17.  Archdeacon Walls was rector of Castle Knock, near Trim.  Esther Johnson was a frequent visitor at his house in Queen Street, Dublin.

18.  William Frankland, Comptroller of the Inland Office at the Post Office, was the second son of the Postmaster-General, Sir Thomas Frankland, Bart.  Luttrell (vi. 333) records that in 17O8 he was made Treasurer of the Stamp Office, or, according to Chamberlayne’s Mag.  Brit.  Notitia for 171O, Receiver-General.

19.  Thomas Wharton, Earl and afterwards Marquis of Wharton, had been one of Swift’s fellow-travellers from Dublin.  Lord Lieutenant of Ireland under the Whig Government, from 17O8 to 171O, Wharton was the most thorough-going party man that had yet appeared in English politics; and his political enemies did not fail to make the most of his well-known immorality.  In his Notes to Macky’s Characters Swift described Wharton as “the most universal villain that ever I knew.”  On his death in 1715 he was succeeded by his profligate son, Philip, who was created Duke of Wharton in 1718.

20.  This money was a premium the Government had promised Beaumont for his Mathematical Sleying Tables, calculated for the improvement of the linen manufacture.

21.  The bellman was both town-crier and night-watchman.

Letter 3.

1.  Dr. William Cockburn (1669-1739), Swift’s physician, of a good Scottish family, was educated at Leyden.  He invented an electuary for the cure of fluxes, and in 173O, in The Danger of Improving Physick, satirised the academical physicians who envied him the fortune he had made by his secret remedy.  He was described in 1729 as “an old very rich quack.”

2.  Sir Matthew Dudley, Bart., an old Whig friend, was M.P. for Huntingdonshire, and Commissioner of the Customs from 17O6 to 1712, and again under George I., until his death in 1721.

3.  Isaac Manley, who was appointed Postmaster-General in Ireland in 17O3 (Luttrell, v. 333).  He had previously been Comptroller of the English Letter Office, a post in which he was succeeded by William Frankland, son of Sir Thomas Frankland.  Dunton calls Manley “loyal and acute.”

4.  Sir Thomas Frankland was joint Postmaster-General from 1691 to 1715.  He succeeded to the baronetcy on the death of his father, Sir William Frankland, in 1697, and he died in 1726.  Macky describes Sir Thomas as “of a sweet and easy disposition, zealous for the Constitution, yet not forward, and indulgent to his dependants.”  On this Swift comments, “This is a fair character.”

5.  Theophilus Butler, elected M.P. for Cavan, in the Irish Parliament, in 17O3, and for Belturbet (as “the Right Hon. Theophilus Butler”) in 1713.  On May 3, 171O, Luttrell wrote (Brief Relation of State Affairs, vi. 577), “’Tis said the Earl of Montrath, Lord Viscount Mountjoy. . . and Mr. Butler will be made Privy Councillors of the Kingdom of Ireland.”  Butler—­a contemporary of Swift’s at Trinity College, Dublin—­was created Baron of Newtown-Butler in 1715, and his brother, who succeeded him in 1723, was made Viscount Lanesborough.  Butler’s wife was Emilia, eldest daughter and co-heir of James Stopford, of Tara, County Meath.