12. 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.”
13. At the foundation school of the Ormonds at Kilkenny. (see note 22.)
14. A Whig haberdasher.
15. 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.
16. Dr. Henry Sacheverell, whose impeachment and trial had led to the fall of the Whig Government.
17. Sir Berkeley Lucy, Bart., F.R.S., married Katherine, daughter of Charles Cotton, of Beresford, Staffordshire, Isaac Walton’s friend. Lady Lucy died in 174O, 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.
18. 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 NOTES.
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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.”
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. 100,000 pounds.
22. 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
pounds a year, while his friend, with the bare abilities of a common scrivener, had gained an estate of above 100,000 pounds.
23. William Cowper, afterwards Lord Cowper.
24. Sir Simon Harcourt, afterwards Viscount Harcourt, had been counsel for Sacheverell. On Sept. 19, 171O, he was appointed Attorney−General, and on October 19 Lord Keeper of the Great Seal. In April 1713 he became Lord Chancellor.
25. This may be some relative of Dr. John Freind (see Letter 9), or, more probably, as Sir Henry Craik suggests, a misprint for Colonel Frowde, Addison’s friend (see Journal, Nov. 4, 171O). No officer named Freind or Friend is mentioned in Dalton’s English Army Lists.
26. See the Tatler, Nos. 124, 2O3. There are various allusions in the “Wentworth Papers” to this, the first State Lottery of 171O; 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.
27. A few weeks later Swift wrote, “I took a fancy of resolving to grow mad for it, but now it is off.”
28. 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 171O.
29. Dryden Leach. (see Letter 7.)
30. 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.
31. James Brydges, son of Lord Chandos of Sudeley, was appointed Paymaster− General of Forces Abroad in 17O7. He succeeded his father as Baron Chandos in 1714, and was created Duke of Chandos in 1729. The NOTES.
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“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.
32. 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.”
33. See No. 23O.
34. William Cavendish, second Duke of Devonshire (1673−1729), who was Lord Steward from 17O7 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.”
35. 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.
36. 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, 171O, 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. 63O, 633.
37. Lady Elizabeth (“Betty”) Butler, who died unmarried in 175O.
38. 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.”
39. Charles, second Earl of Berkeley (1649−171O), married Elizabeth, daughter of Baptist Noel, Viscount Campden. The Earl died on Sept. 24, 171O, and his widow in 1719. Swift, it will be remembered, had been chaplain to Lord Berkeley in Ireland in 1699.
40. Lady Betty and Lady Mary Butler. (see Letter 7, notes 2 and 3.)
41. Henry Boyle, Chancellor of the Exchequer from 17O2 to 17O8, was Secretary of State from 17O8 to 171O, 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.
42. 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 17O7 to 1712; and Mrs. Vanhomrigh was Swift’s next−door neighbour.
43. 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.”
Letter 4.
NOTES.
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1 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.
2 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.