desire my humble Service to MS [sic] and am very sincerely Your most obedient humble Serv J. S. NOTES ON XXVI. On February 22 Swift sent the following letter to Archbishop King : "DEANERY-HOUSE, February 22 1722-3. "MY LORD,-Mr. Chetwode intends to deliver in a petition to the government to-day, and entreated me to speak to your grace before he delivered it, which not having an opportunity to do, I make bold to enclose this letter, which your grace may please to read, and is the substance of what he desired me to say. "I am, My Lord, with the greatest respect, "Your grace's most dutiful, "and most humble servant In a note on Nichols's edition of Swift's Works this petition is said to be about "Chetwode's very good pretensions to an English peerage, for which he presented several memorials; but to no purpose." Knightley Chetwode, it is probable, as has been shown in my notes on an earlier letter, had taken part in a Jacobite plot. The Pretender, in spite of the failure of two risings in Scotland, was still buoyed up with hope. In the autumn of 1722, in a foolish manifesto, he called upon George I. to give up to him the throne of his fathers, and undertook in return to acknowledge him as King, instead of Elector of Hanover. By the order of the two Houses of Parliament it was burnt before the Royal Exchange by the common hangman as a false, insolent and traitorous libel. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended for a year, and many arrests were made. One man was hanged at Tyburn for high treason, and Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, was banished. Chetwode was threatened with prosecution, as the next letter and the seven following show. In Letter XXXI. there is mention of a second petition, presented nearly a year later. Swift had published in 1720 A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufacture, in which he mentions "the pleasant observation of somebody's, that Ireland would never be happy till a law were made for burning everything that came from England, except their people and their coals." He adds that "some ministers were apt from their high elevation to look down upon this kingdom, as if it had been one of their colonies of outcasts in America." He attacks the Irish landlords, "who by unmeasurable screwing and racking their tenants all over the kingdom have already reduced the miserable people to a worse condition than the peasants in France, or the vassals in Germany and Poland." After accusing these same landlords of attacking the bishops, he continues: "I know not how it comes to pass (and yet perhaps I know well enough) that slaves have a natural disposition to be tyrants, and that when my betters give me a kick, I am apt to revenge it with six upon my footman; although perhaps he may be an honest and diligent fellow." The government, not being able to reach the author for want of proof, prosecuted the printer. "The jury," wrote Swift, "brought him in not guilty, although they had been culled with the utmost industry. The Chief Justice sent them back nine times and kept them eleven hours. During the trial, among other singularities, he laid his hand. on his breast, and protested solemnly that the author's design was to bring in the Pretender, although there was not a single syllable of party the whole treatise." Swift retaliated with satire. Among the bitter verses he wrote on this unjust judge the following are perhaps the bitterest : "In church your grandsire cut his throat; To do the job too long he tarried; He should have had my hearty vote To cut his throat before he married." in The Dean in his lines On the death of Dr. Swift described the Chief Justice as : "A wicked monster on the bench, Whose fury blood could never quench; As vile and profligate a villain As modern Scroggs, or old Tresilian; Nor fear'd he God, nor man regarded." The Earl of Chesterfield, when he was LordLieutenant, favoured Irish manufactures. Mrs. Delany wrote from Dublin on Dec. 21, 1745: "Every-body is to appear at the Castle on the Prince of Wales's birthday in Irish stuffs, as they did on the Princess's." The concern that Swift sometimes felt for persons, because they were his friends, he thus expressed in a letter to Pope: "I have ever hated all nations, professions and communities; and all my love is towards individuals; for instance, I hate the tribe of lawyers, but I love Counsellor Such-aone and Judge Such-a-one. It is so with physicians (I will not speak of my own trade), soldiers, English, Scotch, French and the rest. But principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth." Of the letters that passed between him and Pope, Johnson said:-" "They show the age involved in darkness, and shade the picture with sullen emulation." XXVII. S",-I was yesterday with A. B [Archbishop], who tells me that it was not thought fit to hinder the Law from proceeding in the common form, but that particular Instructions were given that you should be treated with all possible Favor; and I have some very good Reasons to believe those Instructions will be observed: neither in this do I speak by Chance: which is all I can say I am y's &c. Feb 25th 1722-3. NOTE ON XXVII. Archbishop King would know what was intended about the prosecution, as he was one of the Lords Justices. Evelyn, eighteen years earlier, had described him as "a sharp ready man in politics, as well as very learned." XXVIII. [To Knightley Chetwode Esq at his Lodgings in William Street:] S", I sent a Messenger on Friday to M' Forbes's Lodging, who had orders if he were not at home, to say that I should be glad to see him--but I did not hear of him, though I stayd at home on Saturday till past two a Clock. I think all y' Comfort lyes in your Innocence, your Steddyness, and the Advice |