LETTING OF LEASES.
NOTE.
The years between that which saw the publication of the "Drapier Letters," and that which rang with the fame of "Gulliver's Travels," were busy fighting years for Swift. Apart from his vigorous championship of the Test, and his war against the Dissenters, he espoused the cause of the inferior clergy of his own Church, as against the bishops. The business of filling the vacant sees of Ireland had degenerated into what we should now call "jobbery"; and during the period of Sir Robert Walpole's administration it was rarely that an Irishman was selected. On any question, therefore, which affected the welfare of the lower clergy, it will at once be seen, that the Lords Spiritual, sitting in the Irish Upper House, would find little difficulty in coming to a solution. That the solution should also be one which only increased the clergy's difficulties, might be expected from a body which aimed chiefly at acquiring wealth and power for itself.
In the reign of Charles I. an act was passed, "prohibiting all bishops, and other ecclesiastical corporations, from setting their lands for above the term of twenty-one years: the rent reserved to be half the real value of such lands at the time they were set." As Swift points out, about the time of the Reformation, a trade was carried on by the popish bishops, who felt that their terms of office would be short, and who, consequently, to get what benefit they could while in office, "made long leases and fee-farms of great part of their lands, reserving very inconsiderable rents, sometimes only a chiefry." It was owing to a continuance in this traffic by the bishops when they became Protestants, and to a recognition of the injustice of such alienation, that the legislature passed the act. In 1723, however, an attempt was made for its repeal. Swift was not the man to permit the bishops to have their way, if he could help it. His opinion of Irish bishops is well known. "No blame," he said, "rested with the court for these appointments. Excellent and moral men had been selected upon every occasion of vacancy, but it unfortunately happened, that as these worthy divines crossed Hounslow Heath, on their way to Ireland, to take possession of their bishoprics, they have been regularly robbed and murdered by the highwaymen frequenting that common, who seize upon their robes and patents, come over to Ireland, and are consecrated bishops in their stead." To prevent, therefore, the encroachments of such individuals he wrote this tract, in which he clearly demonstrates the justice and salutariness of Charles's act. His contention, as Monck Mason points out ("History of St. Patrick's Cathedral," p. 392, note 1) "is confirmed by all writers upon the subject," and quotes from Carte's "Life of James, Duke of Ormond," where it is stated that the bishoprics in Ireland had, "the greatest part of them, been depauperated in the change of religion by absolute grants and long leases (made generally by the popish bishops that conformed)—some of them not able to maintain a bishop, several were, by these means, reduced to £50 a year, as Waterford, Kilfenora, and others, and some to five marks, as Cloyne and Kilmacduagh." To Swift is largely due the fact that the House of Commons, when they received the bill from the Lords, threw it out.
Scott, in his note on this pamphlet (amended from one by Lord Orrery), takes his usual course when considering Swift's attitude of opposition —he implies a motive or prejudice. In his opinion, Swift considered the bill for the repeal of Charles's act, "an indirect mode of gratifying the existing bishops, whom he did not regard with peculiar respect or complacency, at the expense of the Church establishment," and that, therefore, "the spirit of his opposition is, in this instance, peculiarly caustic." As a matter of fact, the spirit of Swift's opposition was always peculiarly caustic, in this case no more so than in any other. But to imply that his motive was a self gratifying one only, is to treat Swift unfairly. If the bishops required an example as to how they should deal with their lands, they could easily have found one in Swift himself. In all the renewals of the leases of the Deanery lands, Swift never sought his own immediate advantage, his terms were based on the consideration that the lands were his only in trust for a successor. To take one instance only, the instance of the parish of Kilberry in county Kildare, cited by Monck Mason (p. 27, note h). In 1695 the rent of this parish was reserved at £100 English sterling, in 1717, Swift raised this rent to £150, in 1731 to £170, and in 1741 to £200 per annum, with a proportionable loss of fine upon each occasion.
The tract is dated October 21st, 1723, but as I have not come across a copy of the original separate issue, I have based the text on that given by Faulkner (vol. iv, 1735), and the title page here reproduced is from that edition. The fifth volume of "Miscellanies," also issued in 1735, contains this tract, and I have compared the texts of the two. The notes given in Scott's edition are, in the main, altered from Faulkner's edition.
[T.S.]
SOME
ARGUMENTS
AGAINST ENLARGING the
POWER OF BISHOPS
In LETTING OF
LEASES.
WITH
REMARKS on some Queries
lately published.
Mibi credite, major haereditas venit unicuique vestraem in iisdem bonis ae jure & ae legibus, quam ab iis ae quibus illa ipsa bona relicta sunt.
Cicero pro A. Caecina.