24 This is, of course, a joke; Swift was never introduced at Court.
25 Captain Delaval (see Letter 5, note 6).
26 Admiral Sir Charles Wager (1666−1743) served in the West Indies from 17O7 to 17O9, 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.
27 See Letter 7, note 27.
28 See Letter 5, note 13.
29 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.
30 Tatler, No. 237.
31 Tatler, No. 23O.
32 “Returning home at night, you’ll find the sink
Strike your offended sense with double stink.”
(“Description of a City Shower, 11. 5, 6.)
33 Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin.
34 See Letter 1, note 3.
35 See Letter 8, note 5.
36 See Letter 6, note 4.
37 See Letter 1, note 11.
38 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.'”
Letter 9.
1 John Freind, M.D. (1675−1728), was a younger brother of the Robert Freind, of Westminster School, NOTES.
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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.
2 See Letter 8, note 19.
3 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.
4 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.
5 “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.
6 See Letter 3, note 18.
7 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.
8 See Letter 2, note 18.
9 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.
10 Richard Freeman, Chief Baron, was Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1707 until his death in November 1710.
11 See Letter 7, note 17.
12 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.
13 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).
14 See Letter 5, note 8.
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15 Elliot was keeper of the St. James’s Coffee−house (see Letter 1).
16 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.
17 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.
18 William Domville, a landed proprietor in County Dublin, whom Swift called “perfectly as fine a gentleman as I know.”
19 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.”
20 See Letter 3, note 10. 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.
21 Letter 5, note 11.
22 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 pounds 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).
23 Welbore Ellis, appointed Bishop of Kildare in 1705. He was translated to Meath in 1731, and died three years later.
24 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).
25 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.”
Letter 10.
1 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.
2 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.
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3 “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.
4 See Letter 1, note 3.
5 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.