, 24), wrote
poems and plays, but is best known for her _Secret Memoirs and Manners of
Several Persons of Quality_, _of both sexes_. _From the New Atalantis_,
1709, a book abounding in scandalous references to her contemporaries.
She was arrested in October, but was discharged in Feb. 1710. In May
1710 she brought out a continuation of the _New Atalantis_, called
_Memoirs of Europe towards the Close of the Eighth Century_. In June
1711 she became editress of the Tory _Examiner_, and wrote political
pamphlets with Swift’s assistance. Afterwards she lived with Alderman
Barber, the printer, at whose office she died in 1724. In her will she
mentioned her “much honoured friend, the Dean of St. Patrick, Dr. Swift.”
{92c} “He seems to have written these words in a whim; for the sake of
what follows” (Deane Swift).
{93a} See p. 62.
{93b} No. 249 (see p. 81).
{94a} See p. 30.
{94b} In a letter to the Rev. Dr. Tisdall, of Dec. 16, 1703, Swift said:
“I’ll teach you a way to outwit Mrs. Johnson: it is a new-fashioned way
of being witty, and they call it a _bite_. You must ask a bantering
question, or tell some damned lie in a serious manner, and then she will
answer or speak as if you were in earnest; and then cry you, ‘Madam,
there’s a _bite_!’ I would not have you undervalue this, for it is the
constant amusement in Court, and everywhere else among the great people.”
See, too, the _Tatler_, No. 12, and _Spectator_, Nos. 47, 504: “In a
word, a Biter is one who thinks you a fool, because you do not think him
a knave.”
{94c} See p. 66.
{95a} “As I hope to be saved;” a favourite phrase in the _Journal_.
{95b} See p. 48.
{95c} This statement receives some confirmation from a pamphlet
published in September 1710, called _A Condoling Letter to the Tatler_:
_On Account of the Misfortunes of Isaac Bickerstaf Esq._, _a Prisoner in
the — on Suspicion of Debt_.
{95d} Dr. Lambert, chaplain to Lord Wharton, was censured in Convocation
for being the author of a libellous letter.
{95e} Probably the same person as Dr. Griffith, spoken of in the
_Journal_ for March 3, 1713,—when he was ill,—as having been “very tender
of” Stella.
{96a} See p. 74, note 1.
{96b} Vexed, offended. Elsewhere Swift wrote, “I am apt to grate the
ears of more than I could wish.”
{96c} Ambrose Philips, whose Pastorals had been published in the same
volume of Tonson’s _Miscellany_ as Pope’s. Two years later Swift wrote,
“I should certainly have provided for him had he not run party mad.” In
1712 his play, _The Distrest Mother_, received flattering notice in the
_Spectator_, and in 1713, to Pope’s annoyance, Philips’ Pastorals were
praised in the _Guardian_. His pretty poems to children led Henry Carey
to nickname him “Namby Pamby.”
{97a} An equestrian statue of William III., in College Green, Dublin.
It was common, in the days of party, for students of the University of
Dublin to play tricks with this statue.
{97b} Lieutenant-General Richard Ingoldsby (died 1712) was Commander of
the Forces in Ireland, and one of the Lords Justices in the absence of
the Lord Lieutenant.
{97c} This seems to have been a mistake; cf. _Journal_ for July 13,
1711, Alan Brodrick, afterwards Viscount Midleton, a Whig politician and
lawyer, was made Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench in Ireland in 1709,
but was removed from office in June 1711, when Sir Richard Cox succeeded
him. On the accession of George I. he was appointed Lord Chancellor for
Ireland. Afterwards he declined to accept the dedication to him of
Swift’s _Drapiers Letters_, and supported the prosecution of the author.
He died in 1728.
{97d} Robert Doyne was appointed Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland
in 1695, and Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1703. This appointment
was revoked on the accession of George I.
{97e} See p. 69.
{97f} Of the University of Dublin.
{98a} See pp. 6, 7. Sir Thomas Frankland’s eldest son, Thomas, who
afterwards succeeded to the baronetcy, acquired a fortune with his first
wife, Dinah, daughter of Francis Topham, of Agelthorpe, Yorkshire. He
died in 1747.
{98b} See p. 60.
{98c} See p. 20.
{99a} Mary, daughter of Sir John Williams, Bart., and widow of Charles
Petty, second Lord Shelburne, who died in 1696. She had married, as her
second husband, Major-General Conyngham, and, as her third husband,
Colonel Dallway.
{99b} Dr. John Vesey became Bishop of Limerick in 1672, and Archbishop
of Tuam in 1678. He died in 1716.
{100a} See p. 14.
{100b} Sex.
{100c} Toby Caulfeild, third son of the fifth Lord Charlemont. In 1689
he was Colonel to the Earl of Drogheda’s Regiment of Foot, and about 1705
he succeeded to the command of Lord Skerrin’s Regiment of Foot. After
serving in Spain his regiment was reduced, having lost most of its men
(Luttrell, vi. 158).
{101a} John Campbell, second Duke of Argyle (1680–1743), was installed a
Knight of the Garter in December 1710, after he had successfully opposed
a vote of thanks to Marlborough, with whom he had quarrelled. It was of
this nobleman that Pope wrote—
“Argyle, the State’s whole thunder born to wield,
And shake alike the senate and the field.”
In a note to Macky’s _Memoirs_, Swift describes the Duke as an
“ambitious, covetous, cunning Scot, who had no principle but his own
interests and greatness.”
{101b} Harley’s second wife, Sarah, daughter of Simon Middleton, of
Edmonton, and sister of Sir Hugh Middleton, Bart. She died, without
issue, in 1737.
{101c} Elizabeth Harley, then unmarried, the daughter of Harley’s first
wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Foley, of Whitley Court,
Worcestershire. She subsequently married the Marquis of Caermarthen,
afterwards Duke of Leeds.
{101d} Harcourt (see p. 11).
{102} William Stawel, the third baron, who succeeded to the title in
1692, was half-brother to the second Baron Stawel. The brother here
referred to was Edward, who succeeded to the title as fourth baron in
1742.
{104a} Charles Finch, third Earl of Winchelsea, son of Lord Maidstone,
and grandson of Heneage, second Earl of Winchelsea. On his death in 1712
Swift spoke of him as “a worthy honest gentleman, and particular friend
of mine.”
{104b} Vedeau was a shopkeeper, who abandoned his trade for the army
(_Journal_, March 28, April 4, 1711). Swift calls him “a lieutenant, who
is now broke, and upon half pay” (_Journal_, Nov. 18, 1712).
{104c} Sir Edmund Bacon, Bart. (died 1721), of Herringflat, Suffolk,
succeeded his father in the baronetcy in 1686.
{104d} The reverse at Brihuega.
{104e} See p. 57.
{106a} John Barber, a printer, became Lord Mayor of London in 1732, and
died in 1741. Mrs. Manley was his mistress, and died at his printing
office. Swift speaks of Barber as his “very good and old friend.”
{106b} Bernage was an officer serving under Colonel Fielding. In August
1710 a difficulty arose through Arbuthnot trying to get his brother
George made Captain over Bernage’s head; but ultimately Arbuthnot waived
the business, because he would not wrong a friend of Swift’s.
{106c} See p. 99.
{107a} George Smalridge (1663–1719), the High Church divine and popular
preacher, was made Dean of Carlisle in 1711, and Bishop of Bristol in
1714. Steele spoke of him in the _Tatler_ (Nos. 73, 114) as “abounding
in that sort of virtue and knowledge which makes religion beautiful.”
{107b} St. Albans Street, Pall Mall, was removed in 1815 to make way for
Waterloo Place. It was named after Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans.
{109} See p. 100
{112a} Algernon Seymour, Earl of Hertford (1684–1750), only son of
Charles Seymour, Duke of Somerset. Lord Hertford succeeded to the
dukedom in 1748. From 1708 to 1722 he was M.P. for Northumberland, and
from 1708 to 1713 he took an active part in the war in Flanders.
{112b} See p. 17.
{112c} _A Short Character of the Earl of Wharton_ (see p. 85).
{112d} See 69.
{113} Henry Herbert, the last Baron Herbert of Cherbury, succeeded to
the peerage in 1709, and soon afterwards married a sister of the Earl of
Portsmouth. A ruined man, he committed suicide in 1738.
{114} Nos. 257, 260.
{115a} See p. 26.
{115b} “_After_ is interlined” (Deane Swift).
{115c} With this account may be compared what Pope says, as recorded in
Spence’s _Anecdotes_, p. 223: “Lord Peterborough could dictate letters to
nine amanuenses together, as I was assured by a gentleman who saw him do
it when Ambassador at Turin. He walked round the room, and told each of
them in his turn what he was to write. One perhaps was a letter to the
emperor, another to an old friend, a third to a mistress, a fourth to a
statesman, and so on: yet he carried so many and so different connections
in his head, all at the same time.”
{116a} Francis Atterbury, Dean of Carlisle, had taken an active part in
the defence of Dr. Sacheverell. After a long period of suspense he
received the appointment of Dean of Christ Church, and in 1713 he was
made Bishop of Rochester and Dean of Westminster. Atterbury was on
intimate terms with Swift, Pope, and other writers on the Tory side, and
Addison—at whose funeral the Bishop officiated—described him as “one of
the greatest geniuses of his age.”
{116b} John Carteret, second Baron Carteret, afterwards to be well known
as a statesman, succeeded to the peerage in 1695, and became Earl
Granville and Viscount Carteret on the death of his brother in 1744. He
died in 1763. In October 1710, when twenty years of age, he had married
Frances, only daughter of Sir Robert Worsley, Bart., of Appuldurcombe,
Isle of Wight.
{117a} Dillon Ashe, D.D., Vicar of Finglas, and brother of the Bishop of
Clogher. In 1704 he was made Archdeacon of Clogher, and in 1706
Chancellor of Armagh. He seems to have been too fond of drink.
{117b} Henley (see p. 37) married Mary, daughter of Peregrine Bertie,
the second son of Montagu, Earl of Lindsey, and with her obtained a
fortune of £30,000. After Henley’s death his widow married her relative,
Henry Bertie, third son of James, Earl of Abingdon.
{117c} Hebrews v. 6.
{118a} Probably Mrs. Manley and John Barber (see pp. 92, 106).
{118b} Sir Andrew Fountaine’s (see p. 28) father, Andrew Fountaine,
M.P., married Sarah, daughter of Sir Thomas Chicheley, Master of the
Ordnance. Sir Andrew’s sister, Elizabeth, married Colonel Edward Clent.
The “scoundrel brother,” Brig, died in 1746, aged sixty-four
(Blomefield’s _Norfolk_, vi. 233–36).
{118c} Dame Overdo, the justice’s wife in Ben Jonson’s _Bartholomew
Fair_.
{119a} See p. 7.
{119b} Atterbury, who had recently been elected Prolocutor to the Lower
House of Convocation.
{120a} Dr. Sterne, Dean of St. Patrick’s, was not married.
{120b} January 6 was Twelfth-night.
{120c} Garraway’s Coffee-house, in Change Alley, was founded by Thomas
Garway, the first coffee-man who sold and retailed tea. A room upstairs
was used for sales of wine “by the candle.”
{120d} Sir Constantine Phipps, who had taken an active part in
Sacheverell’s defence. Phipps’ interference in elections in the Tory
interest made him very unpopular in Dublin, and he was recalled on the
death of Queen Anne.
{120e} Joseph Trapp, one of the seven poets alluded to in the distich:—
“Alma novem genuit celebres Rhedycina poetas,
Bubb, Stubb, Grubb, Crabb, Trapp, Young, Carey, Tickell, Evans.”
Trapp wrote a tragedy in 1704, and in 1708 was chosen the first Professor
of Poetry at Oxford. In 1710 he published pamphlets on behalf of
Sacheverell, and in 1712 Swift secured for him the post of chaplain to
Bolingbroke. During his latter years he held several good livings.
Elsewhere Swift calls him a “coxcomb.”
{120f} See p. 50.
{121} The extreme Tories, who afterwards formed the October Club.
{122} Crowd. A Jacobean writer speaks of “the lurry of lawyers,” and “a
lurry and rabble of poor friars.”
{123a} See p. 24, note 3.
{123b} St. John’s first wife was Frances, daughter and co-heiress of Sir
Henry Winchcombe, Bart., of Berkshire, and in her right St. John enjoyed
the estates of Bucklebury, which on her death in 1718 passed to her
sister. In April 1711 Swift said that “poor Mrs. St. John” was growing a
great favourite of his; she was going to Bath owing to ill-health, and
begged him to take care of her husband. She “said she had none to trust
but me, and the poor creature’s tears came fresh in her eyes.” Though
the marriage was, naturally enough, unhappy, she did not leave St. John’s
house until 1713, and she returned to him when he fell from power. There
are letters from her to Swift as late as 1716, not only doing her best to
defend his honour, but speaking of him with tenderness.
{123c} “Battoon” means (1) a truncheon; (2) a staff of office.
Luttrell, in 1704, speaks of “a battoon set with diamonds sent him from
the French king.”
{124a} Edward Harley, second son of Sir Edward Harley, was M.P. for
Leominster and Recorder of the same town. In 1702 he was appointed
Auditor of the Imposts, a post which he held until his death in 1735.
His wife, Sarah, daughter of Thomas Foley, was a sister of Robert
Harley’s wife, and his eldest son eventually became third Earl of Oxford.
Harley published several books on biblical subjects.
{124b} See p. 36. The last number of Steele’s _Tatler_ appeared on Jan.
2, 1711; Harrison’s paper reached to fifty-two numbers.
{124c} Dryden Leach (see p. 51).
{125a} Cf. Letter 7, October 28th.
{125b} Published by John Baker and John Morphew. See Aitken’s _Life of
Steele_, i. 299–301.
{125c} In No. 224 of the _Tatler_, Addison, speaking of polemical
advertisements, says: “The inventors of Strops for Razors have written
against one another this way for several years, and that with great
bitterness.” See also _Spectator_, Nos. 428, 509, and the _Postman_ for
March 23, 1703: “The so much famed strops for setting razors, etc., are
only to be had at Jacob’s Coffee-house. . . . Beware of counterfeits,
for such are abroad.”
{126a} Sir John Holland (see p. 11).
{126b} Addison speaks of a fine flaxen long wig costing thirty guineas
(_Guardian_, No. 97), and Duumvir’s fair wig, which Phillis threw into
the fire, cost forty guineas (_Tatler_, No. 54)
{127a} Swift’s mother, Abigail Erick, was of a Leicestershire family,
and after her husband’s death she spent much of her time with her friends
near her old home. Mr. Worrall, vicar of St. Patrick’s, with whom Swift
was on terms of intimacy in 1728–29, was evidently a relative of the
Worralls where Mrs. Swift had lodged, and we may reasonably suppose that
he owed the living to Swift’s interest in the family.
{127b} The title of a humorous poem by Lydgate. A “lickpenny” is a
greedy or grasping person.
{128a} Small wooden blocks used for lighting fires. See Swift
(“Description of the Morning”),
“The small-coal man was heard with cadence deep,
Till drowned in shriller notes of chimney-sweep;”
and Gay (_Trivia_, ii. 35),
“When small-coal murmurs in the hoarser throat,
From smutty dangers guard thy threatened coat.”
{128b} The Tory Ministers.
{129a} See p. 51.
{129b} Thomas Southerne’s play of _Oroonoko_, based on Mrs. Aphra Behn’s
novel of the same name, was first acted in 1696.
{129c} “Mrs.” Cross created the part of Mrs. Clerimont in Steele’s
_Tender Husband_ in 1705.
{130a} See p. 106.
{130b} George Granville, afterwards Lord Lansdowne, was M.P. for
Cornwall, and Secretary at War. In December 1711 he was raised to the
peerage, and in 1712 was appointed Comptroller of the Household. He died
in 1735, when the title became extinct. Granville wrote plays and poems,
and was a patron of both Dryden and Pope. Pope called him “Granville the
polite.” His _Works in Verse and Prose_ appeared in 1732.
{131a} Samuel Masham, son of Sir Francis Masham, Bart., had been a page
to the Queen while Princess of Denmark, and an equerry and gentleman of
the bed-chamber to Prince George. He married Abigail Hill (see p. 149),
daughter of Francis Hill, a Turkey merchant, and sister of General John
Hill, and through that lady’s influence with the Queen he was raised to
the peerage as Baron Masham, in January 1712. Under George I. he was
Remembrancer of the Exchequer. He died in 1758.
{131b} A roughly printed pamphlet, _The Honourable Descent_, _Life_,
_and True Character of the_ . . . _Earl of Wharton_, appeared early in
1711, in reply to Swift’s _Short Character_; but that can hardly be the
pamphlet referred to here, because it is directed against libellers and
backbiters, and cannot be described as “pretty civil.”
{131c} “In that word (the seven last words of the sentence huddled into
one) there were some puzzling characters” (Deane Swift).
{132} Sir Robert Worsley, Bart., married, in 1690, Frances, only
daughter of the first Viscount Weymouth. Their daughter Frances married
Lord Carteret (see p. 116) in 1710. In a letter to Colonel Hunter in
March 1709 Swift spoke of Lady (then Mrs.) Worsley as one of the
principal beauties in town. See, too, Swift’s letter to her of April 19,
1730: “My Lady Carteret has been the best queen we have known in Ireland
these many years; yet is she mortally hated by all the young girls,
because (and it is your fault) she is handsomer than all of them
together.”
{133a} See p. 7.
{133b} See p. 25.
{133c} William Stratford, son of Nicholas Stratford, Bishop of Chester,
was Archdeacon of Richmond and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford, until his
death in 1729.
{133d} See p. 10.
{134a} James, third Earl of Berkeley (1680–1736), whom Swift calls a
“young rake” (see p. 151). The young Countess of Berkeley was only
sixteen on her marriage. In 1714 she was appointed a lady of the
bed-chamber to Caroline, Princess of Wales, and she died of smallpox in
1717, aged twenty-two. The Earl was an Admiral, and saw much service
between 1701 and 1710; under George I. he was First Lord of the
Admiralty.
{134b} Edward Wettenhall was Bishop of Kilmore from 1699 to 1713.
{134c} In the Dedication to _The Tale of a Tub_ Swift had addressed
Somers in very different terms: “There is no virtue, either in public or
private life, which some circumstances of your own have not often
produced upon the stage of the world.”
{136} Their lodgings, opposite to St. Mary’s Church in Stafford Street,
Dublin.
{138a} The Stamp Act was not passed until June 1712: see the _Journal_
for Aug. 7, 1712.
{138b} Both in St. James’s Park. The Canal was formed by Charles II.
from several small ponds, and Rosamond’s Pond was a sheet of water in the
south-west corner of the Park, “long consecrated,” as Warburton said, “to
disastrous love and elegiac poetry.” It is often mentioned as a place of
assignation in Restoration plays. Evelyn (_Diary_, Dec. 1, 1662)
describes the “scheets” used on the Canal.
{139a} Mrs. Beaumont.
{139b} The first direct mention of Hester Vanhomrigh. She is referred
to only in two other places in the _Journal_ (Feb. 14, 1710–11, and Aug.
14, 1711).
{139c} See p. 10.
{139d} No. 27, by Swift himself.
{140a} No. 7 of Harrison’s series.
{140b} The printers of the original _Tatler_.
{141} Harley had forwarded to Swift a banknote for £50 (see _Journal_,
March 7, 1710–11).
{143} At Moor Park.
{144a} Scott says that Swift here alludes to some unidentified pamphlet
of which he was the real or supposed author.
{144b} See p. 89.
{144c} The _Examiner_.
{145a} See p. 43.
{145b} Mistaken.
{145c} Mrs. De Caudres, “over against St. Mary’s Church, near Capel
Street,” where Stella now lodged.
{146a} “A crease in the sheet” (Deane Swift).
{146b} “In the original it was, _good mallows_, _little sollahs_. But
in these words, and many others, he writes constantly _ll_ for _rr_”
(Deane Swift).
{147a} See p. 21.
{147b} “Those letters which are in italics in the original are of a
monstrous size, which occasioned his calling himself a loggerhead” (Deane
Swift).
{147c} _I.e._, to ask whether.
{148a} Harcourt.
{148b} “A shilling passes for thirteenpence in Ireland” (Deane Swift).
{148c} Robert Cope, a gentleman of learning with whom Swift
corresponded.
{148d} Archdeacon Morris is not mentioned in Cotton’s _Fasti Ecclesiæ
Hiberniæ_.
{149a} See p. 131.
{149b} See p. 76.
{149c} Abigail Hill, afterwards Lady Masham, had been introduced into
the Queens service as bed-chamber woman by the Duchess of Marlborough.
Her High Church and Tory views recommended her to Queen Anne, and in 1707
she was privately married to Mr. Samuel Masham, a gentleman in the
service of Prince George (see p. 131). The Duchess of Marlborough
discovered that Mrs. Masham’s cousin, Harley, was using her influence to
further his own interests with the Queen; and in spite of her violence
the Duchess found herself gradually supplanted. From 1710 Mrs. Masham’s
only rival in the royal favour was the Duchess of Somerset. Afterwards
she quarrelled with Harley and joined the Bolingbroke faction.
{149d} See 20.
{150a} No. 14 of Harrison’s series.
{150b} See p. 139.
{150c} Richard Duke, a minor poet and friend of Dryden’s, entered the
Church about 1685. In July 1710 he was presented by the Bishop of
Winchester to the living of Witney, Oxfordshire, which was worth £700 a
year.
{150d} Sir Jonathan Trelawney, one of the seven bishops committed to the
Tower in 1688, was translated to Winchester in 1707, when he appointed
Duke to be his chaplain.
{151a} See p. 17.
{151b} See p. 14.
{151c} See p. 134.
{151d} See p. 52.
{152a} Cf. p. 155.
{152b} Esther Johnson lodged opposite St. Mary’s in Dublin.
{152c} This famous Tory club began with the meeting together of a few
extreme Tories at the Bell in Westminster. The password to the
Club—“October”—was one easy of remembrance to a country gentleman who
loved his ale.
{153} “Duke” Disney, “not an old man, but an old rake,” died in 1731.
Gay calls him “facetious Disney,” and Swift says that all the members of
the Club “love him mightily.” Lady M. W. Montagu speaks of his
“Broad plump face, pert eyes, and ruddy skin,
Which showed the stupid joke which lurked within.”
Disney was a French Huguenot refugee, and his real name was Desaulnais.
He commanded an Irish regiment, and took part in General Hill’s
expedition to Canada in 1711 (Kingsford’s _Canada_, ii. 465). By his
will (_Wentworth Papers_, 109) he “left nothing to his poor relations,
but very handsome to his bottle companions.”
{154} There were several Colonel Fieldings in the first half of the
eighteenth century, and it is not clear which is the one referred to by
Swift. Possibly he was the Edmund Fielding—grandson of the first Earl of
Denbigh—who died a Lieutenant-General in 1741, at the age of sixty-three,
but is best known as the father of Henry Fielding, the novelist.
{155} Cf. p. 152.
{156a} See p. 14.
{156b} “It is a measured mile round the outer wall; and far beyond any
the finest square in London” (Deane Swift).
{156c} “The common fare for a set-down in Dublin” (_ib._).
{156d} “Mrs. Stoyte lived at Donnybrook, the road to which from
Stephen’s Green ran into the country about a mile from the south-east
corner” (_ib._).
{156e} “Those words in italics are written in a very large hand, and so
is the word large” (_ib._).
{157} Deane Swift alters “lele” to “there,” but in a note states how he
here altered Swift’s “cypher way of writing.” No doubt “lele” and other
favourite words occurred frequently in the MS., as they do in the later
letters.
{158a} Sir Thomas Mansel, Bart., Comptroller of the Household to Queen
Anne, and a Lord of the Treasury, was raised to the peerage in December
1711 as Baron Mansel of Margam. He died in 1723.
{158b} Lady Betty Butler and Lady Betty Germaine (see pp. 14, 17).
{159} James Eckershall, “second clerk of the Queen’s Privy Kitchen.”
Chamberlayne (_Magnæ Britanniæ Notitia_, 1710, p. 536) says that his
wages were £11, 8s. 1½d., and board-wages £138, 11s. 10½d., making £150
in all. Afterwards Eckershall was gentleman usher to Queen Anne; he died
at Drayton in 1753, aged seventy-four. Pope was in correspondence with
him in 1720 on the subject of contemplated speculations in South Sea and
other stocks.
{160a} In October 1710 (see p. 43) Swift wrote as if he knew about the
preparation of these _Miscellanies_. The volume was published by Morphew
instead of Tooke, and it is frequently referred to in the _Journal_.
{160b} In 1685 the Duke of Ormond (see p. 5) married, as his second
wife, Lady Mary Somerset, eldest surviving daughter of Henry, first Duke
of Beaufort.
{160c} Arthur Moore, M.P., was a Commissioner of Trade and Plantations
from 1710 until his death in 1730. Gay calls him “grave,” and Pope
(“Prologue to the Satires,” 23) says that Moore blamed him for the way in
which his “giddy son,” James Moore Smythe, neglected the law.
{161a} James, Lord Paisley, who succeeded his father (see p. 86) as
seventh Earl of Abercorn in 1734, married, in 1711, Anne, eldest daughter
of Colonel John Plumer, of Blakesware, Herts.
{161b} Harley’s ill-health was partly due to his drinking habits.
{161c} Crowd or confusion.
{162} The first wife of Charles Seymour, sixth Duke of Somerset, was
Lady Elizabeth Percy, only daughter of Joscelyn, eleventh Earl of
Northumberland, and heiress of the house of Percy. She married the Duke,
her third husband, at the age of eighteen.
{163a} John Richardson, D.D., rector of Armagh, Cavan, and afterwards
chaplain to the Duke of Ormond. In 1711 he published a _Proposal for the
Conversion of the Popish Natives of Ireland to the Established Religion_,
and in 1712 a _Short History of the Attempts to Convert the Popish
Natives of Ireland_. In 1709 the Lower House of Convocation in Ireland
had passed resolutions for printing the Bible and liturgy in Irish,
providing Irish preachers, etc. In 1711 Thomas Parnell, the poet, headed
a deputation to the Queen on the subject, when an address was presented;
but nothing came of the proposals, owing to fears that the English
interest in Ireland might be injured. In 1731 Richardson was given the
small deanery of Kilmacluagh.
{163b} See p. 159.
{163c} Harley.
{163d} “Bank bill for fifty pound,” taking the alternate letters (see
pp. 141, 150).
{164a} See p. 25.
{164b} See Nos. 27 and 29, by Swift himself.
{164c} “Print cannot do justice to whims of this kind, as they depend
wholly upon the awkward shape of the letters” (Deane Swift).
{165a} See p. 54.
{165b} “Here is just one specimen given of his way of writing to Stella
in these journals. The reader, I hope, will excuse my omitting it in all
other places where it occurs. The meaning of this pretty language is:
‘And you must cry There, and Here, and Here again. Must you imitate
Presto, pray? Yes, and so you shall. And so there’s for your letter.
Good-morrow’” (Deane Swift). What Swift really wrote was probably as
follows: “Oo must cly Lele and Lele and Lele aden. Must oo mimitate
Pdfr, pay? Iss, and so oo sall. And so lele’s fol oo rettle.
Dood-mallow.”
{166a} Lady Catherine Morice (died 1716) was the eldest daughter of
Thomas Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, and wife of Sir Nicholas Morice, Bart.,
M.P. for Newport.
{166b} Perhaps Henry Arundell, who succeeded his father as fifth Baron
Arundell of Wardour in 1712, and died in 1726.
{166c} Antoine, Abbé de Bourlie and Marquis de Guiscard, was a cadet of
a distinguished family of the south of France. He joined the Church, but
having been driven from France in consequence of his licentious excesses,
he came to England, after many adventures in Europe, with a
recommendation from the Duke of Savoy. Godolphin gave him the command of
a regiment of refugees, and employed him in projects for effecting a
landing in France. These schemes proving abortive, Guiscard’s regiment
was disbanded, and he was discharged with a pension of £500 a year. Soon
after the Tories came to power Guiscard came to the conclusion that there
was no hope of employment for him, and little chance of receiving his
pension; and he began a treacherous correspondence with the French. When
this was detected he was brought before the Privy Council, and finding
that everything was known, and wishing a better death than hanging, he
stabbed Harley in the breast. Mrs. Manley, under Swift’s directions,
wrote a _Narrative of Guiscard’s Examination_, and the incident greatly
added to the security of Harley’s position, and to the strength of the
Government.
{166d} Harley’s surgeon, Mr. Green.
{167a} See p. 73.
{167b} Mrs. Walls’ baby (see p. 185).
{168a} The phrase had its origin in the sharp practices in the horse and
cattle markets. Writing to Arbuthnot in 1727, Swift said that Gay “had
made a pretty good bargain (that is a Smithfield) for a little place in
the Custom House.”
{168b} “There.”
{169a} See Swift’s paper in the _Examiner_, No. 32, and Mrs. Manley’s
pamphlet, already mentioned.
{169b} Presumably Mrs. Johnson’s palsy-water (see p. 25).
{170a} Thomas Wentworth, Baron Raby (1672–1739), was created Viscount
Wentworth and Earl of Strafford in June 1711. Lord Raby was Envoy and
Ambassador at Berlin for some years, and was appointed Ambassador at the
Hague in March 1711. In November he was nominated as joint
Plenipotentiary with the Bishop of Bristol to negotiate the terms of
peace. He objected to Prior as a colleague; Swift says he was “as proud
as hell.” In 1715 it was proposed to impeach Strafford, but the
proceedings were dropped. In his later years he was, according to Lord
Hervey, a loquacious and illiterate, but constant, speaker in the House
of Lords.
{170b} A beauty, to whom Swift addressed verses in 1708. During the
frost of January 1709 Swift wrote: “Mrs. Floyd looked out with both her
eyes, and we had one day’s thaw; but she drew in her head, and it now
freezes as hard as ever.” She was a great friend of Lady Betty
Germaine’s.
{170c} Swift never had the smallpox.
{170d} See p. 116.
{171a} Heart.
{171b} The first number of the _Spectator_ appeared on March 1, 1711.
{172a} In one of his poems Swift speaks of Stella “sossing in an
easy-chair.”
{172b} See p. 21.
{173a} “It is reasonable to suppose that Swift’s acquaintance with
Arbuthnot commenced just about this time; for in the original letter
Swift misspells his name, and writes it Arthbuthnet, in a clear large
hand, that MD might not mistake any of the letters” (Deane Swift). Dr.
John Arbuthnot had been made Physician in Ordinary to the Queen; he was
one of Swift’s dearest friends.
{173b} Clobery Bromley, M.P. for Coventry, son of William Bromley, M.P.
(see p. 70), died on March 20, 1711, and Boyer (_Political State_, i.
255) says that the House, “out of respect to the father, and to give him
time, both to perform the funeral rites and to indulge his just
affliction,” adjourned until the 26th.
{174a} See p. 23.
{174b} See p. 163.
{175a} Sir John Perceval, Bart. (died 1748), was created Baron Perceval
1715, Viscount Perceval 1722, and Earl of Egmont 1733, all in the Irish
peerage. He married, in 1710, Catherine, eldest daughter of Sir Philip
Parker A’Morley, Bart., of Erwarton, Suffolk; and his son (born Feb. 27,
1710–11) was made Baron Perceval and Holland, in the English peerage, in
1762.
{175b} This report was false. The Old Pretender did not marry until
1718, when he was united to the Princess Clementina Maria, daughter of
Prince James Sobieski.
{176a} John Hartstonge, D.D. (died 1717), was Bishop of Ossory from 1693
to 1714, when he was translated to Derry.
{176b} See p. 145.
{176c} Thomas Proby was Chirurgeon-General in Ireland from 1699 until
his death in 1761. In his _Short Character of Thomas_, _Earl of
Wharton_, Swift speaks of him as “a person universally esteemed,” who had
been badly treated by Lord Wharton. In 1724 Proby’s son, a captain in
the army, was accused of popery, and Swift wrote to Lord Carteret that
the charge was generally believed to be false: “The father is the most
universally beloved of any man I ever knew in his station. . . . You
cannot do any personal thing more acceptable to the people of Ireland
than in inclining towards lenity to Mr. Proby and his family.” Proby was
probably a near relative of Sir Thomas Proby, Bart., M.P., of Elton,
Hunts, at whose death in 1689 the baronetcy expired. Mrs. Proby seems to
have been a Miss Spencer.
{176d} Meliora, daughter of Thomas Coningsby, Baron of Clanbrassil and
Earl of Coningsby, and wife of Sir Thomas Southwell, afterwards Baron
Southwell, one of the Commissioners of Revenue in Ireland, and a member
of the Irish Privy Council. Lady Southwell died in 1736.
{176e} Lady Betty Rochfort was the daughter of Henry Moore, third Earl
of Drogheda. Her husband, George Rochfort, M.P. for Westmeath, was son
of Robert Rochfort, an Irish judge, and brother of Robert Rochford, M.P.,
to whose wife Swift addressed his _Advice to a very Young Lady on her
Marriage_. Lady Betty’s son Robert was created Earl of Belvedere in
1757.
{177} See p. 166. Mr. Bussiere, of Suffolk Street, had been called in
directly after the outrage, but Radcliffe would not consult him.
{178a} The letter from Dr. King dated March 17, 1711, commenting on
Guiscard’s attack upon Harley.
{178b} See p. 147.
{178c} The word “trangram” or “tangram” ordinarily means a toy or
gimcrack, or trumpery article. Cf. Wycherley (_Plain Dealer_, iii. 1),
“But go, thou trangram, and carry back those trangrams which thou hast
stolen or purloined.” Apparently “trangum” here means a tally.
{178d} See p. 104.
{179a} Swift means Godolphin, the late Lord Treasurer.
{179b} Sir John Holland (see p. 11).
{179c} “It caused a violent daub on the paper, which still continues
much discoloured in the original” (Deane Swift).
{180a} “He forgot here to say, ‘At night.’ See what goes before” (Deane
Swift).
{180b} See p. 158.
{180c} Irishman. “Teague” was a term of contempt for an Irishman.
{180d} _To Mr. Harley_, _wounded by Guiscard_. In this piece Prior
said, “Britain with tears shall bathe thy glorious wound,” a wound which
could not have been inflicted by any but a stranger to our land.
{181a} Sir Thomas Mansel married Martha, daughter and heiress of Francis
Millington, a London merchant.
{181b} Slatterning, consuming carelessly.
{181c} “The candle grease mentioned before, which soaked through,
deformed this part of the paper on the second page” (Deane Swift).
{182a} Harcourt.
{182b} William Rollinson, formerly a wine merchant, settled afterwards
in Oxfordshire, where he died at a great age. He was a friend of Pope,
Bolingbroke, and Gay.
{184} In relation to the banknote (see p. 163).
{185a} “Swift was, at this time, their great support and champion”
(Deane Swift).
{185b} See p. 134.
{185c} See p. 167.
{185d} “Stella, with all her wit and good sense, spelled very ill; and
Dr. Swift insisted greatly upon women spelling well” (Deane Swift).
{185e} “The slope of the letters in the words _this way_, _this way_, is
to the left hand, but the slope of the words _that way_, _that way_, is
to the right hand” (Deane Swift).
{186a} See p. 167.
{186b} See pp. 24, 85.
{186c} By the Act 9 Anne, cap. 23, the number of hackney coaches was
increased to 800, and it was provided that they were to go a mile and a
half for one shilling, two miles for one shilling and sixpence, and so
on.
{187} See p. 95.
{188a} In a letter to Swift, of March 17, 1711, King said that it might
have been thought that Guiscard’s attack would have convinced the world
that Harley was not in the French interest; but it did not have that
effect with all, for some whispered the case of Fenius Rufus and Scevinus
in the 15th book of Tacitus: “Accensis indicibus ad prodendum Fenium
Rufum, quem eundem conscium et inquisitorem non tolerabant.” Next month
Swift told King that it was reported that the Archbishop had applied this
passage in a speech made to his clergy, and explained at some length the
steps he had taken to prevent the story being published in the _Postboy_.
King thanked Swift for this action, explaining that he had been arguing
on Harley’s behalf when someone instanced the story of Rufus.
{188b} A Tory paper, published thrice weekly by Abel Roper.
{189} Sir Charles Duncombe, banker, died on April 9, 1711. The first
wife of the Duke of Argyle (see p. 101) was Duncombe’s niece, Mary
Browne, daughter of Ursula Duncombe and Thomas Browne, of St. Margaret’s,
Westminster. Duncombe was elected Lord Mayor in 1700, and was the
richest commoner in England.
{190a} The Rev. Dillon Ashe (see p. 117).
{190b} John, fourth Baron Poulett, was created Earl Poulett in 1706,
after serving as one of the Commissioners for the Treaty of Union with
Scotland. From August 1710 to May 1711 he was First Lord of the
Treasury, and from June 1711 to August 1714 he was Lord Steward of the
Household.
{190c} Lost or stupid person.
{191a} Sir William Read, a quack who advertised largely in the _Tatler_
and other papers. He was satirised in No. 547 of the _Spectator_. In
1705 he was knighted for his services in curing many seamen and soldiers
of blindness gratis, and he was appointed Oculist in Ordinary to the
Queen. Read died in 1715, but his business was continued by his widow.
{191b} General John Webb was not on good terms with Marlborough. He was
a Tory, and had gained distinction in the war at Wynendale (1708), though
the Duke’s secretary gave the credit, in the despatch, to Cadogan. There
is a well-known account of Webb in Thackeray’s _Esmond_. He was severely
wounded at Malplaquet in 1709, and in 1710 was given the governorship of
the Isle of Wight. He died in 1724.
{191c} Henry Campion, M.P. for Penryn, is mentioned in the _Political
State_ for February 1712 as one of the leading men of the October Club.
Campion seems to have been Member, not for Penryn, but for Bossiney.
{192a} See p. 12.
{192b} Sir George Beaumont, Bart., M.P. for Leicester, and an
acquaintance of Swift’s mother, was made a Commissioner of the Privy Seal
in 1712, and one of the Lords of the Admiralty in 1714. He died in 1737.
{192c} Heneage Finch, afterwards second Earl of Aylesford, was the son
of Heneage Finch, the chief counsel for the seven bishops, who was
created Baron Guernsey in 1703, and Earl of Aylesford in 1714.
{192d} James, Lord Compton, afterwards fifth Earl of Northampton, was
the eldest son of George, the fourth Earl. He was summoned to the House
of Lords in December 1711, and died in 1754.
{193} See p. 89.
{194} In 1670 Temple thanked the Grand Duke of Tuscany for “an entire
vintage of the finest wines of Italy” (Temple’s _Works_, 1814, ii.
155–56).
{195a} Mrs. Manley (see p. 166).
{195b} Charles Cæsar, M.P. for Hertford, was appointed Treasurer of the
Navy in June 1711, in the room of Robert Walpole.
{196} Joseph I. His successor was his brother Charles, the King of
Spain recognised by England.
{197} Simon Harcourt, M.P. for Wallingford. He married Elizabeth,
sister of Sir John Evelyn, Bart., and died in 1720, aged thirty-five,
before his father. He was secretary to the society of “Brothers,” wrote
verses, and was a friend of the poets. His son Simon was created Earl
Harcourt in 1749, and was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.
{199a} Doiley, a seventeenth-century linen-draper,—probably “Thomas
Doyley, at the Nun, in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden,”—invented stuffs
which “might at once be cheap and genteel” (_Spectator_, No. 283).
{199b} A special envoy. The Resident from Venice in 1710 was Signor
Bianchi.
{199c} See p. 160.
{199d} Nanfan Coote, second Earl of Bellamont, who died in 1708,
married, in 1705, Lucia Anna, daughter of Henry de Nassau, Lord of
Auverquerque, and sister of Henry, first Earl of Grantham. She died in
1744.
{200a} “Farnese” (Deane Swift).
{200b} See p. 188.
{200c} Swift’s changes of residence during the period covered by the
_Journal_ were numerous. On Sept. 20, 1710, he moved from Pall Mall to
Bury Street, “where I suppose I shall continue while in London.” But on
Dec. 28 he went to new lodgings in St. Albans Street, Haymarket. On
April 26, 1711, he moved to Chelsea, and from there to Suffolk Street, to
be near the Vanhomrighs. He next moved to St. Martins Street, Leicester
Fields; and a month later to Panton Street, Haymarket. In 1712 he lodged
for a time at Kensington Gravel Pits.
{201a} At raffling for books.
{201b} James Brydges, Paymaster-General, and afterwards Duke of Chandos
(see p. 12).
{202a} Thomas Foley, M.P. for Worcestershire, was created Baron Foley in
December 1711, and died in 1733.
{202b} See pp. 198, 200.
{202c} See p. 176.
{202d} Charles Dering, second son of Sir Edward Dering, Bart., M.P. for
Kent, was Auditor of the Exchequer in Ireland, and M.P. for Carlingford.
{202e} See p. 97.
{203a} See pp. 43, 160.
{203b} A Whig paper, for the most part by Mainwaring and Oldmixon, in
opposition to the _Examiner_. It appeared weekly from October 1710 to
August 1711.
{203c} See p. 166.
{203d} See _Spectator_, No. 50, by Addison.
{203e} In all probability a mistake for “Wesley” (see p. 2).
{205a} Lord Paisley (see p. 161).
{205b} See p. 88.
{206a} Sir Hovenden Walker. The “man midwife” was Sir Chamberlen
Walker, his younger brother. The “secret expedition” against Quebec
conveyed upwards of 5000 soldiers, under the command of General John Hill
(see p. 76), but owing to the want of due preparations and the severe
weather encountered, the fleet was compelled to return to England without
accomplishing anything.
{206b} Robert Freind, elder brother of John Freind, M.D. (see p. 66),
became headmaster of Westminster School in 1711, and held the appointment
until 1733. He was Rector of Witney, and afterwards Canon of Windsor,
Prebendary of Westminster, and Canon of Christ Church. He died in 1751,
aged eighty-four.
{206c} Christopher Musgrave was Clerk of the Ordnance.
{207a} Atterbury’s wife, Katherine Osborn, has been described as “the
inspiration of his youth and the solace of his riper years.”
{207b} The original Chelsea Bun House, in Jew’s Row, was pulled down in
1839. Sir R. Philips, writing in 1817, said, “Those buns have afforded a
competency, and even wealth, to four generations of the same family; and
it is singular that their delicate flavour, lightness, and richness have
never been successfully imitated.”
{208a} See p. 60. King wrote to Swift (May 15, 1711), “The death of the
Earl of Rochester is a great blow to all good men, and even his enemies
cannot but do justice to his character. What influence it will have on
public affairs God only knows.”
{208b} See p. 89.
{210a} See p. 160.
{210b} See p. 170.
{210c} See p. 192.
{211a} Swift’s curate at Laracor.
{211b} Queen Anne was the last sovereign who exercised the supposed
royal gift of healing by touch. Dr. Johnson was touched by her, but
without effect.
{212a} Richard Thornhill was tried at the Old Bailey on May 18, 1711,
for the murder of Sir Cholmley Dering, M.P. for Kent, and found guilty of
manslaughter only; but he was shortly afterwards assassinated (see
_Journal_ for Aug. 21, 1711; _Spectator_, No. 84). The quarrel began on
April 27, when they fell to blows, and Thornhill being knocked down, had
some teeth struck out by Sir C. Dering stamping on him. The spectators
then interfered, and Dering expressed himself as ready to beg pardon; but
Thornhill not thinking this was sufficient satisfaction, gave Dering the
lie, and on May 9 sent him a challenge.
{212b} Tothill Fields, Westminster, was a favourite place for duels in
the seventeenth century.
{212c} See p. 124.
{213} Benjamin Burton, a Dublin banker, and brother-in-law of Swift’s
friend Stratford (see p. 10). Swift says he hated this “rogue.”
{214} The day on which the Club met. See letter from Swift to St. John,
May 11, 1711.
{215a} Henry Barry, fourth Lord Barry of Santry (1680–1734), was an
Irish Privy Councillor, and Governor of Derry. In 1702 he married
Bridget, daughter of Sir Thomas Domville, Bart., and in an undated letter
(about 1735) to Lady Santry Swift spoke of his esteem for her, “although
I had hardly the least acquaintance with your lord, nor was at all
desirous to cultivate it, because I did not at all approve of his
conduct.” Lord Santry’s only son and heir, who was born in 1710, was
condemned to death for the murder of a footman in 1739, when the barony
became extinct by forfeiture. See B. W. Adams’s _History of Santry_.
{215b} Probably Captain Cammock, of the _Speedwell_, of 28 guns and 125
men (Luttrell, vi. 331), who met on July 13, 1708, off Scotland, two
French privateers, one of 16, the other of 18 guns, and fought them
several hours. The first privateer got off, much shattered; the other
was brought into Carrickfergus.
{215c} See 50.
{215d} See p. 120.
{216a} This valuable pamphlet is signed “J.G.,” and is believed to be by
John Gay.
{216b} Edmund Curll’s collection of Swift’s _Miscellanies_, published in
1711, was an expansion of a pamphlet of 1710, _A Meditation upon a
Broomstick_, _and somewhat beside_, _of the same Author’s_.
{217a} “In this passage DD signifies both Dingley and Stella” (Deane
Swift).
{217b} Sir Henry Craik’s reading. The old editions have, “It would do:
DD goes as well as Presto,” which is obviously corrupt.
{217c} Cf. _Journal_, June 17, 1712.
{217d} Cf. “old doings” (see p. 73.)
{217e} See p. 163.
{217f} Rymer’s _Fœdera_, in three volumes, which Swift obtained for
Trinity College, Dublin.
{217g} See pp. 43, 145.
{218a} Stephen Colledge, “the Protestant joiner,” was hanged in 1681.
He had published attacks on the Roman Catholics, and had advocated
resistance to Charles II.
{218b} See p. 14.
{218c} Mitford Crowe was appointed Governor of Barbados in 1706, and
before his departure for that island went to Spain, “to settle the
accounts of our army there, of which he is paymaster” (Luttrell, vi.
104). In 1710 charges of bribery brought against him by merchants were
inquired into by the Privy Council, but he seems to have cleared himself,
for in June 1711 Swift speaks of him as Governor of Jamaica. He died in
1719.
{219} See p. 60.
{220a} Swift’s uncle Adam “lived and died in Ireland,” and left no son.
Another daughter of his became Mrs. Whiteway.
{220b} William Lowndes, M.P., secretary to the Treasury, whom Walpole
called “as able and honest a servant as ever the Crown had.”
{220c} The Lord Treasurer’s staff: since the dismissal of Godolphin, the
Treasurership had been held in commission.
{221} “As I hope to be saved.”
{222} Stella’s maid.
{223} See letter from King to Swift, May 15, 1711. Alderman
Constantine, a High Churchman, indignant at being passed over by a junior
in the contest for the mayoralty, brought the matter before the Council
Board, and produced an old by-law by which aldermen, according to their
ancientry, were required to keep their mayoralty. King took the side of
the city, but the majority was for the by-law, and disapproved of the
election; whereupon the citizens repealed the by-law and re-elected the
same alderman as before.
{224} The Lord Treasurer’s staff.
{225a} Swift’s “little parson cousin,” the resident chaplain at Moor
Park. He pretended to have had some part in _The Tale of a Tub_, and
Swift always professed great contempt for him. Thomas Swift was son of
an Oxford uncle of Swift’s, of the same name, and was at school and
college with Swift. He became Rector of Puttenham, Surrey, and died in
1752, aged eighty-seven.
{225b} The Duke of Ormond’s daughter, Lady Mary Butler (see p. 44).
{225c} Thomas Harley, the Lord Treasurer’s cousin, was secretary to the
Treasury.