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No usurper!" The meeting-houses of the Nonconformists were pulled down. Thirty-nine years later Mrs. Delany wrote: "We were ushered into Oxford by ringing of bells, illuminations, squibs, crackers, and bonfires, and could willingly have spared all the bustle and roar of joy that surrounded us. It was all for his Majesty's coronation day."

IV.

[Indorsed, "A pencil note fr Wodebrook where he came in K. C.'s [Knightley Chetwode's] absence dining out."]

Not to disturb you in the good work of a Godfather nor spoil y' dinner, I onely design M Chetwode and you would take care not to be benighted; but come when you will you shall be heartily welcome to my House. The children's Tutor is gone out and so there was no pen and ink to be had.

WOODBROOK, Nov 6th past one in the afternoon.

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V.

[Indorsed, This was my advice to a young Lady."]

I look [sic] over the inclosed some time ago, and

again just now; it contains many good Things, and wants many alterations. I have made one or two, and pointed at others, but an Author can only sett his own Things right.-Friday.

VI.

[Per messenger.]

DUBLIN. Decor 3. 1714

SR, Mr Graves never came to me till this morning, like a vile Man as he is. I had no letters from Engl to vex me except on the publick Account; I am now teazed by an impertinent woman, come to renew her Lease, the Baron and she are talking together I have just squired her down, and there is at present no body with me but-yes now Mr Wall [? Walls] is come in-and now another-you must stay;-Now I am full of company again and the Baron is in hast,-I will write to you in a Post or two. Manly is not Commiss nor expects it. I had a very ingenious Tory Ballad sent me printed, but receiving it in a Whig house I suddenly read it, and gave it to a Gentleman with a wink, and ordered him to burn it, but he threw another Paper into the Fire. I hope to send you a Copy of it. I have seen nobody since I came. Bolton's Paten

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for St. Warbraw is passed, and I believe I shall find Difficultyes with the Chapter about a Successor for him. I thought to give the Baron some good Coffee, and they made it so bad, that I would hardly give it Wharton. I here send some Snuff to Mrs Chetwood; the Baron will tell you by what Snatches I write this Paper. I am yrs &c.

My humble Service to Dame Plyant.

NOTES ON VI.

Isaac Manley was at the head of the post-office in Ireland. Swift befriended him in the Queen's time, though he mentions more than once that he was accused of opening letters. Some years later the Dean wrote: "I escaped hanging very narrowly a month ago; for a letter from Preston, directed to me, was opened in the post-office and sealed again in a very slovenly manner, when Manley found it only contained a request from a poor curate.'

Bolton was Dr. Theophilus Bolton, Chancellor of St. Patrick's, afterwards Bishop of Clonfert and Archbishop of Cashel. He had been appointed Rector of St. Werburgh. Swift, in 1717, complained of his behaviour: "He has taken every opportunity of opposing me in the most unkind and unnecessary manner, and I have done with him." Five years later the Dean wrote: "Your new Bishop Bolton

was born to be my tormentor, he ever opposed me as my subject, and now has left me embroiled for want of him." In 1735, Bolton, now Archbishop, sent a kind letter to him: "If I could be put upon the old foot, as when I was your subject at St. Patrick's, I should think myself the happiest man in the world."

Swift prided himself on his skill in making coffeeTo a lady who asked for a cup he said, "You shall have some in perfection; for when I was chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley, who was in the government here, I was so poor I was obliged to keep a coffeehouse, and all the nobility resorted to it to talk treason." He thereupon made the coffee himself. He gave up drinking it later in life. "My breakfast," he wrote, "is that of a sickly man, rice gruel; and I am wholly a stranger to tea and coffee."

Of Lord Wharton, to whom he would hardly have given the bad coffee, much as he hated him, he said: "He is the most universal villain I ever knew." In the Short Character he drew of him, when the Earl "had some years passed his grand climacteric," he wrote: "His behaviour is in all the forms of a young man at five and twenty. Whether he walks, or whistles, or swears, or talks bawdy, or calls names, he acquits himself in each beyond a Templar of three years' standing.. He goes constantly to prayers in the forms of his place, and will talk bawdy and blasphemy at the chapel door. He is a Presbyterian in politics, and

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an atheist in religion; but he chooses at present to whore with a Papist." To attacks he was indifferent. "When these papers are public,” continues Swift, "it is odds but he will tell me, as he once did upon a like occasion, 'that he is damnably mauled'; and then, with the easiest transition in the world, ask about the weather or time of the day." It was Wharton's boast that by his Lilibulero he had sung a king out of his three kingdoms. His son was scarcely less profligate. "One day he recounted to the Dean several wild frolics he had run through. My Lord,' said Swift, let me recommend one more to you take a frolic to be good; rely upon it, you will find it the pleasantest frolic you ever were engaged in.'

"Dame Plyant"-the name is taken from a character in Ben Jonson's Alchemist—was no doubt Chetwode's wife. It will be seen later on that she and her husband agreed so ill that at last they separated.

VII.

[p' private hand.]

Jan 3d 1714

I have had a Letter of yours by me these three weeks, which among others has lain unanswered, because I left of my old Custom of answering Letters

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