[Footnote 4: These works can hardly be called "tracts." Algernon Sidney's "Discourses concerning Government" (1698), is a portly folio of 467 pages, and Ludlow's "Memoirs" (1698-9) occupy three stout octavo volumes. [T.S.]
[Footnote 5: On July 21st, 1683, the University of Oxford passed a decree condemning as "false, seditious, and impious," a series of twenty-seven propositions, among which were the following:
"All civil authority is derived originally from the people."
"The King has but a co-ordinate power, and may be over-ruled by the Lords and Commons."
"Wicked kings and tyrants ought to be put to death."
"King Charles the First was lawfully put to death."
The decree was reprinted in 1709/10 with the title, "An Entire Confutation of Mr. Hoadley's Book, of the Original of Government." It was burnt by the order of the House of Lords, dated March 23rd, 1709/10. [T.S.]
[Footnote 6: In a letter to Dr. Chenevix, Bishop of Waterford (dated May 23rd, 1758), Lord Chesterfield, speaking of Swift's "Last Four Years," says that it "is a party pamphlet, founded on the lie of the day, which, as Lord Bolingbroke who had read it often assured me, was coined and delivered out to him, to write 'Examiners' and other political papers upon" (Chesterfield's "Works," ii. 498, edit. 1777). [T.S.]
[Footnote 7: From this and many previous passages it is obvious, that, in joining the Tories, Swift reserved to himself the right of putting his own interpretation upon the speculative points of their political creed. [S.]
[Footnote 8: See Swift's "Presbyterians' Plea of Merit," and note, vol. iv., p. 36, of present edition. [T.S.]