2 Swift was afterwards President of this Club, which is better known as “the Society.”
3 Perhaps Daniel Reading, M.P. for Newcastle, Co. Dublin.
4 Afterwards Congreve formed a friendship with the Whigs; or, as Swift put it,
“Took proper principles to thrive,
And so might every dunce alive.”
5 Atterbury.
6 This pamphlet, published in February 1712, was called “A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue, in a Letter to the. . . Lord High Treasurer.”
7 No. 47
8 Francis Gastrell, Canon of Christ Church, was made Bishop of Chester in 1713. His valuable Notitia Cestriensis was published in 1845−50.
9 Near Fulham.
10 See Letter 12, note 21.
11 The daughters of Meinhardt Schomberg, Duke of Leinster, in Ireland, and third Duke of Schomberg. Lady Mary married Count Dagenfeldt, and Lady Frederica married, first, the Earl of Holderness, and, secondly, Earl Fitz Walter.
12 Thomas Harley.
13 See Letter 19, note 3.
Letter 26.
1 The widow of Sir John Lyndon, who was appointed a justice of the Court of King’s Bench in Ireland in 1682, and died in 1699.
2 “Marmaduke Coghill, LL.D., was judge of the Prerogative Court in Ireland. About this time he courted a lady, and was soon to have been married to her; but unfortunately a cause was brought to trial before him, wherein a man was sued for beating his wife. When the matter was agitated, the Doctor gave his opinion,
‘That although a man had no right to beat his wife unmercifully, yet that, with such a little cane or switch as he then held in his hand, a husband was at liberty, and was invested with a power, to give his wife moderate NOTES.
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correction’; which opinion determined the lady against having the Doctor. He died an old man and a bachelor” (Deane Swift). See also Lascelles, Liber Muner. Hibern., part ii. p. 80.
3 This was a common exclamation of the time, but the spelling varies in different writers. It seems to be a corruption of “God so,” or “God ho,” but there may have been a confusion with “cat−so,” derived from the Italian “cazzo.”
4 See Letter 9, note 28. Mrs. Manley was now editing the Examiner.
5 Sir Henry Belasyse was sent to Spain as Commissioner to inquire into the state of the English forces in that country. The son of Sir Richard Belasyse, Knight of Ludworth, Durham, Sir Henry finished a chequered career in 1717, when he was buried in Westminster Abbey (Dalton’s Army Lists, ii. 228). In his earlier years he served under the United Provinces, and after the accession of William was made a Brigadier−General in the English army, and in 1694, Lieutenant−General. In 1702 he was second in command of the expedition to Cadiz, but he was dismissed the service in consequence of the looting of Port St. Mary. Subsequently he was elected M.P. for Durham, and in 1713 was appointed Governor of Berwick.
6 Atterbury.
7 See Letter 3, note 20.
8 Sir John Powell, a Judge of the Queen’s Bench, died in 1713, aged sixty− eight. He was a kindly as well as able judge.
9 See June 7th, 1711.
10 This Tisdall has been described as a Dublin merchant; but in all probability he was Richard Tisdall, Registrar of the Irish Court of Chancery, and M.P. for Dundalk (1707−1713) and County Louth (1713−1727).
He married Marian, daughter of Richard Boyle, M.P., and died in 1742. Richard Tisdall was a relative of Stella’s suitor, the Rev. William Tisdall, and years afterwards Swift took an interest in his son Philip, who became a Secretary of State and Leader of the Irish House of Commons.
11 “In Ireland there are not public paths from place to place, as in England” (Deane Swift).
12 See Letter 24, note 6.
13 Probably a son of John Manley, M.P. (see Letter 5, note 8).
14 See Letter 11, note 45.
15 Dr. George Stanhope, who was Vicar of Lewisham as well as of Deptford. He was a popular preacher and a translator of Thomas a Kempis and other religious writers.
16 See Letter 3, note 17.
17 A favourite word with Swift, when he wished to indicate anything obscure or humble.
18 See Letter 17, note 11.
19 See June 7th, 1711 and notes.
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20 See Letter 17, note 23.
21 Thomas Mills (1671−174O) was made Bishop of Waterford and Lismore in 17O8. A man of learning and a liberal contributor to the cost of church restorations, he is charged by Archbishop King with giving all the valuable livings in his gift to his non−resident relatives.
22 Tooke was appointed printer of the London Gazette in 1711 (see Letter 3, note 8).
23 See Letter 5, note 10
24 Lady Jane Hyde, the elder daughter of Henry Hyde, Earl of Rochester (see Letter 5, note 11), married William Capel, third Earl of Essex. Her daughter Charlotte’s husband, the son of the Earl of Jersey, was created Earl of Clarendon in 1776. Lady Jane’s younger sister, Catherine, who became the famous Duchess of Queensberry, Gay’s patroness, is represented by Prior, in The Female Phaeton, as jealous, when a young girl, of her sister, “Lady Jenny,” who went to balls, and “brought home hearts by dozens.”
25 See Letter 3, note 2.
26 John Holles, Duke of Newcastle, had held the Privy Seal from 17O5, and was regarded by the Ministers as a possible plenipotentiary in the event of their negotiations for a peace being successful. He married Lady Margaret Cavendish, daughter and co−heiress of Henry Cavendish, second Duke of Newcastle, and was one of the richest nobles in England. His death, on July 15, 1711, was the result of a fall while stag−hunting. The Duke’s only daughter married, in 1713, Edward, Lord Harley, the Earl of Oxford’s son.
Letter 27.
1 Alexander Forbes, fourth Lord Forbes, who was afterwards attainted for his share in the Rebellion of 1745.
2 Obscure (cf. Letter 7, note 30).
3 Jacob Tonson the elder, who died in 1736, outlived his nephew, Jacob Tonson the younger, by a few months. The elder Tonson, the secretary of the Kit−Cat Club, published many of Dryden’s works, and the firm continued to be the chief publishers of the time during the greater part of the eighteenth century.
4 John Barber.
5 By his will Swift left to Deane Swift his “large silver standish, consisting of a large silver plate, an ink−pot, and a sand−box.”
6 I.e., we are only three hours in getting there.
7 Cf. Letter 15, note 9.
8 The Examiner was revived in December 1711, under Oldisworth’s editorship, and was continued by him until 1714.
9 James Douglas, fourth Duke of Hamilton, was created Duke of Brandon in the English peerage in September 1711, and was killed by Lord Mohun in a duel in 1712. Swift calls him “a worthy good−natured person, very generous, but of a middle understanding.” He married, in 1698, as his second wife, Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Digby, Lord Gerard, a lady to whom Swift often refers in the Journal. She outlived the Duke thirty−two years.
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10 See August 27th, 1711.
11 William Fitzmaurice (see Letter 11, note 19).
12 The Duke of Shrewsbury (see Letter 3, note 32) married an Italian lady, Adelhida, daughter of the Marquis of Paliotti, of Bologna, descended maternally from Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth’s favourite. Lady Cowper (Diary, pp. 8, 9) says that the Duchess “had a wonderful art of entertaining and diverting people, though she would sometimes exceed the bounds of decency; . . . but then, with all her prate and noise, she was the most cunning, designing woman alive, obliging to people in prosperity, and a great party−woman.” As regards the name “Presto,” see Letter 2, note 11.
13 Probably a cousin.
14 Presumptuous: claiming much.
15 See Letter 13, note 15. John Winchcombe, a weaver of Newbury, marched with a hundred of his workmen, at his own expenses, against the Scots in 1513.
16 Thomas Coke, M.P., of Derbyshire, was appointed a Teller of the Exchequer in 1704, and Vice−Chamberlain to the Queen in 1706. In 1706 he marriedas his second wifeMrs. Hale, one of the maids of honour (Luttrell, v. 411, 423; vi. 113, 462; Lady Cowper’s Diary, 15, 16), a lady whose “piercing”
beauty it was, apparently, that Steele described under the name of Chloe, in No. 4 of the Tatler. Jervas painted her as a country girl, “with a liveliness that shows she is conscious, but not affected, of her perfections.” Coke was the Sir Plume of Pope’s Rape of the Lock.
17 The committee of management of the Royal household.
18 Francesca Margherita de l’Epine, the famous singer, and principal rival of Mrs. Tofts, came to England in 1692, and constantly sang in opera until her retirement in 1718, when she married Dr. Pepusch. She died in 1746. Her sister, Maria Gallia, also a singer, did not attain the same popularity.