ANECDOTES

OF THE

FAMILY OF SWIFT.

A FRAGMENT.

WRITTEN BY DR SWIFT.

[The original Manuscript in his own hand is lodged in the University Library of Dublin.]

THE

HE family of the Swifts was ancient in Yorkshire; from them descended a noted person, who passed under the name of Cavaliero Swift, a man of wit and humour. He was made an Irish peer by King James or King Charles the First, with the title of Baron Carlingford, * but never was in that kingdom. Many traditional pleasant stories are related of him, which the family planted in Ireland has received from their parents. This lord died without issue male; and his heiress, whether of the first or second descent, was married to Robert Fielding, Esquire, commonly called Handsome Fielding ; she brought him a considerable estate in Yorkshire, which he squandered away, but had no children: the earl of Eglinton married another coheiress of the same family, as he has often told me. t

Barnam Swift, esq. was created viscount (not baron) of Carlingford, by King Charles I. March 20, 1627, and by his death in 1642, S. P. the title became extinct.

+ Scottish genealogists do not record such a marriage in the pedigree of the Eglintoun family.

Another of the same family was Sir Edward Swift, well known in the times of the great rebellion and usurpation, but I am ignorant whether he left heirs or not.

Of the other branch, whereof the greatest part settled in Ireland, the founder was William Swift, prebendary of Canterbury,* towards the last years of Queen Elizabeth, and during the reign of King James the First. He was a divine of some distinction. There is a sermon of his extant, and the title is to be seen in the catalogue of the Bodleian Library, but I never could get a copy, and I suppose it would now be of little value. †

This William married the heiress of Philpott, I suppose a Yorkshire gentleman, by whom he got a very considerable estate, which however she kept in her own power; I know not by what artifice. She was a capricious, ill-natured, and passionate woman, of which I have been told several instances. And it has been a continual tradition in the family, that she absolutely disinherited her only son Thomas, for no greater crime than that of robbing an orchard when he was a boy. And thus much is certain, that except a church or chapter lease which was not renewed, Thomas never enjoyed more than one hundred pounds a year, which was all at Goodrich, in Herefordshire, whereof not above one half is now in the possession of a great grandson.

His original picture § is now in the hands of Godwin Swift of Dublin, Esq. his great grandson, as well as that of his wife, who seems to have a good deal of the shrew in her countenance; whose arms of an heiress are joined with his own; and by the last he seems to have been a person somewhat fantastick; for in these he gives as his device, a dolphin (in those days called a Swift) twisted about an anchor, with this motto, Festina lente.

There is likewise a seal with the same coat of arms (his

William Swift was rector of St Andrew's in Canterbury, not a prebendary.

It was preached Jan. 25, 1621, at St George's, Canterbury, at the funeral of Sir Thomas Wilson, in Rom. viii. 18, and is written much in the style and manner of that age.-D. S.

More probably of Kent.-D. S.

§ Drawn in 1603, æt. 57: his wife's in the same year, æt. 54.-D. S. These pictures are still preserved in the family.