On his death in January 1699, Temple left a will,[3] dated 1694, directing the payment of 20 pounds each, with half a year’s wages, to Bridget Johnson “and all my other servants”; and leaving a lease of some land in Monistown, County Wicklow, to Esther Johnson, “servant to my sister Giffard.”  By a codicil of February 1698, Temple left 100 pounds to “Mr. Jonathan Swift, now living with me.”  It may be added that by her will of 1722, proved in the following year, Lady Giffard gave 20 pounds to Mrs. Moss—­Mrs. Bridget Johnson, who had married Richard Mose or Moss, Lady Giffard’s steward.  The will proceeds:  “To Mrs. Hester (sic) Johnson I give 10 pounds, with the 100 pounds I put into the Exchequer for her life and my own, and declare the 100 pounds to be hers which I am told is there in my name upon the survivorship, and for which she has constantly sent over her certificate and received the interest.  I give her besides my two little silver candlesticks.”

Temple left in Swift’s hands the task of publishing his posthumous works, a duty which afterwards led to a quarrel with Lady Giffard and other members of the family.  Many years later Swift told Lord Palmerston that he stopped at Moor Park solely for the benefit of Temple’s conversation and advice, and the opportunity of pursuing his studies.  At Temple’s death he was “as far to seek as ever.”  In the summer of 1699, however, he was offered and accepted the post of secretary and chaplain to the Earl of Berkeley, one of the Lords Justices, but when he reached Ireland he found that the secretaryship had been given to another.  He soon, however, obtained the living of Laracor, Agher, and Rathbeggan, and the prebend of Dunlavin in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.  The total value of these preferments was about 230 pounds a year, an income which Miss Waring seems to have thought enough to justify him in marrying.  Swift’s reply to the lady whom he had “singled out at first from the rest of women” could only have been written with the intention of breaking off the connection, and accordingly we hear no more of poor Varina.

At Laracor, a mile or two from Trim, and twenty miles from Dublin, Swift ministered to a congregation of about fifteen persons, and had abundant leisure for cultivating his garden, making a canal (after the Dutch fashion of Moor Park), planting willows, and rebuilding the vicarage.  As chaplain to Lord Berkeley, he spent much of his time in Dublin.  He was on intimate terms with Lady Berkeley and her daughters, one of whom is best known by her married name of Lady Betty Germaine; and through them he had access to the fashionable society of Dublin.  When Lord Berkeley returned to England in April 1701, Swift, after taking his Doctor’s degree at Dublin, went with him, and soon afterwards published, anonymously, a political pamphlet, A Discourse on the Contests and Dissentions in Athens and Rome.  When he returned to Ireland in September he was accompanied by Stella—­to