[211a] Swift’s curate at Laracor.
[211b] Queen Anne was the last sovereign who exercised the supposed royal gift of healing by touch. Dr. Johnson was touched by her, but without effect.
[212a] Richard Thornhill was tried at the Old Bailey on May 18, 1711, for the murder of Sir Cholmley Dering, M.P. for Kent, and found guilty of manslaughter only; but he was shortly afterwards assassinated (see Journal for Aug. 21, 1711; Spectator, No. 84). The quarrel began on April 27, when they fell to blows, and Thornhill being knocked down, had some teeth struck out by Sir C. Dering stamping on him. The spectators then interfered, and Dering expressed himself as ready to beg pardon; but Thornhill not thinking this was sufficient satisfaction, gave Dering the lie, and on May 9 sent him a challenge.
[212b] Tothill Fields, Westminster, was a favourite place for duels in the seventeenth century.
[213] Benjamin Burton, a Dublin banker, and brother-in-law of Swift’s friend Stratford (see p. [10]). Swift says he hated this “rogue.”
[214] The day on which the Club met. See letter from Swift to St. John, May 11, 1711.
[215a] Henry Barry, fourth Lord Barry of Santry (1680–1734), was an Irish Privy Councillor, and Governor of Derry. In 1702 he married Bridget, daughter of Sir Thomas Domville, Bart., and in an undated letter (about 1735) to Lady Santry Swift spoke of his esteem for her, “although I had hardly the least acquaintance with your lord, nor was at all desirous to cultivate it, because I did not at all approve of his conduct.” Lord Santry’s only son and heir, who was born in 1710, was condemned to death for the murder of a footman in 1739, when the barony became extinct by forfeiture. See B. W. Adams’s History of Santry.
[215b] Probably Captain Cammock, of the Speedwell, of 28 guns and 125 men (Luttrell, vi. 331), who met on July 13, 1708, off Scotland, two French privateers, one of 16, the other of 18 guns, and fought them several hours. The first privateer got off, much shattered; the other was brought into Carrickfergus.