Letter 16.
1 Harcourt.
2 "A shilling passes for thirteenpence in Ireland" (Deane Swift).
3 Robert Cope, a gentleman of learning with whom Swift corresponded.
4 Archdeacon Morris is not mentioned in Cotton's Fasti Ecclesiae Hiberniae.
5 See Letter 14, note 6.
6 See Letter 10, note 2.
7 Abigail Hill, afterwards Lady Masham, had been introduced into the Queens
service as bed-chamber woman by the Duchess of Marlborough. Her High Church
and Tory views recommended her to Queen Anne, and in 17O7 she was privately
married to Mr. Samuel Masham, a gentleman in the service of Prince George (see
Letter 14, note 6). The Duchess of Marlborough discovered that Mrs. Masham's
cousin, Harley, was using her influence to further his own interests with the
Queen; and in spite of her violence the Duchess found herself gradually
supplanted. From 1710 Mrs. Masham's only rival in the royal favour was the
Duchess of Somerset. Afterwards she quarrelled with Harley and joined the
Bolingbroke faction.
8 See Letter 4, note 16.
9 No. 14 of Harrison's series.
10 See Letter 15, note 4.
11 Richard Duke, a minor poet and friend of Dryden's, entered the Church about
1685. In July 1710 he was presented by the Bishop of Winchester to the living
of Witney, Oxfordshire, which was worth 700 pounds a year.
12 Sir Jonathan Trelawney, one of the seven bishops committed to the Tower in
1688, was translated to Winchester in 17O7, when he appointed Duke to be his
chaplain.
13 See Letter 4, note 3.
14 See Letter 3, note 39.
15 See Letter 14, note 14.
16 See Letter 7, note 28.
17 Cf. Feb. 22, 1711.
18 Esther Johnson lodged opposite St. Mary's in Dublin.
19 This famous Tory club began with the meeting together of a few extreme
Tories at the Bell in Westminster. The password to the Club--"October"--was
one easy of remembrance to a country gentleman who loved his ale.
20 "Duke" Disney, "not an old man, but an old rake," died in 1731. Gay calls
him "facetious Disney," and Swift says that all the members of the Club "love
him mightily." Lady M. W. Montagu speaks of his
"Broad plump face, pert eyes, and ruddy skin,
Which showed the stupid joke which lurked within."
Disney was a French Huguenot refugee, and his real name was Desaulnais. He
commanded an Irish regiment, and took part in General Hill's expedition to
Canada in 1711 (Kingsford's Canada, ii. 465). By his will (Wentworth papers,
109) he "left nothing to his poor relations, but very handsome to his bottle
companions."
21 There were several Colonel Fieldings in the first half of the eighteenth
century, and it is not clear which is the one referred to by Swift. Possibly
he was the Edmund Fielding--grandson of the first Earl of Denbigh--who died a
Lieutenant-General in 1741, at the age of sixty-three, but is best known as
the father of Henry Fielding, the novelist.
22 Cf. Feb. 17, 1711.
23 See Letter 3, note 37.
24 "It is a measured mile round the outer wall; and far beyond any the finest
square in London" (Deane Swift).
25 "The common fare for a set-down in Dublin" (ib.).
26 "Mrs. Stoyte lived at Donnybrook, the road to which from Stephen's Green
ran into the country about a mile from the south-east corner" (ib.).
27 "Those words in italics are written in a very large hand, and so is the
word large" (ib.). [Italics replaced by capitals for the transcription of this
etext.]
28 Deane Swift alters "lele" to "there," but in a note states how he here
altered Swift's "cypher way of writing." No doubt "lele" and other favourite
words occurred frequently in the MS., as they do in the later letters.
