"When the Earl of Stamford was in Herefordshire, in October, 1642, and pillaged all that kept faith and allegiance to the king, information was given to Mrs. Swift, wife of Thomas Swift, parson of Goodrich, that her house was designed to be plundered. To prevent so great a danger, she instantly repaired to Hereford, where the earl then was, some ten miles from her own home, to petition him that no violence might be offered to her house or goods. He most nobly, and according to the goodness of his disposition, threw the petition away, and swore no small oaths that she should be plundered to-morrow. The good gentlewoman, being out of hope to prevail, and seeing that there was no good to be done by petitioning him, speeds home as fast as she could, and that night removed as much of her goods as the shortness of the time would permit. Next morning, to make good the Earl of Stamford's word, Captain Kirle's troop, consisting of seventy horse and thirty foot, which were hangers on—birds of prey, came to Mr. Swift's house. There they took away all his provision of victuals, corn, household stuff, which was not conveyed away. They empty his beds, and fill the ticks with malt; they rob him of his cart and six horses, and make this part of their theft the means to convey away the rest. Mrs. Swift, much affrighted to see such a sight as this, thought it best to save herself, though she lost her goods; therefore, taking up a young child in her arms, began to secure herself by flight, which one of the troopers perceiving, he commanded her to stay, or, holding a pistol to her breast, threatened to shoot her dead. She, good woman, fearing death whether she went or returned, at last, shunning that death which was next unto her, she retires back to her house, where she saw herself undone, and yet durst not oppose, or ask why they did so. Having thus rifled the house and gone, next morning early she goes again to Hereford, and there again petitions the earl to show some compassion to her and her ten children, and that he would be pleased to cause her horses and some part of her goods to be restored to her. The good earl was so far from granting her petition, that he would not vouchsafe so much as to read it. When she could not prevail herself, she makes use of the mediation of friends. These have the repulse also, his lordship remaining inexorable, without any inclination to mercy. At last, hoping that all men's hearts were not adamant relentless, she leaves the earl, and makes her addresses to Captain Kirle, who, upon her earnest entreaty, grants her a protection for what was left; but for restitution, there was no hope of that. This protection cost her no less than thirty shillings. It seems paper and ink are dear in those parts. And now, thinking herself secure in his protection, she returns home, in hope that what was left she might enjoy in peace and quietness. She had not been long at home ere Captain Kirle sends her word that, if it pleased her, she might buy four of her own six horses again, assuring her, by her father's servant and tenant, that she should not fear being plundered any more by the Earl of Stamford's forces while they were in those parts. Encouraged by these promises, she was content to buy her own, and deposited eight pounds ten shillings for four of her horses. And now, conceiving the storm to be blown over, and all danger past, and placing much confidence in her purchased protection, she causes all her goods secured in her neighbor's houses to be brought home; and since it could not be better, rejoiced that she had not lost all. She had not enjoyed these thoughts long ere Captain Kirle sent unto her for some vessels of cider, whereof having tasted, but not liking it, since he could not have drink for himself he would have provender for his horses, and therefore, instead of cider, he demands ten bushels of oats. Mrs. Swift, seeing that the denial might give some ground for a quarrel, sent him word that her husband had not two bushels of oats in a year for tithes, nor did they grow any on their glebe, both of which were most true. Yet, to show how willing she was, to her power, to comply with him, that the messengers might not return empty, she sent him forty shillings to buy oats. Suddenly after, the captain of Goodridge castle sends to Mr. Swift's house for victual and corn. Mrs. Swift instantly shows him her protection. He, to answer show with show, shows her his warrant; and so, without any regard to her protection, seizeth upon that provision which was in the house, together with the cider which Captain Kirle had refused. Hereupon Mrs. Swift writes to Captain Kirle, complaining of this injury, and the affront done to him in slighting his protection; but before the messenger could return with an answer to her letter, some from the castle came a second time to plunder the house, and they did what they came for. Presently after comes a letter from Captain Kirle in answer to Mrs. Swift's, that the Earl of Stamford did by no means approve of the injuries done to her, and withal, by word of mouth, sends to her for more oats. She, perceiving that as long as she gave they would never leave asking, resolved to be drilled no more. The return not answering expectation, on the third of December, Captain Kirle's lieutenant, attended by a considerable number of dragoons, comes to Mr. Swift's house and demands entrance; but the doors being kept shut against them, and not being able to force them, they broke down two iron bars in a stone window, and so, with swords drawn and pistols cocked, they enter the house. Being entered, they take all Master Swift's and his wife's apparel, his books and his children's clothes, they being in bed; and these poor children that hung by their clothes, they being unwilling to part with them, they swung them about until, their hold-fast failing, they dashed them against the walls. They took away all his servants' clothes, and made so clean work with one that they left him not a shirt to cover his nakedness. There was one of the children, an infant, lying in the cradle; they robbed that, and left not the poor soul a rag to defend it from the cold. They took away all the iron, pewter, and brass; and a very fair cupboard of glasses, which they could not carry away, they broke to pieces; and the four horses lately redeemed are with them lawful prize again, and nothing left of all the goods but a few stools, for his wife, children, and servants to sit down and bemoan their distressed condition. Having taken away all, and being gone, Mrs. Swift, in compassion to her poor infant in the cradle, took it up, almost starved with cold, and wrapped it in a petticoat which she took off from herself; and now hoped that having nothing to lose would be a better protection for their persons than that which they purchased of Captain Kirle for thirty shillings. But, as if Job's messenger would never make an end, her three maid-servants, whom they in the castle had compelled to carry the poultry to the castle, return and tell their mistress that they in the castle said they had a warrant to seize upon Mrs. Swift and bring her into the castle, and they would make her three maid-servants wait on her there, and added things not fit for them to speak nor us to write. Hereupon Mrs. Swift fled to the place where her husband, for fear of the rebels, had withdrawn himself. She had not been gone two hours before they come from the castle, and bring with them three teams to carry away what was before designed for plunder, but wanted means of conveyance. When they came there was a batch of bread hot in the oven. This they seize on; her children, on their knees, entreat but for one loaf, and at last, with much importunity, obtained it; but before the children had eaten it, they took even that one loaf away, and left them destitute of a morsel of bread among ten children. Ransacking every corner of the house that nothing might be left behind, they find a small pewter dish in which the dry-nurse had put pap to feed the poor infant, the mother who gave it suck being fled to save her life. This they seize on too. The nurse entreats, for God's sake, that they would spare that, pleading that, in the mother's absence, it was all the substance which was or could be provided to sustain the life of the child, that 'knew not the right hand from the left,' a motive which prevailed with God himself, though justly incensed against Nineveh.
"Master Swift's eldest son, a youth, seeing this barbarous cruelty, demanded of them a reason for this so hard usage. They replied that his father was a traitor to the king and Parliament, and added, that they would keep them so short that they would eat the very flesh from their arms; and to make good their word, they threaten the miller, that if he ground any corn for these children, they would grind him in his own mill; and not contented with this, they go to Mr. Swift's next neighbor, whose daughter was his servant, and take him prisoner: they examine him on oath what goods of Mr. Swift's he had in his custody. He professing that he had none, they charge him to take his daughter away from Mr. Swift's service, or else they threaten to plunder him; and to make sure work, they make him give them security to obey all their commands. Terrified with this, the neighbors stand afar off, and pity the distressed condition of these persecuted children, but dare not come or send to their relief. By this means the children and servants had no sustenance, hardly any thing to cover them, from Friday, six o'clock at night, until Saturday, twelve at night, until at last, the neighbors, moved with the lamentable cries and complaints of the children and servants, one of the neighbors, overlooking all difficulties, and showing that he durst be charitable in despite of these monsters, ventured in, and brought them some provision. And if the world would know what it was that so exasperated these rebels against this gentleman, the Earl of Stamford, a man that is not bound to give an account of all his actions, gave two reasons for it: first, because he had bought arms and conveyed them into Monmouthshire, which, under his lordship's good favor, was not so; and, secondly, because, not long before, he preached a sermon in Rosse upon that text, 'Give unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's,' in which his lordship said he had spoken treason in endeavoring to give Cæsar more than his due. These two crimes cost Mr. Swift no less than £300."[8]
With the memory of such things as these in the family, there need be no wonder at the dean's decided tendency to Toryism. His father and three uncles, that is, four out of ten sons, and three or four daughters of the persecuted clergyman, fled to Ireland, where the eldest son, Godwin Swift, a barrister, married a relative of the Marchioness of Ormond, and was made, by the Marquis of Ormond, his attorney-general in the palatinate of Tipperary. This Godwin married the co-heiress of Admiral Deane; the second son, a daughter of Sir William Davenant. Another was Mr. Dryden Swift, so called after his mother, who was a Dryden, and a near relation of the poet's. Thus Swift was of good family and alliance. He was the only son of Jonathan Swift, the eighth son of Thomas Swift, the vicar of Goodrich, who was so plundered. His mother was Abigail Erick, of Leicestershire, descended from the most ancient family of the Ericks, who derive their lineage from Erick the Forester, a great commander, who raised an army to oppose the invasion of William the Conqueror, by whom he was vanquished, but afterward employed to command that prince's forces. In his old age he retired to his house in Leicestershire, where his family has continued ever since, has produced many eminent men, and is still represented by the Heyricks of Leicester town, and the Herricks of Beaumanor.
Swift's father was a solicitor, and steward to the Society of the King's Inn, Dublin; but he died before Swift was born, and left his mother in such poverty that she was not able to defray the expenses of her husband's funeral. He was born on the 30th of November, 1667, St. Andrew's Day, in a small house, now called No. 7, in Hoey's Court, Dublin, which is still pointed out by the inhabitants of that quarter, and, by the antiquity of its appearance, seems to vindicate the truth of the tradition. Here a circumstance occurred to him as singular as the case of his father, who, as a child in the cradle, had his clothes stripped from him by the troopers of Captain Kirle. His nurse was a woman of Whitehaven, and being obliged to go thither in order to see a dying relative, from whom she expected a legacy, out of sheer affection for the child, she stole on shipboard, unknown to his mother and uncle, and carried him with her to Whitehaven, where he continued for almost three years; for, when the matter was discovered, his mother sent orders by all means not to hazard a second voyage till he could better bear it. The nurse was so careful of him, that before he returned he had learned to spell, and by the time that he was five years old he could read any chapter in the Bible.
After his return to Ireland he was sent, at six years old, to Kilkenny school, and thence, at fourteen, he was transferred to the University at Dublin. At Kilkenny, it is said that his name is still shown to strangers at the school, cut, boy fashion, upon his desk or form. At the University, like Goldsmith, he was more addicted to general reading and poetry than to the classics and mathematics. He was poor, and the sense of his poverty on his proud spirit made him reckless, and almost desperate. He got into dissipation to drown his mortification. Between the 14th of November, 1685, and the 8th of October, 1687, he incurred no less than seventy penalties for non-attendance at chapel, for neglecting lectures, for being absent at the evening roll-call, and for town-haunting, the academical phrase for absence from college without license. These brought censures, suspension of his degree; and, on his part, satirical sallies against the college authorities. He finally received his degree of bachelor of arts by special grace, that is, not by his own fair acquisition. His uncles, Godwin, and, after his death, Dryden, had borne the cost of his education; his mother had gone over to her native Leicester and friends, and, on obtaining his degree, he passed over to England to her. His mother was related to the wife of Sir William Temple, and, through her, Swift was received into Sir William's house as his private secretary. This brings us to the first home which Jonathan Swift may almost be said to have had.
Sir William, according to some authorities, was residing at this time at Sheen, near Richmond; according to others, he had retired to his favorite residence of Moorpark, near Farnham, in Surrey. Whichever place it was originally, it soon became Moorpark. Here William III. used to visit Temple; and here, as at Sheen, it was that the Dutch monarch, as is related as a most important fact, taught Swift to cut asparagus the Dutch way. The fact is Dutch and economical, and worthy to be known to all gardeners, and all other people who undertake this useful operation. It consists in cutting with a short and circular stroke, not with a wide, sweeping one. In the first case, you cut off only the head of asparagus you want; in the other, you most probably cut off half a dozen heads that have not yet appeared above the soil. Still, this was only half the advantage derived from the royal gardener: he taught Swift how to eat the asparagus when cut; and Swift used always to tell his guests that King William ate the stalks as well as the heads. If he taught him how to make them eatable, it is a great pity that the secret is lost. William is said, also, to have offered Swift a troop of horse, which might naturally arise out of their cutting horseradish for dinner at the same time, though of this the biographers do not inform us. Certain it is, that Swift must have become a great favorite with William, or have thought so; for, though he respectfully declined becoming a trooper, he gave the king to understand that he had no objection to become a canon; and the king, as Swift wrote his uncle, desired him not to take orders till he gave him a prebend. Such was the opinion entertained by both Sir William Temple and Swift of his standing in the monarch's estimation, that he was employed by Sir William, who was himself laid up with the gout, to lay before the king reasons why his majesty ought to assent to the bill for triennial Parliaments. Swift could strengthen Sir William's opinion by several arguments drawn from English history; but all his arguments had no effect on William III., who knew how to cut triennial Parliaments as cleverly as asparagus. This was Swift's first dip into politics, and, though he said it helped to cure him of vanity, it did not of addicting himself to the same unsatisfactory pursuit in after life.
Swift's residence at Moorpark is marked by all the characteristics of his after life, and by two of those events which are mixed up with its great mystery, and which brought after them its melancholy ending. He was so morose, bitter, and satirical, that Mr. Temple, nephew to Sir William, stated that Sir William for a long time very much disliked him "for his ill qualities, nor would allow him to sit down at table with him." Though related to Lady Temple, Sir William had engaged him only in the capacity of reader and amanuensis, at a salary of £20 a year and his board, and looked upon him as "a young fellow taken into a low office who was inclined to forget himself." We can well believe that the proud and unbending spirit which, through life, never deserted Swift, made him feel that he was thus regarded, and excited his most hostile and disagreeable qualities. He was also very defective in his education, and the consciousness of this in a towering spirit like Swift's, while it mortified him, could not make him humble. Yet his better qualities at length prevailed. He took to study; was commended by Sir William; and this, on his part, induced a more respectful deportment toward Sir William, whose fine mind and noble character no one could better estimate than Swift, and it ended, notwithstanding an occasional jar, and a parting at one time, with Swift's becoming the most zealous, attentive, and affectionate friend of Sir William, who admitted him to his most entire and cordial confidence.
The whole period of Swift's residence at Moorpark was two years. During this time he went for a while to Oxford to take his degree, and he was absent twice in Ireland; once a few months on account of his health, and the second time when Swift, anxious for some means of independence, and Temple only offering him an employment worth a hundred a year in the office of the rolls in Ireland, they parted with mutual displeasure. Swift then went to Ireland, where, the heat of their difference having abated on both sides, through Sir William's influence, he obtained the prebend of Kilroot, in the diocese of Connor, worth about a hundred pounds a year. To this small living he retired, and assumed the character of a country clergyman. But this life of obscurity and seclusion was not likely long to suit the reckless, aspiring nature of Swift. He sighed to return to the intellectual pleasures and persons who resorted to Moorpark, and Sir William had not the less sensibly felt the absence of Swift, than Swift the absence of Moorpark. He returned within the year, and was welcomed back with warmth and respect, and thenceforward stood in a new position. With his abrupt departure from Kilroot, two very different stories have been connected: one which, if true, would sink his character forever; the other, which has never been questioned, evidencing the noblest qualities in that character. The first of these stories is that he attempted violence on the daughter of a farmer, one of his parishioners. Of this it is enough to quote the words of Sir Walter Scott, which, after giving the particulars of the refutation of this calumny, are: "It is sufficient for Swift's vindication to observe, that he returned to Kilroot after his resignation, and inducted his successor in face of the church and of the public; that he returned to Sir William Temple with as fair a character as when he left him; that during all his public life in England and Ireland, when he was the butt of a whole faction, this charge was never heard of; that when adduced so many years after his death, it was unsupported by aught but sturdy and general averment; and that the chief propagator of the calumny first retracted his assertions, and finally died insane."
That there might be something on which this charge was founded is by no means improbable, and that Swift, as alleged, was brought before a magistrate of the name of Dobbs; for it is confessed that in his youth he was of a dissipated habit, and it is far more likely that these habits induced that constitutional affection, with giddiness, deafness, and ultimate insanity, which made his future life wretched, than that it was owing to eating an over quantity of stone-fruit. In this point of view, the life of Swift presents a deep moral lesson; for no man, if that were the case, ever drew down upon himself a severer chastisement; but, as regards this particular fact, it could by possibility be nothing so flagrant as was endeavored to be propagated by the report. The second statement one is unwilling to weaken, because, in itself, it is so beautiful; yet in the dean's life there are so many proofs of his making professions of patriotism and generosity to cover and screen his private purposes, that one is equally tempted to suspect a certain share of policy. The fact is thus stated:
"In an excursion from his habitation, he met with a clergyman, with whom he formed an acquaintance, which proved him to be learned, modest, well-principled, the father of eight children, and a curate at the rate of forty pounds a year. Without explaining his purpose, Swift borrowed this gentleman's black mare—having no horse of his own—rode to Dublin, resigned the prebend of Kilroot, and obtained a grant of it for this new friend. When he gave the presentation to the poor clergyman, he kept his eyes steadily fixed on the old man's face, which, at first, only expressed pleasure at finding himself preferred to a living; but when he found that it was that of his benefactor, who had resigned in his favor, his joy assumed so touching an expression of surprise and gratitude, that Swift, himself deeply affected, declared he had never experienced so much pleasure as at that moment. The poor clergyman, at Swift's departure, pressed upon him the black mare, which he did not choose to hurt him by refusing; and thus mounted for the first time on a horse of his own, with fourscore pounds in his purse, Swift again rode to Dublin, and there embarked for England, and resumed his situation at Moorpark as Sir William Temple's confidential secretary."